I thought I'd make this post to point people in the direction of some amazing blogs that definitely need some more recognition. Check all these out! I've learned about so many amazing artists from these people.

-A Softly Sleeping Rose: NOISE/IDOL/EXPERIMENTAL/ETC. EVERYTHING GOOD!
-Habit of Sex: JAPANESE INDEPENDENT MUSIC (The most obscure stuff you'll ever find!)
-Japshare: DUH!
-Stalking Duppi: JAPANESE 80'S UNDERGROUND

Also, if you could take the time to check out/follow a blog my friend and I run focusing on the Orange County Noise scene and the annual Santa Ana Noise Festival. We try to update fairly often about local happenings and artists.

Santa Ana Noise Festival @ The OCCCA

We also have a YouTube channel: OCNoise

Peace!

-Garrett

Sadesper Record is a two-person group involving Narasaki of Coaltar of the Deepers (who goes under the alias, Goro Watari, on this album) and Oshima Watchma (WATCHMAN) who has played with groups such as Melt Banana.

The CD actually is technically a soundtrack for the movie U.F.O., directed by YU-ICHI SUKIGARA. The video for "Siesta" is meant to be a kind of trailer for said movie.


If you've heard Coaltar of the Deepers before, that may gave you a brief indication of what to expect. A nice mix of shoegaze, grind, electronica and pop. Although the genre clash may be relatively close to what Coaltar does, the sound here is quite distinct from that band. Songs such as "Lose Your Sight" is a blissful shoegaze piece with distinctivly J-pop vocals. Think something like Coaltar of the Deepers meets Hatsune Miku. The other tracks sound more "soundtrack-like", with many brief instrumentals that give one the image of running through a dark, industrial city, or drifting away on a soft cloud. The stand-out piece, "Siesta," sounds like what it would be like if aliens abducted Kevin Shields to write a 90's house song.

A bit too songy to be called a movie soundtrack, but sometimes too dense to stand out as a complete album. Altogether, this is a very brief, but fun record. I'll post their full-length soon.


-Garrett

Thanks to Megane-kun's recent post on Etsuko Yakushimaru I've been obsessively listening to her band Soutaiseiriron for the past month or so. It's a bit hard to talk about this band, aside from the language barrier, it seems as if this band is quite difficult to decipher even to native fans of the group. The band name itself translates to "Theory of Relativity," a name that is very fitting due to their complexity. No pictures or video at live shows, little to no press photos or interviews, and ambiguous music videos with no members of the band being show. Despite this though, singer Etsuko Yakushimaru has been hard at work with her own solo career (her image present in press and video), guitarist Seiichi Nagai has produced for groups such as Spangle Call Lilli Line, and drummer Kensuke Nishiura supports groups like Mass of the Fermenting Dregs and Luminous Orange. This band already has obvious talent.


From the usual schoolgirl/teacher loli-themes of coy sounding Japanese indie pop ("Jigoku Sensei) to more obscure themes such as a 25th century boy traveling to the 22nd century to find a girl ("Shikaku Kakumei"), Soutaiseiriron are not just another quirky guitar pop group to be dismissed and forgotten about, lyrically, musically, and aesthetically they are very ominous and mysterious.


Upon a few listens to them you will notice the amount of intricacy in their songs, from the jangly Smiths-eque guitar work, to the sad innocence of Etsuko's voice. The end result is surprisingly dreamy despite it's initial sparseness. This album is altogether strange, sad, but also often joyous with it's often tongue-in-cheek and self-aware approach to pop music. It goes without saying, but despite how closed off they are to the mainstream, Soutaiseiriron's music is extremely enduring and not gimmicky at all. They live up to the image they present and even exceed that. Whether they remain in the dark or show themselves in the future does not matter, they've already proved themselves to be an amazing band who's obscurity far surpasses that of image alone.

-Garrett

Silver Forest is a doujin music circle who produces remixes and rearrangements of music from the Touhou series. Not to be confused with the more well-known IOSYS, I believe Silver Forest produces songs that are typically more faithful to it's original works, but that is not to say I have any preference over IOSYS or Silver Forest; they both make innovative, and insane interpretations of the Touhou works. That being said, this album has some very relaxed, simple orchestrated instrumentals, warm electro-pop, as well as the fast-paced typical loli-styled songs that one would typically associate with any doujin music circle, especially one focused on something like Touhou. Enjoy.

SAWA has been around since 2008 and has released 5 mini-albums to date. It was not until earlier this year that she released her 1st full length. Her first mini-album, Many Colors, was a small collection of clean-cut techno-pop songs, putting aside all the vocoder and autotune that has been highly present in practically all techno-pop groups now. However, to call SAWA simply a techno-pop artist isn't really fair. Her debut album, Welcome to Sa-World presents a large variety of pop songs which mostly throw back to the sounds of house music and shibuya-kei that were present in the late 90's/2000's in Japanese pop. Many of the songs on this album are actually produced by SAWA herself, along with producers like RAM RIDER, Nawata Hisashi, and Takeshi Hanzawa of FreeTEMPO.

Personally, I think this may one of my favorite Japanese pop albums of the year. Although this year has been really good for techno-pop (Sweet Vacation, Aira Mitsuki, Saori@destiny, capsule, etc.), SAWA not only busts out some very, very good techno-pop-esque songs, but stands out by throwing back to the sounds of pre-techno-pop crazy Japan, taking in the influence of the relaxed, summery sounds of shibuya-kei. SAWA explores the usual cute side of pop, while also creating some tracks that are slightly unnerving in a subtle way, notably with tracks like "Swimming Dancing" below. Although I love techno-pop, it's still refreshing to see an artist like SAWA who isn't a robot to her producer and is crafting her own tunes. The songs on the album seem to be approached more personally, and the fact that her voice isn't warped to death probably adds to that feeling. Also, "Swimming Dancing" may be my favorite bizarre techno-pop video since "Secret Secret" or maybe "I Can Fly" is stranger.... I can't decide yet. GOTTA LEARN THAT DANCE.

Spacey 2-step/dubstep single by London native Peter O'Grady. I'm not too knowledgeable on either genre, but I believe many here would be appreciative of this due to his use of minimalism and repetition in his works. It's the kind of stuff you can grind a bitch to (a very classy bitch, mind you). Very cool stuff indeed.

Why do I need to post a Perfume album? Well, most casual listeners of the group may have looked over this single that they released shortly after their indie days. And hey, their name is even written in hiragana on this album. Perfume teamed up with denpa queen Momoi Haruko of Under17 fame and.... well, Momoi Haruko fame, and this was the end result of said efforts. It is pretty much the kind of production you would expect with a Momoi Haruko song, but with the voices of Perfume instead. A nice change of pace, and Kashi's voice sounds adorable on this. A really cool collaboration for fans of both artists. I'll stop before I start acting like too much of a drooling fanboy at how amazing this.