Coming Up Roses' eponymous 3rd EP is their first since the indie/alt rock band's relocation to London, UK. It tells a story of reconciling relationships and the inter-personal connections that we have with our friends and family around us.
Now consisting of original members from Singapore Emily Sera (vocals, bass) and Darius Oon (guitar) and the addition of UK members Charlie Wilson (guitar) and Caleb Blake (drums), the quartet's new EP is a representation of the shared experiences of adolescence - no matter where one has grown up.
On opening track 'Don't Let It Break Your Heart', lead singer Emily delivers a message to a loved one who is struggling with the trails and tribulations of life. She says: "Life is hard and sometimes people we love get overwhelmed by life or mental health issues. It was really heartbreaking seeing our loved ones change and struggle. We wanted to write a song to let them know that we see them for who they are and that their struggles doesn’t change our love for them."
Second single 'Back The Way We Came' is a song written much earlier which the band rediscovered during rehearsals with their 2 new members. Fittingly, the song carries a reconciliatory meaning - a reminder to the self of reassurance and self-forgiveness in the face of difficulty. Sonically, this EP sees Coming Up Roses venturing into new waters, with the inclusion of the acoustic-folk track 'Silence' while the band's shoegaze influences fully culminate with closing track 'Why'.
The EP was recorded and produced by Joshua Rumble (BCNR, Florence Welch) and mixed by fellow Singaporean Caesar Edmunds (Beach House, Queens of the Stone Age).
While Coming Up Roses have been around for a while now, it seems that their flowers are just beginning to bloom as they take their first steps into London. releases April 5, 2024
Recorded and produced by Joshua Rumble Mixed by Caesar Edmunds Mastered by Felix Davis Additional Recording by Leonard Soosay Assistant Recording by Andrea Trevisan
Emily Sera - Vocals, Bass, Synths Darius Oon - Guitar, Synths, Percussion Charlie Wilson - Guitar Caleb Blake - Drums Lorenzo Mailum - Guitar
Hailing from the island nation of Singapore, London-based alternative rock band Coming Up Roses forge a sound that is distinctively familiar - yet you can’t quite put your finger on. Led by singer-bassist Emily Sera, the group has emerged as one of the most promising acts out of Southeast Asia owing to their dynamic live shows and heartfelt lyrical themes.
YIFY (ee-fee) is a cinematic-electronic singer-songwriter and sound healer. Her music is a unique blend of cinematic electronica, songwriting, and healing frequencies.
Born in the metropolis of Beijing, YIFY began on the violin at the age of 5. When an injury to the spine prevented her from a career in violin performance, she dove into composition and songwriting, and fell deeply in love with music.
After years of craft honing and performing as a singer songwriter, YIFY began a sound healing project (Berlin Music & Sound Healing) in 2021, mixing music with sound healing frequencies. She hosts concerts on full moons that blend a unique mix of soothing sound healing instruments with cine-electronic singer-songwriter material. Her mission is to create live soundscapes for listeners to unplug and recharge, and connect more deeply to themselves.
OHCHILL 오칠 - The Burning City
[Live Session] Something's Wrong - OHCHILL
The band OHCHILL, represented as two wild animals, has released their second full-length album, 'The Burning City,' four years after their debut album, 'Oh, Two Animals,' in 2019. In their first album, they spoke about themselves, while in the new album, they discussed the world they inhabit.
Work on OHCHILL's second album began during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not unreasonable to think that the end of the world is imminent, given the various events such as viruses, wars, climate crises, racism, hatred, social media frenzy, and drug addiction running rampant. This album was created while observing the world hurtling towards its demise, with each track narrating the stories of what is happening in the city we currently live in.
Their new album unfolds a tale of the past and present, narrated by a lone survivor in a city reduced to ashes and ruins. "The Grey Area" is a song about the screams of a lone survivor in a city devastated by war, surrounded only by gray ash. "Something's Wrong," tells the story of people living day by day in a bustling city, depicting the struggles of depressed and lost individuals and young people compelled to contemplate death in their pursuit of normal lives. The last message he left for his loved ones 57 days before the end of his life is titled "D-57." "My Naked Pictures" is a song that delves into the Nth Room, a phenomenon that sparked discussions in Korea. "Tiny Demons” talks about the screams of people trapped on social media. After listening to the album, you'll gain insight into why the city burned down. Nevertheless, as always, love stories cannot be omitted. Through "Dead Letters," written while missing loved ones, and "Kuma," sung to his son before the city was burned, we consistently find hope in the pitch-black darkness. released November 20, 2023
[Credits] 오칠 OHCHILL Vocals & Guitar by 윤준홍 Junhong Yun Vocals & Drums by 김설 Seol Kim
All Music by 윤준홍 Junhong Yun All Lyrics by 김설 Seol Kim Produced by OHCHILL
Arranged by OHCHILL, HAWAGON (손민곤,오은하) Vocals, Backing Vocals, Guitars, Drums by OHCHILL Bass by 우석제 Seokje Woo Cello (1.) String, Organ, Choir (2. 3.) Orchestrate (3. 9.) Pad, Synth (5. 10.) by HAWAGON Percussion (2. 5. 6.) Synth (6.) by 손민곤 Mingon Son Pad, String (6.) Piano (9.) Organ (10.) by 오은하 Eunha Oh
Recorded by Brad Wheeler @East Seoul Studio Mixed by 손민곤 Mingon Son @JICA Studio Mastered by Andy ‘Hippy’ Baldwin @Metropolis Studios Designed by 팔로 Pallo, 김설 Seol Kim Photos by Blair Kitchener Cover Photo by 김홍균 Fayper @Fayper Studio Translation Advised by Ella Kaill
released February 21, 2024 re: lapse was formed in 2019 and is mainly active in the dream pop shoegazer scene in Tokyo. The biggest features are the pale and ephemeral male and female vocals and melodies, and the shoegaze guitar that floats comfortably while being distorted to the limit. It's not a sound production covered with roaring sounds and feedback noise, but it has an ambient floating feeling, a movie-like sound image full of sense, and the world view of My Bloody Valentine of slow dive works "All I Need" and "sometimes". There is a world view where you can enjoy the feeling of expressing "Wabi-sabi" unique to Japanese people.
released March 1, 2024 MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS is a Japanese alternative rock band formed in Kobe City, Japan. In 2007, they won the best artist of EMI Music Japan’ s new comer audition and recorded their songs with Dave Fridman at Tarbox road Studio in USA. After they released their 1st album in 2008, they rapidly climbed the alternative-rock ladder in Japan. The band once paused their activities in 2012 then reunion in 2017. The current lineup consists of Natsuko Miyamoto (Vocal & Bass) , Naoya Ogura (Guitar & Backing vocal) and Isao Yoshino (Drums & Backing vocal). Known for their energetic, hair-flailing live shows and melodic, guitar driven pop sound, they are still one of the most edgy and attracted alternative rock outfit in Japan https://www.motfd.com/ https://www.facebook.com/massofthefermentingdregs/ https://twitter.com/MOTFD_official https://massofthefermentingdregs.bandcamp.com/music https://www.youtube.com/@motfdofficial
Bewitched is the second studio album by Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey, released through AWAL. Described by Laufey as "a love album, whether it be a love towards a friend or a lover or life", Bewitched deals with a variety of romantic themes in its songs. Musically, Bewitched consists of jazz pop ballads, predominantly written by Laufey and collaborator Spencer Stewart, and produced by the duo along with Philharmonia Orchestra and Dan Wilson “As a musician, my goal is to bring jazz and classical music to my generation through a more accessible road,” declares the composer, singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Laufey. In 2022, the Icelandic-Chinese artist’s trailblazing approach paid off, with a performance on Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! in support of her first full-length Everything I Know About Love, sold out tours of North America, Asia, and Australia, and she was the most streamed jazz artist of the year on Spotify.
The Los Angeles-based Laufey (pronounced lāy-vāy) continued her story by writing and recording Bewitched, her second album. Inspired by jazz greats and classical masters while possessing a point of view that could only be conveyed by a 21st-century twentysomething, Bewitched represents an expansion of Laufey’s sonic palette. Tracks like the breezy bossa nova cut “From the Start” and the smoldering string-assisted ballad “Promise” have classic songcraft and intricate arrangements that make them feel instantly timeless, while Laufey’s conversational lyrics give her music a relatability to the next generation of jazz and classical aficionados.
Laufey’s self-assured musicianship and deeply felt lyrics take the idea of “classic” music, whether it’s slotted as classical or jazz—or even chart-topping pop—and humanize it, creating a deep-seated connection with listeners that goes deeper than hitting “play” on a streaming service. “There are very few examples of artists who are onstage with an orchestra one day and making TikToks the next,” she notes dryly. Laufey’s straddling of those two worlds has put her in a singular place across music, and with Bewitched, she’s ready to ascend to the next level. https://www.laufeymusic.com/about
This album marks TsuShiMaMiRe’s 25th anniversary! Japanese title: バンドは水物 English title: MIZUMONO バンドは水物 (pr. bando wa mizumono) is a phrase we made up and have used since our 10th anniversary. It roughly means that being a band is a gamble (mizumono) ; a matter of chance, unpredictable and out of anyone's control. No one knows what the future holds! To continue in this band over the past 25 years has been an exceptional and rare honor for us. Our band is a miracle! This album has 11 songs, each of which offers a unique perspective into our world; our joys and sorrows. Please tune in to TsuShiMaMiRe's emotional journey and enjoy the ride! releases March 13, 2024
ANGEL FACE - "I Can't Go Back" b/w "New Generator" EP
Slovenly Recordings is gassed to release the second 7inch and DEBUT LP (!!!) by ANGEL FACE, a super new group featuring Fink (Teengenerate, Firestarter, Raydios), Toyozo (Fadeaways), wild woman skin basher Rayco on the pummel, and a freak who calls himself Hercules handcuffed to the mic! Our favorite new Japanese band has taken Tokyo by storm one live house party at a time, and these two limited edition vinyl slabs are already sought after by those in the know... Snag a copy of each while you can! released December 22, 2023
Legendary late '70s/early '80s post-punk group led by future award-winning novelist Machida Machizo. Coming up in the same scene as Aunt Sally, INU took Japan by storm in '79 with its powerful live show, and went on to record one of the greatest punk albums of the early '80s. In perfect punk fashion, the group disbanded three months after the album's release. A high-octane tour-de-force widely considered in Japan to be one of the all-time greatest punk records, 1981's Don’t Eat Food! remains shockingly unknown to the rest of the world. Led by literate but unhinged Machida Machizo, a magnetic stage presence who sang in a thick Osaka dialect that sounded like nothing else at the time, INU came from the same scene as Aunt Sally and took Japan by storm in the late '70s with their powerful live show. Their membership changed frequently but INU's final lineup -- the group that recorded Don’t Eat Food! -- was sharp as a knife, and the band's airtight debut still wows forty-plus years later.
Excerpted from Syojiro Ishibashi's essay on INU:
Unlike Tokyo — Japan’s economic and cultural center, where everything is consumed in a fashionable way, and even the tiniest subculture can turn a profit — Kansai’s cities (Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe) will forever live in the capital’s shadow. But this underdog dynamic informs the region’s rich, unique culture. Kansai folk are known for resenting Tokyo, but also for plainly and incisively sussing out the true nature of things with their singular aesthetic sensibilities and deeply ironic, humorous dispositions.
It was in one of these “secondary” cities, Osaka, that Kou Machida (then known as Machizo Machida) formed INU (Japanese for “dog”) in 1979. INU’s original lineup was Machida (vocals), Naoto Hayashi (guitar), Takeshi Nishimori (drums), and Keisuke “Osho” Tanaka (bass). They were all 17 to 18 years old at the time.
In the late ’70s, outdated music styles — blues covers sung in broken English and (mostly) original, acoustic folk tunes sung in Japanese — were all the rage in Kansai. There was a small group of bands in the area who’d been inspired by the global punk/new wave movement, but few could draw audiences larger than 20 to 30 people. They also didn’t have many places to play — few clubs welcomed their sort of music — so they frequently booked their own gigs on university campuses, which tended to be comparatively laid-back spaces.
Around the same time, a dozen or so Tokyo bands — Friction, Lizard, Mirrors, Mr. Kite, S-Ken, etc. — began calling themselves Tokyo Rockers. Inspired by international punk/new wave, they got a lot of attention in Japan for championing a new style of music. Young Kansai musicians watched this movement with keen interest, but some saw Tokyo Rockers (with a couple of notable exceptions, like Friction) as simply more of the same old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll, and openly shunned them. These young musicians were determined to create a new type of music unlike anything that had come before.
In ’78, bands from the Tokyo Rockers scene shared a bill with a handful of young Kansai groups at Kyoto University's Seibu Koudo Hall (incidentally, home to one of Japan’s few squats at the time). Later writing in his Outsider fanzine, a pre-INU Hayashi strongly criticized the Kansai bands on the lineup (SS, etc.) for being punk “in style only.”
But Hayashi also wrote in Outsider that he wanted to “hear local bands channel the sound of the city,” and it was this desire that led him to support Kansai bands. As if in response to Hayashi’s entreaties and criticisms, Osaka’s INU (now including Hayashi) and Alcohol 42%, Kobe’s Aunt Sally (featuring Phew on vocals), and Kyoto’s SS and Ultra Bidé (featuring Hijokaidan’s Jojo Hiroshige on bass) — all creative young Kansai bands who’d been influenced by the worldwide punk/new wave movement — joined forces. Picking up on the sincerity behind Hayashi’s words, these bands welcomed the criticism. At the time, no one else took young bands seriously enough to offer a thoughtful analysis, and his earnest, critical voice was valuable to the scene.
Dubbed the “Kansai No Wave” tour by Hayashi, these five bands performed around Tokyo in ’79 (playing five shows at four venues), and music fans throughout the country were soon taking note of the new Kansai scene and the creative groups from the region. INU made a particularly strong impression, not only for its aggressive stage show and witty, literate lyrics, but also for Machida’s intense personality. His provocative behavior toward audiences often got him into trouble, but his skirmishes only elevated the band’s profile.
In March ’79, after the Tokyo tour, Hayashi left the band and was replaced by Keita Koma. With Koma in the group, INU pivoted away from the simplistic sound of their early years and became a bit more pop. In May of that same year, Naruko Nishikawa (bass) and Hiroshi Kitagawa (drums) joined the group, and in August, Masahiro Kitada replaced Koma on guitar. Shinichi Higashiura then replaced Kitagawa on drums. These musicians made up the final INU lineup — the same one that would record Don't Eat Food!
In ’81, the major label Tokuma Japan released the band’s debut album, Don't Eat Food! Machida’s witty lyrics, delivered in the unique rhythm of the Kansai dialect, were already literate enough to foretell his future receipt of Japan’s top literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, in 2000. The title track actually dated to the Kusareomeko era of the group. Machida was 16 years old when he composed the lyrics to this song.
INU rarely played outside of Tokyo or Kansai, so even though they quickly earned a reputation as an incredible live band, very few people had actually heard them. With the release of this album, however, both INU and Machida became quite well known throughout Japan.
Three months after the release of Don't Eat Food!, INU disbanded. With its impactful cover art, memorable tunes, tight performances and provocative vocals, INU’s Don't Eat Food! is a legendary work, and one of the country’s most celebrated ‘80s punk albums. Highly influential even today, its presence continues to be felt well beyond the punk sphere.
-Syojiro Ishibashi (F.M.N. Sound Factory) released October 6, 2023
More street-grit than surfside, Thee Tsunamis are a rock’n’roll joyride with hellcat weed queens at the wheel. On their debut full-length Saturday Night Sweetheart, the Midwest-turf trio—Betsy (guitar), Jenna (bass) and Sharlene (drums)—blend girl-group bubblegum with feral punk, hugging every hairpen turn along the way. Saturday Night Sweetheart, with its jagged harmonies over fuzz-crusted pop hooks, marries the New York Dolls’ gutter-glam attitude with the sound of Brill Building teen-sploitation, to a much bloodier effect. From heart-in-a-blender tales and drag-race party anthems to the title track’s proto-punk pyrotechnics, these 12 tunes are as catchy as they are cutting and together they tell a story as old as time: what the men don’t know, the little girls understand. Like Thee Tsunamis’ demo release A Goodbad Man Is Hard To Find (2013) and horror-concept EP Delirium and Dark Waters (2014), Saturday Night Sweetheart (May, 2015) was recorded to tape in the basement of Magnetic South and has the signature fidelity of a subterranean rock’n’roll echo-chamber. Plate reverb and tape delay spin some witchy doo wop atmospherics between slasher guitar riffs and nerve rattling rhythms. Saturday Night Sweetheart is a date you don’t want to break. For fans of: the Trashwomen, the Shangri Las, the New York Dolls, the Ramones, the Bobbyteens, the Mummies, Girls in the Garage, and John Waters released May 26, 2015
All tracks written, recorded & produced by: N.M. All vocals & instruments performed/programmed by: N. M. released December 1, 2023
An alternative artist inspired by the previous decades. Nostalgia and sadness are often associated with her works– this has encouraged her to explore different genres such as grunge, progressive rock, garage rock. The "alternative" side had such an impact on her as a person that she is more comfortable to separate herself from the norm and from the current indie scene in the Philippines. The musician visualizes, writes, records, produces and releases her tracks on her own from the comfort of her own home.
Mitski - The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine (Official Video)
Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.
Photo: https://mitski.bandcamp.com/
Love is always radical, which means that it always disrupts, which means that it always takes work to receive it. This land, which already feels inhospitable to so many of its inhabitants, is about to feel hopelessly torn and tossed again – at times, devoid of love. This album offers the anodyne. “This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. But “maybe it’s beyond witnessing,” she says. At times, it feels like the album is an exercise in negative capability – a fearless embodiment and absorption of the pain of other bodies. When I ask her what the album would look like, if it were a person, she says it would be someone middle-aged and exhausted, perhaps someone having a midlife crisis. But through the daily indignity and exhaustion, something enormous and ecstatic is calling out. In this album, which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star.
Mitski wrote these songs in little bursts over the past few years, and they feel informed by moments of noticing – noticing a sound that’s out of place, a building that groans in decay, an opinion that splits a room, a feeling that can’t be contained in a body. It was recorded at both the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles. The album incorporates an orchestra arranged and conducted by Drew Erickson, as well as a full choir of 17 people - 12 in LA and 5 in Nashville - arranged by Mitski. And for the first time, it felt important to Mitski to have a band recording live together in the studio, to create this new sublime sound. Working with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland, the album has a wide-range of references, from Ennio Morricone’s bombastic Spaghetti Western scores to Carter Burwell’s tundra-filling Fargo soundtrack, from the breathy intimacy of Arthur Russell to the strident aliveness of Scott Walker or Igor Stravinsky, from the jubilation of Caetano Veloso to the twangy longing of Faron Young.
From the first track, the album introduces and then heals a wound. “Bug Like an Angel” finds the divine in the ordinary, in the boozy drowning of sorrow. The narrator sings from the strange comfort of rock bottom: “sometimes a drink feels like family.” And suddenly, that choir of angels sings: “FAMILY!” This first track introduces a cosmic paradox: “The wrath of the devil was also given him by God.” This is an album in which dark and light exist in the same gesture, the same broken prayer. Like the Buddha inviting the demon Mara in for tea, The Land embraces brutal, daily pain — the necessary toll of transcendent love.
In “Buffalo Replaced,” the wail of a freight train replaces the vibrations of the long-gone stampeding buffalo. Here, hope itself is personified, anthropomorphized into a sleeping creature, and our narrator wonders if life would be easier without her. But then, as though in response, “Heaven” offers a beautiful moment of passion, preserved like a fossil in time even though the “dark awaits us all around the corner.” This oasis is aggressively interrupted by “I Don’t Like My Mind,” a song from the perspective of someone in extraordinary pain. They are begging to keep their job, while actively keeping terrible traumatic memories at bay. Without their employment, these memories might take over, consuming them as relentlessly as the cake that they ate one “inconvenient Christmas.” The toggling between hope and despair in these four songs is masterful — the good, the bad, and the ugly in America’s backyard.
This mythology continues to deepen with the stunning “The Deal,” in which someone is so burdened by their soul that they beg for it to be taken from them. Soon, the singer’s soul is revealed to be a bird perched on a streetlight. In a coup of songwriting, the narration does not switch into the newly-souled bird’s voice. No, we stay with the soulless “I.” The bird calls down: “You’re a cage without me. / Your pain is eased but you’ll never be free.” This song reinforces the album’s tug-of-war between the intoxication of love and the pain of isolation. Close on its heels is “My Love Mine All Mine,” an instant classic and the beating heart of the album, wherein the singer imagines their love shining down on the earth from the moon, long after the speaker is gone.
“It’s just witness-less me,” she sings on “The Frost,” which suddenly takes us from the anticipation of loss right into the aching loneliness of it. On the subject of witnessing, Mitski says: “I’ve always been the person on the outside watching. And I’ve also done that with myself... outside of myself, witnessing myself, watching myself.” She thinks that she might have adopted this habit as a condition of being a woman of color, and that it’s led to the occasional post-apocalyptic fantasy of being the only person left in the world. We talked about Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in which a man is profoundly alone, with only an archive of old tapes to keep him company. He remembers the seismic event of an old sexual encounter, but now it’s: “Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.” The Land repeatedly offers that same hypothesis. Without love, is there anyone here?
After the alien lift of “Star” comes the album’s showdown. “I’m Your Man” feels as inevitable, bloody, and haunting as a Sergio Leone duel scene. The “Man” in the title isn’t some fella proclaiming devotion, Mitski says, but rather the man inside her head, the haunting patriarch who treats her like a dog and can destroy her at whim. Despite his confidence and swagger, he is tracked down by a pack of hounds — who have unionized in the name of catharsis. After this violent reckoning, a Fowler’s Toad calls out in what sounds like a human scream. The night settles into silence. The earth might be uninhabited. We glide into the liberating closer, “I Love Me After You,” in which someone is truly alone but truly free. King of all the land.
“I don’t have a self,” Mitski observes. “I have a million selves, and they’re all me, and I inhabit them, and they all live inside me.” Loving all of these selves does not yield the easy burst of a pop song. It’s the “long, complex, deep love, that you can never get to the end of, that’s always evolving, like a person. And there’s just no end to it. It feels like space travel.” The album is full of the ache of the grown- up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain, arching towards love.
Maybe this is what our best artists do: take a spaceship into the furthest reaches of pain, in order to bring back the elixir that we already had inside us. The unknowable known of love. “You have to go to both worlds all the time,” Mitski says, by which she means the mysterious world of making and the brutal world of living. This album is an act of hyperlocal space travel. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and then rejecting us. To love this place — this earth, this America, this body — takes active work. It might be impossible. The best things are.
released September 15, 2023
RECORDING CREDITS: Engineer - Michael Harris Assistant Engineer - Nate Haessly Recorded/Engineered/Produced by - Patrick Hyland
ALL TRACKS: Written by Mitski Patrick Hyland — Guitar, Bass, Keys, Drums Mitski — Keys, Voice, Choral Arrangements Orchestral Arrangements and Choral Copyist — Drew Erickson Choir Contractor — Fletcher Sheridan Digital and Vinyl Mastering by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. Typefaces: Ready by Lucas Descroix and Benjamin Dumond for Plainform and Tofino by Alanna Munro. Album design by Mary Banas.
Red Go-Cart - Skip And Make It Flower
released October 13, 2023
Started in 1996 by Yuji Usui and Tomomi Usui with the aim of releasing sound sources through multiple recordings. 1996 Clover Records released their first cassette tape EP 'sweets consists of red go-cart'. 1995 They have been active since 1995. Together with Yuji Usui's band Recycledpop and the fanzine 'pastels badge' published by Tomomi Usui, they have been featured in many indie magazines both in Japan and abroad, and have attracted a lot of attention. In 1999 they released their first album 'skip and make it flower'. The album has a punk spirit that pays respect to indie label K, but at the same time has a cute and delicate sensibility, and has gained support from overseas as a representative of Japanese indie pop. The impressive melodies are the very essence of pop music!
Moon In June - ロマンと水色の街 (Romance and Soft Blue City)
Moon In June - Head for München (Official Music Video)
One year after releasing their second EP, “Evergreen”, Tokyo-based five-piece Moon In June is back with their debut full-length effort ロマンと水色の街!
With nods to the likes of SPITZ, Galileo Galilei, Supercar, and Homecomings, Moon In June has packed the album with a sense of comfortable nostalgia, while also leaning into some up-tempo dreamy tunes a la DIIV, and even throwing in a homage to shoegaze legends Slowdive.
Drawing on musical influences and films, there’s a bittersweet tone to the lyrics, which dive into the theme of starting fresh following loss and regret. It’s an emotional work and a complete listening experience built by a collective songwriting effort that further builds on Moon In June’s already impressive catalog.
released October 11, 2023 イラスト: なまま ミックス：岩田純也（Triple Time Studio） マスタリング： 中村宗一郎（PEACE MUSIC）
