GAIJIN DISCO

In a world of aloof net-artists that seemed to me to thrive on mystery rather than substance Yim was a real tonic, forever chatting away in the comment sections of his Facebook updates and responding to Tweets, thanking people for their interest and appearing to be genuinely shocked and moved to discover people have connected with his music on the emotional level they have. I speak as a fan of course but you never feel too far away from Meishi Smile and it’s rare to find a long space of time without an update on the direction Yim thinks he’s thinking of taking this week, or a picture of him preparing personalized trinkets to send out with his physical releases or even a performance of a virtual concert on the excellent SPF420 where dozens of people come together from all corners of the world to listen and talk nonsense to each other through Tinychat. 

Yim has never been one to shy away from sharing his own personal feelings and thought process when it comes to explaining his music and it’s not uncommon to come across a long sermon about a sudden new dawning that has occurred to him, explaining this new creative ideology with the kind of fervour usually reserved for politicians or cultists. If this sounds like a criticism it really isn’t. In a world full of artists that, when asked the story behind their moniker will simply reply “oh, it was just a word we picked out of the dictionary one evening”, Yim will gladly write a paragraph explaining the meaning behind the carefully picked words he used. I mention this only because there was a period where I was sensing a lot of frustration from his updates. A desire to give up and take things back to the harsh noise of the early single Synthetic Girl or even his previous project Yuko Imada in order to be taken seriously as an electronic musician rather than a producer of gimmicky “cool kids meme music”, as one particularly cretinous Last.fm user put it. 

It does seem that there has been a effort on Yim’s part to disassociate himself from the anime-sample heavy early output of Meishi Smile. You won’t find  mYSTERIOUS sUMMER vACATION on his bandcamp any more, nor the video to Kiss which consisted entirely of a slow-motion clip from some unknown 80s anime, or; sadly for me as it was one of my favourites, his song Taidamia which is a beautiful re-working of a song with the same name from the anime Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai.   Yim stated upon releasing ...Belong:  “I wrote this album against a lot of what I’ve felt is going against sincerity and the desire to be true. I want to break down the veil of irony and false sentimentality and create a reality that rings with a desire to push forward art on a meaningful level that relates, rather than stand as a cheap trend or a falsified co-opt of real individualized emotions and experiences.” So whether it’s my own over-analysing or a deliberate step away from such things is up to you, dearest reader but a line seems to have been drawn under what has come before leaving us with Meishi 2.0. “What does that actually have to do with the album?” I hear you complain; “is this an album review or do you get paid by the word?” Fair point, you've got me there.

Although nervous about the possibility that Yim had just decided to make a full on noise album, this was a project I trusted enough to lay down a tenner to pre-order the album without any research. When the day finally arrived and I excitedly unzipped my shiny new folder; being greeted by the first track Here did little to alleviate this worry as it howled and pulsated it’s way through it’s two minutes of digital commotion, like a pocket-sized Death Star by Atari Teenage Riot. However once this carnage had subsided we were back on familiar ground with the previously released Star, full of waves of phased hissing synth loveliness with vocals taking a much more central position than previous efforts. On LUST there were fewer vocals and when they did appear they were so altered that you could be forgiven for mistaking them for another keyboard part; a particularly good example of this was Honey. You still need the lyrics up on screen to follow along but it’s a lot closer to the perfect use of vocal effects (Perfume) than the worst possible use of vocal effects (Abandon All Ships).

Today, Again mixes trip-hopesque percussion with floaty synth stabs that brought memories of the Super Money Ball soundtrack into my mind. Innocence is a brief but amazingly atmospheric ambient interlude which harkens back to Yim’s days as nono. and reminded me of the american drone act Celer.

Being a bit of a Meishi fanatic I had the benefit of going into the album knowing a few of the songs, Blank Ocean and Us appearing as a stand alone single and a track on Orchid Tapes’ Angel Town compilation respectively. Blank Ocean has been reworked to sound fuller vocally and had it’s tempo raised to a more danceable speed. This is possibly the happiest Meishi Smile song yet (musically if not lyrically) and sounds how I imagine Japanese technopop will sound 100 years into the future when Yasutaka Nakata, now a cyborg, has reached the limits of working with people and uses only computers to make his songs. Us conversely has slowed down since we last heard it becoming a lot warmer and acting as an antithesis to the chillier interlude Innocence. It’s the perfect train window gazing song.

The album peaks in the middle with Dysphoria and Pastel (the best song on the album along with the re-worked Blank Ocean) two melancholic, almost-ballads that are possibly the project’s biggest step away from electronic dance-pop to date. Yim saves his harshest sounds for the end with Fetus which is another slow song but this time wrapped up in a cacophony of Atari 2600 squeals and Belong is a surprise harsh noise outro with more amens than your local church picnic.  .

All things considered this is a very worthy successor to Lust and to me feels like more of a complete packaged whole than the previous album. If you’ve been curious about Meishi Smile before but dismissed it out of hand as music that would only appeal to J-pop or anime fans, now would be a very good time to dive in and take a closer look. There are very few artists I can think of today that so successfully blend such uncomplimentary genres (J-pop/Shoegaze/Noise) to create something that’s not only aesthetically compelling but also a bloody good listen.

Rating: 5/5

1. I’ve moved house and it now takes me forever to get to and from work.

2. I’ve started another blog that is much easier to write. It’s called Partizan Bristle and it’s about non-league football grounds in and around Bristol. I would imagine the crossover of people interested in Japanese indie and non-league British football is pretty tiny but there we go.

3. In this time I haven’t listened to anything except daoko due to a combination of lack of time spent combing the net for new music and her just being so damn good. I’m a daokoholic, if you will.

Hailing from Tokyo, daoko's music is firmly planted on the more laid-back end of the hip-hop scale, with an impossibly lazy flow that often sounds like she's just been woken up from a deep sleep and asked to rap. If you're a hip-hop head, think Cool Calm Pete and NoName Gypsy meets J-pop. I like to believe this vocal style was born out of being perched on a chair in her bedroom as a young girl, cutting her musical teeth in the small hours recording with a laptop microphone trying not to wake anyone up. This may sound like I'm being disgustingly twee and romantic but consider the fact that daoko was already niconico famous by the time her debut album HYPERGIRL-向こう側の女の子- came out, when she was only 15.

daoko has already had a mention on this blog in my best of 2014 list but I wanted to go into a lot more detail because 2014 was actually a pretty quiet year for her. Despite the fact that she's only really been going since 2012 and she won't turn 18 until the week after next, daoko has produced a pretty hefty back catalogue, which I'm gonna breeze through for you now.

HYPER GIRL-向こう側の女の子- / HYPER GIRL-The Other Side of the Girl- (2012, LOW HIGH WHO?)

daoko's first and in my opinion best album. Stunningly varied and polished for such a young début. Starts off with toy pianos and violins on パレードへようこそ (Welcome to the Parade), later goes electro-poppy with キラキラ (Glitter) and 脳内DISCO (Brain Disco), things get weird and a bit jazz-hop with L&H which features just daoko's voice, some samples of what sounds like chopped up flute, an old-school sounding beat and some wanton abuse of a double-bass, there's even some chiptune on Fog. The album also features some of the best examples of daoko's ambient tendencies in the form of the Nujabesesque again followed by bUd and Ranunculus which go together to create a brilliantly dream-sequence feel to finish the album.

I do feel like a bit of a dolt for attempting to assess a Japanese-language rap album without being able to understand more than a tiny amount of Japanese but from what I’ve managed to source online (hats off to nmuth) daoko’s slightly cute image belies some of the mature, often to the point of being quite ominous lyrics she comes out with on the album, touching on themes of loneliness, abandonment and, unless I’m very much mistaken abortion.  

GRAVITY (2013, LOW HIGH WHO?)

daoko’s sophomore effort; GRAVITY contains less of the electro-pop influence that prevailed on HYPER GIRL and is replaced by chilly, sparse electronic glitchy backing tracks that allow more room for her to show off her rapping ability, which is considerable, stand-out examples including まだゆめをみている (I’m Still Dreaming) and メギツネ (Megitsune) which features her then label-mates Page & Gomess. I’d say this is one for the hip-hop fans. I keep coming back to a lot of fairly recent American alt-rap as a comparison, particularly this song by MF DOOM’s alter-ego Viktor Vaughn.

There are also a number of songs on GRAVITY that I can picture as cult 90s hip-hop hits in the vein of artists like Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu. This is probably just my over-active imagination to be honest but listening to the sultry vocals and mellow instrumentals on BOY and ずれてる (until it goes trippy 2/3rds of the way through) you can almost picture yourself as a pre-teen watching MTV Base in your pyjamas with a bowl of Frosties. What an era. I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s something to reflect all aspects of daoko’s sound on GRAVITY. I think it’s probably her least accessible release with the benefit of hindsight that has come from living in the present and having four albums in my lap but it does still have TWINS on it which is the cutest song ever, so you know, you’ll find something you like.

Dimension (2015, LOW HIGH WHO?)

daoko’s third and final indie release. This is probably the hardest to get a handle on or maybe just the least aesthetically consistent of her first trio of albums. Songs like Nirvana and the almost ballad-like Sotsugyo are a pointer towards the more joyous, sentimental pop sound we find daoko inhabiting in the present day but 7 Kakansouzou and Psychedelic / OKOK are some of the weirdest alt-hip-hop tracks she’s ever done. 

Seeing as though this album was released a mere month before her self-titled major-label début came out (seriously, 49 days apart) it’s difficult to not see this as a sort of mopping up job but if you liked her first two indie albums, particularly GRAVITY, this shouldn't disappoint.

Ututu EP (2013, LOW HIGH WHO?)

A GRAVITY-era four song EP (plus six remixes, instrumental and acapella versions). The title track pushes the jazz-hop sound of some of the songs from the first two albums further while 蛇の心臓 (Snake of Heart) combines it with east-Asian folk sounds to great effect with a intriguing swelling chorus. The EP also includes a cover of fellow Low High Who? artist Jinmenusagi’s  ぐちぐち (Guchiguchi).

Kireigoto EP (2014, self-released) 

A collaboration between daoko and Nagoyan ambient musician koducer which I’ve already covered in detail here.

This list only represents daoko’s main releases and there’s loads more collaborations, remixes and a demo EP for you completionists out there to enjoy. Hopefully this will give you something to chew over whilst I write the post I’ve been excited about for a long time, the review of daoko’s self-titled début major-label album.  

マヒトゥ・ザ・ピーポー - 沈黙の次に美しい朝

禁断の多数決 - 真夏のボーイフレンド

★STAR GUiTAR - Mind Surf feat daoko

daoko - bUd 

indigo la End - sweet spider 

ゲスの極み乙女。 - 猟奇的なキスを私にして 

KANA-BOON - ないものねだり 

Tonika & spiLa - summer daze 

Predawn - Suddenly 

Predawn - Breakwaters 

Meishi Smile - Honey 

Meishi Smile - Pale (Skeets Remix) 

P*Light - Happymaker (Junk Remix) 

Meishi Smile - Pond 

the cabs - キェルツェの螺旋 

Heaven in her Arms - Akai Yume 

Boris - Quicksilver 

Kero Kero Bonito - Picture This 

For Tracy Hyde - Shady Lane Sherbet 

Charisma.com - HATE 

神聖かまってちゃん - フロントメモリーfeat.川本真琴 

パスピエ - MATATABISTEP 

パスピエ - S.S 

BiS - FINAL DANCE 

BiS - My Ixxx 

BiS - primal. 

左右 - 河童 

Tujiko Noriko - Yellow of You 

宇宙コンビニ - EverythingChanges 

大森靖子 - エンドレスダンス @ ボロフェスタ2013 

青葉市子 - サーカスナイト 

LLLL - Drowned Fish 

LLLL - Because of my Eyes 

6. Koducer x daoko - きれいごと

daoko is a female rapper from Tokyo, notable for creating some of the best Japanese hip-hop in years at the tender age of 15. For those of you perhaps less familiar with Koducer... welcome to the club. From my learnings I can tell you that he/she is from from Yokohama and きれいごと (the name of the EP as well as the song) is their first proper release (minus two free-jazzy piano numbers on soundcloud).

きれいごと (meaning Kierigoto, which roughly translates to graceful) grants Koducer's unbounded style some necessary grounding while retaining some nods to the improvisational jazz of the aforementioned soundcloud demos. Sweet, twinkly chimes that sound like they came from one of those Fisher-Price xylophone toy keyboards meet with jittery drums and swirling piano in an almost Christmas-like ambient style. It reminds me a lot of Lullatone which is never an unwelcome thing.

Daoko's vocals, which are always delivered in a style so laid-back they're basically horizontal anyway, are taken up a notch here; if you've never heard someone rap in their sleep before this might be a good approximation. If you're expecting quick delivery and intricate wordplay you won't find it here, Daoko treats us to a little more of her singing voice than we're used to, in expense of some of the very competent rap of the rest of her catalogue but it all comes together in a really beautiful way. Just don't listen to it when you're tired. 

5. Oomori Seiko/大森靖子 - Kyruukyruu きゅるきゅる

Depressed about BiS breaking up last year? Here's the cure.

I'm not to sure if Seiko can be counted as a straight-up parody of the idol and visualist scene or whether this video and her general aesthetic is all just part of her bombastic, let's mash these genres together and see what happens approach to music. She's on record (thanks again, Noisey) as being in favour of appropriating any style, just as long as it's fun and has recently performed a slew of concerts with just her and an acoustic guitar doing a sterling impression of Predawn (or maybe I just need a new Predawn album, who knows.) However when you watch the video of Kyruukyruu, Seiko in garish visualist garb being literally paraded around town in the back of a van to bemused passers-by, or the alternate video featuring her doing hilariously bad choriographed dancing in a professional looking studio, I find it very hard to believe she's not a disciple of the Society. It's great to see artists picking up and running with this style because J-pop has been stagnant for far too long. 

Kyruukyruu starts off with some delay-laden guitar plucking and reversed swelling that makes you think it's going to be some kind of power ballad but suddenly breaks into a jaunty Charlie Brown-esque piano riff. Seiko momentarily breaks this saccharinity with a strangled scream and we're thrown into the songs unsettling verse which juxtaposes sweet sounding J-pop synths and a creepy droning, monotonous bass line that gives way to a bouncier second half which makes you question whether you'd really heard it. All the while Omori yelps out lyrics like "You wrap up our half-eaten love, how long are you going to keep it? You want to see if it rots, don't you? How cute of you." The song's chorus is a gleeful explosion of parodic idol sweetness, complete with violins which Seiko greets by doing a ridiculous seizure of a dance move. I consider myself a fairly serious person most of the time and I've still caught myself singing Kyruukyruu gleefully as I potter around my house. It's so infectiously fun. 

I'm absolutely loving the revolt against cute going on in J-pop lately (at least it's indie acts anyway) and long may artists like Seiko confound and enrage the kind of fans that created the plastic and damaging cult of idol.

4. LLLL - Drowned Fish

The enigmatic and truly insanely named LLLL are an electronic group from Tokyo and are yet another excellent band associated with the Zoom Lens label. I don't want to describe them in too much detail here because I'm pretty sure they'll be getting their own post later on down the line, that and there's very little info about them online that I can find. We'll deal with that problem later. Drowned Fish is a track from the group's début album Paradice, released in June 2014. 

The song brings to my mind all the best moments from bands like Purity Ring, Salem and maybe a little Cocteau Twins. Ever wanted a Purity Ring album that didn't feel so overwhelmingly chilly? A Salem album without the ridiculous vocals? I sure did and I think got it this year. Drowned Fish is by far the most mellow song on Paradice, it doesn't have the crushingly low bass of FOI or the intense glitchiness of Oddness. What it does have, I feel, is the most space to get lost in sound than the rest of the tracks on an album that often borders on the transcendental in it's ambitions. LLLL are a fitting addition to Garrett Yim's "internet shoegaze" army, blending ghostly vocals, warm synths and distorted yet far away sounding digital percussion to create music that would feel as at home in a re-scored version of Serial Experiments Lain as it would sitting next to Caribou in a record shop. I don't know what I'm talking about any more. LLLL are really good, you ought to give them a try.

3. ゲスの極み乙女。/Gesu no Kiwami Otome - 猟奇的なキスを私にして/Give me a Bizarre Kiss

Ah Gesu, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Your boundlessly energetic, genre-blending music has reminded me that I could never truly get bored of guitar rock, no matter how long the phase where interest in it leaves me. Your music videos are hilarious and awesome and you bring one out on a seemingly monthly basis. Your début album did not disappoint me. Your keyboard player is a beautiful lunatic, who can drop into a classical piano solo in the middle of a song and then carry on like it's no big deal. Most of all however, you look and sound like you have fun doing what you're doing and that seems to be becoming increasingly rare in indie music.

It's for the last reason Give me a Bizarre Kiss was my favourite Gesu song last year over the many more complex, technically better ones they put out. It's the triumphant sound of a band who know their peculiar style, self-described as "progressive rap" has been accepted and are now on the path to achieving more than they could with their other bands. A band that feel comfortable enough in themselves to let their hair down and write a silly love song. It's a beautiful moment for them encapsulated into a brilliantly contagious song. Even with a full album just out, I still can't wait for more.

2. 禁断の多数決/Kindan no Tasūketsu - 真夏のボーイフレンド/Midsummer Boyfriend

While Gesu no Kiwami Otome have gone under a period of consolidation this year, Kindan no Tasūketsu seem to have reached the end of an era with Polta and Roller Girl (the two singers in this video) leaving to form Real District 3 and being replaced by three new singers who I'll undoubtedly have to go to great sleuthing to put names to. Honestly guys, you could just put a band member list, or like, any information about yourselves at all online and you'd save hacks with poor Japanese like me a lot of effort. 

I've already written about these guys so I won't go on too much. It seems my wild stab in the dark about Manatsu no Boyfriend sounding like a long-lost Strawberry Switchblade song was bang on because I noticed one of their members tweet a playlist featuring a song by them. Let that be a lesson readers, compulsive stalking will ultimately lead to vindication of your crackpot theories. Coming up next week on Gaijin Disco, the name of the next The Pillows album that I discovered whilst rooting around in Yoshiaki Manabe's trash. 

Manatsu no Boyfriend is, like Strawberry Switchblade, sweet and catchy but also lightly mournful in it's nostalgia. This kind of music just doesn't exist any more does it? It's like when you were 13 and met someone cute your own age on holiday at some God forsaken resort full of OAPs and stray cats and you went to the dreary on-site disco together on the last night as an excuse to spend just a little more time together and skipped out early and ran off into the night alone together and held hands and fuck this blog I'm gonna go write a electro-pop song with this, someone make me a music video full of dancing fruit while I'm gone.

1. Meishi Smile - Honey

Eagle-eyed readers of this blog will have already spotted this coming when I named this my song of the year so far at the end of November because I am a master of suspense and planning. 

It's hard to sum up my feelings for Garrett Yim and his online entourage without sounding patronizing but they really have shown the world what a net-label should be before their leader was even old enough to drink. Meishi Smile/Zoom Lens can attract 250 people to listen to a tinny broadcast of one of it's shows over Tinychat (the worst website in the world) and what's more, convince me to stay up until half three UK time to be in his cyber presence. He and everyone at Zoom Lens have created over the last few years a truly diverse and beautiful network of musicians without regard for image, nationality or genre and this should be praised. The internet as I remember it as a kid wasn't really such an encouraging place so it's lovely to see these creative souls finding inspiration and friendship in each other and making better music all the time.

15. A Crow Is White - fake!fake!

Sapporo's A Crow Is White released their first full length album last year and followed it up with a mini-album, awesomely entitled Speed of Sound Merry-Go-Round, on Space Shower Music in June. 

fake!fake! blends frantic high-speed funk pop with a distinct Shibuya-kei influence and ought get your foot tapping if you're in any way susceptible to fun. As well as the song I also love the animated music video, it sort of reminds me of the old Pink Panther cartoons if they were made by SHAFT. 

14. Meishi Smile - Star

Star was Meishi's final release of a particularly busy year which saw a re-release of his debut album Lust, a ton of live shows both physical and online, exposure in Pitchfork and even his own MTV column. Hardcore fans will remember a demo version of Star being released on an early mixtape Do You Remember Love? 

This is, so far, the most unaltered we've heard Yim's voice on a song and I think he does a great job considering he always seems to be looking for people to do vocals for him. The lyrics are just lovely too:

waves crash so far without your touch is heaven such a place so far?

The single version of Star is certainly a lot more fleshed out than the original demo and if memory serves me correctly, it's quite a bit slower as well. This is the first Meishi song that I feel has really befitted "internet shoegaze", one of his many strange self-imposed labels. It has the dreamy, heavily layered sound of shoegaze but also the moody synths and Nakata-esque technopop beats of Yim's own special blend of sad bastard electro. If this is the new Meishi, I'm into it. 

13. Passepied/パスピエ - YES/NO

Passepied are a five-piece band that formed at Tokyo University of Art in 2009. They released their second album 幕の内ISM (Makunouchi-ISM because it's J-pop so of course it's named after food) in June 2014.

YES/NO is an album track, a four minute bouncy pop-rock number featuring prominent keyboard sections that wouldn't feel out of place in some 70s space rock opera. Go figure. Some people may find vocalist Natsuki Ogoda's shrill bubblegum pop crooning a little grating but if you can get past that it's a super catchy tune. I managed to but then I also diligently sat through the English dub of Cardcaptor Sakura as a child.

12. BiS - FiNAL DANCE

BiS (Brand-New Idol Society) were a satirical idol group that began in 2010 and retired in July 2014. Taking AKB48's motto "idols you can meet" to a whole new level, BiS touted themselves as 'idols you can touch' and were as good as their word, as well as physical stunts like stage-diving during their shows and hosting "hugging events", BiS created a fearsome strain of punk-rock bubblegum pop that brought hundreds of Japanese punks and disgruntled J-pop fans together to kick the shit out of each other in sweaty basements. Their music videos were full of visceral imagery such as the group running naked through Aokigahara (Chūbu's infamous suicide hotspot), being gagged, bound and seemingly forced to sing and dance by mechanical devices and close up shots of blood, guts and throats. Put it this way; they were considered punk enough to be support band for Off!'s Japanese tour. For a better summary of their antics check out this Noisey article. FiNAL DANCE is both a good song for the gals to go out to and a great example of what their sound was largely like during their brief existence, saccharine, manufactured idol hyperpop buried underneath thrashing guitar and drums. An AKB48 you can break a stranger's nose to. There's really nothing like it to be honest. BiS have always been more about their message/image than the music but FiNAL DANCE is a good tune and they've brought out several other good tunes, My Ixxx, IDOL is DEAD and DiE to name three. (All NSFW btw) Okay so I admit FiNAL DANCE is on this list because BiS are disbanding, rather than it being one of their best songs but it's at least a fun, triumphant closing romp and a good snapshot of what they were about. 

Also if anyone's wondering what Pour Lui's tearful address to the camera in the middle of the video is: “I guess this is the last time to do something like now. If we were to stop our disbanding, it may never end. But BiS will die if we should stop disbanding. So we’re going to disband.  That would be more fun.” Bless. Many of my fellow J-hacks have commented on the fact that BiS seem to have slowly turned into the very thing they set out to ruthlessly mock, a Okinawan bikini-clad video? An ex-member who went on to become a straight-up idol? Signing to Avex from Tsubasa? Staring in the Japanese version of Pharrell Williams' Happy? Hard to argue in many ways. I'd still say you won't find many idol groups that pose with nail studded baseball bats in their bikini MVs and make ridiculous extended deadpan kissy faces to the camera. They're clearly still taking the piss, it just might not feel as authentic as it used to. Maybe Lui was recognizing that and the band felt the need to put a halt to proceedings before they went too far. Bit bloody rich to decry manufactured pop when you're on the same label as fucking O-Zone innit? Regardless of how you feel about their later activity, BiS said a lot of things about idol culture and the Japanese music industry in general that needed to be said and braved a lot of outrage from it's rabid otaku fans in the process (just look at the downvotes on their videos). I will definitely miss them.   

11. Good Morning America - inトーキョーシティ

Good Morning America have existed under their current name (having previously been known as This Morning Day) since 2007. They released their second major-label album, also titled inトーキョーシティ (in Tokyo City) in October 2014, of which this song is the first track.

One of the less sophisticated tracks on my list perhaps but it has everything you could want out of straight-forward, dudebro altpop that you can jump about to: an easily air-guitarable intro, lyrics overstating the grittiness of the signer's hometown and an easily repeatable chorus complete with a reverb-heavy, just the drums reprise just before the finale. Result.

Anyway, I enjoyed this song a lot all year, including it's wacky video featuring assassin doppelgängers of the band members stalking their counterparts through the Tokyo metropolis and eventually killing them, only to watch them bleed out fluorescent paint instead of blood. Maybe they were the replicants all along? Woo. Inception.    

10. 左右/Sa Yuu - ちがいないわ

Following the most mainstream sounding song I've enjoyed all year must come the weirdest song I've enjoyed all year. Say hello to Sa Yuu (Left Right), a two person band featuring a boy and a girl (possibly named Hikori and Miho but don't quote me on that) who, between them, play a guitar, a bass, a bass drum and shout. 

Their songs are an adventure into minimal, angular math-rock silliness and it's fascinating to hear how intricate they can be with their two and a half instruments. If you often find yourself really missing early math-rock bands like Nomeansno, The Jesus Lizard and Victim's Family, congratulations, here is your new favourite group.

9. Tujiko Noriko - Yellow of You

The Osaka-born, Paris-residing Tuijiko Noriko is a prolific electronic musician who has released 15 albums in as many years since 2000. She will be most recognizable to western, certainly British ears by her song White Film which appeared in season 3 of the wildly successful Channel 4 drama Skins, which dramatized teenage life in Bristol about as truthfully as Bernard Madoff invested money.

I've been fascinated by Noriko's music for years and unfortunately for me it's pretty a difficult job to describe. It's a slowly swirling sea of bending notes from every kind of synthesizer imaginable (I can definitely pick out a Moog and a styleophone in Yellow of You), ghostly half-heard in one ear electronic twinkles and bleeps and her husky, sing-song voice that combine to create some kind of scary but pretty lullaby for a fridge that's a bit past it and you're going to chuck out tomorrow. She often gets lazily compared to Björk like every hard to categorize female electronic artist but to me she's pretty unique in her sound. Yellow of You to me harkens back to her From Tokyo To Naiagara days, if that means anything to you then good and we should hang out some time. You don't really listen to Tujiko Noriko's music, you sort of let it cocoon you, like sleeping in a four season sleeping bag underneath your duvet when it gets really cold, which I totally do.

8. 宇宙コンビニ - EverythingChanges

Math pop forever man. Uchu Conbini formed in 2012 and hail from Kyoto. 月の反射でみてた (I Had Seen in the Reflection of the Moon) is the group's second mini-album was released in August 2014. I'm going to say something that will be a big deal to a small number of people reading this when I say, for me, Uchu are currently the best at making whatever you want to call the music that American Football made. Wow that was a shittly constructed sentence.  However I mean what I say when I say that despite the best efforts of the This Town Needs Guns and Algernon Cadwalladers of the world, these guys come closer to matching the grace and effortlessly melodic complexity of the grand daddy of twinkly indie bands. Here's a sampler of their mini-album that'll take you 3:25 to get through, judge for yourself.

If you don't know or care about American Football, first of all sort your life out but also rest assured that Uchu are still an awesome band without background knowledge. They combine Daijiro Nakagawa's frantic yet fragile noodly guitar lines with unexpected changes in structure and time signature but not in a way that will leave you behind, like your more po-faced prog-rock bands. Skip to 2:15 in the video and you'll see what I mean. Dat precision tho. Add to that the soaring vocals of singer Emi Ohki and Yuto Sakai's malleable drumming that switches very well between jazzy and slow-rock and you have a recipe for some chill but strangely intense music. I definitely would've written a whole article had I not discovered them so late in the year but there's always 2015.

7. Boris - Quicksilver 

Oh Boris, what are you? Are you sludge, noise rock, crust punk, doom metal or do you just love to confound us music bloggers. Actually keep it up whatever it is because you've melted faces for 23 years without my silly attempts at pigeon-holing. I am not worthy. Noise is Boris' first of two album releases in 2014, the second being The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked Extra which I'm not going to discuss because it's highly dense and conceptual and it's past my bedtime.  I'd hope most people who'd bother to come read a shitty Japanese indie blog would have some idea about who Boris are but just in case; they started in 1996, became popular in America through Southern Lord Records even to the extent of the BBC giving their album Pink a cursory 'yeah it's alright' and throughout their existence they have placed a premium on releasing loads and touring more. Front-man Atsuo once said in an interview:

"That we tour so much and release so many albums, I think it is representative of what we’re about. Direct communication is something we’ve lost in this day and age. It’s a shame – [even] interviews are over [the] phone. I think it's important to see people face to face – that's why it's so important to go on tour. It's something very basic to humans that we’ve lost lately."

So they're pretty cool people. Especially Wata. Look at her go.

So Quicksilver then. It's one of their more fast-paced tunes overall, many miles away from the sludgy, plodding Farewell. It has a couple of breakdowns and doom-metal drones, notably towards the end but it mostly sounds like it could fit quite nicely on to a split with some super-angry political vegan straight edge band from 90s Washington D.C. What does it for me is the atmosphere Boris manage to cram into even the simplest song, it's full of gloomy tones, distortion, the contrast between the guttural shrieks and the low monotonous singing that sounds like it could be some cult leader reciting black mass, all caught up in a whirlwind of thrashing drums. This is an example of Boris rocking rather than doing the stoner-rock or doom thing and it's fucking awesome.

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Alright that's your lot for today kiddies. Thank you for joining me on another ride through my favourite songs of 2014. I'll be back before the end of January with the final instalment. Peace. 

20. Gesu no Kiwami Otome - Normal Head

Gesu no Kiwami Otome have had a hell of a year. From beginning life as a zany side project that would allow Enon Kawatani to play music with musician friends outside of indigo la End, the self-described "progressive hip-hop" quartet now have have 8 music videos with several millions of YouTube views and a full-length album on Unborde (a sublabel of Warner Music Japan) which hit #3 in the Oricon daily albums chart. I probably shouldn't be writing about them at all any more but they're just too good to resist. Normal Atama is the band revelling in their familiar sound of casino lounge act on Mandy, with jazzy drumming and a bassline which feels at times like it could have been lifted from some long-forgotten 70s disco track. Compare with last year's Gesu joint Killer Ball to satisfy your new-found craving for "casino lounge on Mandy" songs (God I am seriously turning into Pitchfork aren't I?). For me though keyboard player Mari Fukushige really steals the show here. Maybe it's because piano is the one rock instrument I have absolutely no understanding of but I'm always mesmerized by her playing. I particularly love how she spends the first verse complimenting Enon and Kachō then changes the pace for the second verse and bridge so that she's basically duelling with them. She's always been my favourite and if you don't want to give her a hug/hi-five/handshake after watching this video then I cannot help you I'm afraid. I also love Enon's cheeky bastard lyrics about his apparent fear of normal people and attempting to fit into society, it's very them.    

19. Shinsei Kamattechan - Zuttomo

Continuing to step closer and closer to the vaguely normal, Zuttomo contains little of the gurgling, gremlin-like vocal stylings and harsh noise that Kamattechan were infamous for when they first started making music. Contrast Zuttomo with Sunset Piano and you'll probably see why I'm a little surprised this band are writing violin-laced ballad pop. Sweet and catchy with enough noise-pop bite to keep it a bit different, it's a welcome new direction for these guys. Don't ask me what's going on in the video, please. 

18. Kero Kero Bonito - Flamingo

Featured on Secret Songs' very strange compilation shh#ffb6c1, Flamingo is another stand-alone track, along with Build It Up that shows KKB in a more fleshed-out state. While their debut Intro Bonito seemed to literally be made of nothing but the most inexpensive toy instruments and MIDI effects they could get their grubby little mitts on, the aforementioned singles feature slicker production with some pretty meaty bass to make the more cheap-and-cheerful elements more of a signature sheen than something to build an entire song around.

When I read some of the disparaging remarks that float around about these guys I do wonder whether they're helped by being ostensibly linked to a kind of "friends only" laptop EDM scene when they come across as a very earnest, chirpy band with lyrics that preach inclusiveness and celebrating your weird interests. "Black, white, green or blue show off your natural hue Flamingo If you're multicolored, that's cool too You don't need to change It's boring being the same Flamingo You're pretty either way." "No matter what you're into Or what you look like Even if you don't know us You're gonna have a good time."  When I listen to KKB I'm reminded of bands like Tallulah Gosh and Trixie's Big Red Motorbike that rejected miserable ultra-coolness, not the myriad of edgy, faceless internet trap producers they get lumped in with. I wish more people would give them a chance because they're an enormous amount of fun if you let them be. Make it your new year's resolution or something.  

17. Kindan no Tasūketsu - Tonight, Tonight

I feel like I've already written way too much about these guys this year to say anything interesting but I'll try anyway. Tonight, Tonight is the song which initially made me compare Kindan to an updated and much more melancholy version of Strawberry Switchblade. Listen to those saccharine duel female vocals and nostalgic keys, perfect pop, just like the days of yore. When you're bored of that you can enjoy this a cappella version featuring insane Japanese beatboxer, Cyborg Kaori (maybe).

16. Microcosm - 落とし蓋

Since Shinsei Kamattechan have gone soft on me and my favourite noise rock band Pairs bit the big one early last year, I've been looking for a new loud obnoxious noise-rock band to keep me satisfied, step forward Microcosm. Microcosm are Mio Ota (guitar, vocals) and Honami Sato (drums). If you're a regular reader you will recognize Sato as the drummer for Gesu no Kiwami Otome, Ota also works as a support guitarist for minimal techno musician WOZNAIK (Yuta Hoshi).  Microcosm produce just the kind of rumbustious, fuzzed-out fix I was looking for. This is Honami as you won't have heard her before if you're a Gesu fan. Gone is the intricate jazz-infused tapping of her new band in favour of powerful, stomping hits. I love the way the drums have been recorded on this track as well, huge, booming and echoey, as it should be. Ota has quite a nice voice too, almost too nice for the kind of music she's playing. You can get their new EP Face here.