Tag: post rock

The Rainy – “Film”

While it’s true that the Nagoya scene has been a bit lacking over the years with regard to shoegaze bands with a reputation outside the city, there’s been a steady flow of alternative bands largely based around Tsurumai live house Daytrip and its sister venue Daytrive.  That section of the Nagoya indie scene is extremely underrated, but it boasts real quality and considerable diversity.  Gloomy post rock outfit, The Rainy, has been one of the bands at the center of the current wave of Nagoya shoegaze-adjacent artists, and they followed up an impressive 2018 with the release of their debut EP, “Film”, at the start of this year.

The Rainy is one of a number of Nagoya bands that identify to some degree as shoegaze, but the way in which they draw on the genre is extremely subtle.  The band’s approach to songwriting is based largely on gradual crescendos from light, often acoustic, intros to deeper emotional finishes.  “Film” is basically a showcase of that style of song development, highlighted by the heart-wrenching fan-favorite that is the EP’s title track.  Though a lot of what The Rainy does is repetitive as a general process, they change it up by feinting and teasing the flows of songs, picking their shots and setting them up effectively.  The placement of “Yulunohi” smack in the middle of the EP creates a nice change of pace with its the piqnic-esque moody intensity.  It might be somewhat difficult to truly appreciate The Rainy without seeing their spectacular live performances, but “Film” is a nice introduction to what the band does.

You can listen to The Rainy’s “Film” EP on most streaming services and purchase it via iTunes.  Physical copies are also available for purchase via File-Under Records.

You can hear the title track below:

土曜日と人鳥とコーヒー – “Parameer 02”

Kobe’s Doyoubi to Jinchou to Kohi (which very awkwardly roughly translates to “Saturday and Penguin and Coffee”) has been a low key fixture of the Kansai shoegaze scene for the past decade.  The three-piece, which has seen a few different member changes around frontman and founding member Yuki Yoshimura, has released a bunch of material and appeared at some of the Kansai area’s largest shoegaze events.  Their latest, a single titled “Parameer 02” – the follow-up to last year’s “Parameer 01” – features more of the dark post rock sound that the band has stuck to over the years.  The lead track, “Meltdown”, slowly evolves from cleanly picked guitars to an explosion of guitar noise, while Yoshimura’s falsettos eventually escalated to emotional moans.  The recording doesn’t quite belt at the level of the band’s live performances, but this is a signature song from the band.  “Ymir” on the other hand doesn’t waste any time building up, kicking off with a blgtz-esque uptempo hook and some very Shota Tamura-esque screams in the chorus.  It feels quite clear where the inspiration for this track came from.  I like the change of pace here.

You can pick up “Parameer 02” on Bandcamp.

Once Grace Forever

While 2018 has seen plenty of new bands introduce themselves with singles and EPs, Once Grace Forever came out of nowhere with a well-assembled 8-track self-titled debut last week.  The Tokyo trio shows a couple different looks on the album, starting off with some deliberately-paced, moody post rock.  On the latter half they pick up the tempo a bit, transitioning to some pretty shoegaze tracks before a chilled-out electronic finale.  The period of the album spanning “Summer”, “∞”, and “Melody” particularly hit the spot, but the entire thing from start to finish is quite impressive, all things considered.  Once Grace Forever decided to forego the requisite “roughly-produced two- to three-track demo” phase and go right to putting together a really nice first release.

You can pick up Once Grace Forever’s debut at Bandcamp.

Ulm – “After Dark”

Instrumental post rock/shoegaze four-piece Ulm has spent the last year or so establishing its place in the Nagoya scene thanks to impressive live performances alongside some of the bigger names in shoegaze and shoegaze-adjacent alt rock circles. At the end of July, the band released its first recorded material, an EP titled “After Dark”, which was recorded and mixed by Muscle Soul frontman Tomoaki Taguchi. Over the course of the EP’s three tracks, which span almost twenty-four minutes, Ulm offers a lot of what you’d expect from a post rock album with dreamy lulls crescendoing into huge guitar explosions. In each phase of an Ulm song, there is a wonderful harmony between the two guitar parts, whether it’s clean, mellow arpeggios woven tightly together or heavy, distorted leads soaring alongside one another. The EP’s title track in particular is a good example of what cinematic post rock should sound like, and the transitions between parts are smooth and tight. While a lot of the post rock segment of the Japanese shoegaze scene has gone away in recent years, Ulm have brought some of it back and done so really well.  It’s a good showing from yet another impressive young act from Nagoya.

The CD is currently available at Nagoya’s File-Under Records (which ships internationally). Below is a link to some sample audio from Soundcloud.

S A W A G I – “Forget-Me-Not”

Nagoya newcomers SAWAGI have arrived, bringing their dark blackgaze sound to a local scene that had already boasted a tonally diverse shoegaze scene.  The band formally announced its formation just last month, one day after releasing a two-track demo EP titled “Forget-Me-Not”.  The EP is very much a demo with some somewhat distracting programmed drums and the sort of mixing you’d expect from a demo, but there is some real promise here.  The EP’s title track crescendo’s nicely from an unexceptional verse to a lush, heavy chorus.  While the clean guitar strums over the chorus are sort of off-putting, the mix of the massive guitar wall, tinny screams, and a soaring guitar lead work tremendously well together.  The other track, “Zephyranthes”, is more of a speedy, proggy black metal track.  It’s unspectacular – those drums just get sillier sounding at a higher tempo – but I like the consistency of the vocals over the two tracks.  Considering the EP was composed and produced by one person and released the day the band officially formed, the flaws can be overlooked.  There’s enough to pique my interest here.  Also, this studio clip the band posted on Twitter is really promising (props for the Mayhem shirt, too):

 


SAWAGI is getting ready to make its live debut next month at the YURAGI LANDS release show at Nagoya’s Tsurumai Daytrip.  You can pick up their EP for whatever you’d like to pay on Bandcamp:

Foilverb & Sourin – “The End of Whitenote”

Japanese chiptune producer Foilverb has teamed up with shoegaze unit Sourin – perhaps better known as the solo project of monocism’s Tomoya Matsuura – to put out an interesting new collaborative EP titled The End of Whitenote.  With Foilverb’s tendency toward darker, somewhat cinematic chiptune tracks shrouded in non-8-bit instruments and Sourin’s shoegaze backed by chaotic electronic drums and synths, the pairing is a very logical one and the result feels right.  The End of Whitenote is unsurprisingly dark and dramatic, perhaps more along the lines of chiptune post rock than the familiar chipgaze standard of The Depreciation Guild.  Intro track “Funeral Song” is as good a blend of chiptune and shoegaze as there is, with the 8-bit blips sitting comfortably under the blanket of guitar noise and echoing falsetto vocals without getting too distracting.  The mix is solid.

You can pick up the EP via Foilverb’s Bandcamp page.  Check out Sourin as well (the first album is spectacular).

Looprider – Umi

When they released their 2015 debut “My Electric Fantasy”, Tokyo-based rock outfit Looprider displayed some impressive versatility in creating a cohesive record that incorporated sludgy hooks and pop-infused shoegaze.  Released about nine months later, their second record “Ascension” took things in a quite different direction, drawing on hardcore and harsh noise, while steering clear of any pop influence from the first.  Through two albums the band had covered so much ground that predicting where they might go from there was both intriguing and impossible. 

When they released their 2015 debut “My Electric Fantasy”, Tokyo-based rock outfit Looprider displayed some impressive versatility in creating a cohesive record that incorporated sludgy hooks and pop-infused shoegaze.  Released about nine months later, their second record “Ascension” took things in a quite different direction, drawing on hardcore and harsh noise, while steering clear of any pop influence from the first.  Through two albums the band had covered so much ground that predicting where they might go from there was both intriguing and impossible. 

Today, the band put out their third album, “Umi”, which predictably veers in yet another new direction.  Initially promoted by the band as “an epic post rock concerto”, “Umi” goes beyond that.  The album is a single, mostly instrumental 25-minute track that organically flows from start to finish with massive crescendos and lulls.  

The opening 5 minutes, which the band uploaded as an album teaser a few weeks prior to the release, is a solid setup to the rest of the record.  If “My Electric Fantasy” was a showcase of Looprider’s ability to write catchy, hook-driven tunes, and “Ascension” their talent for tonal brutality, “Umi” brings to light the side of the band that expertly crafts intense music using layers and textures.  You get a feel for this in the album’s opening minutes where a number of simple parts are gradually woven together, building up to a dramatic peak where each of those parts explodes to create a beautiful sort of chaos.  At about the four and a half minute mark, the double drums really shine through, too.

Just as any good post rock has it’s big crescendos, a sudden come-down and reminder that you need to breathe is just as impactful.  While, at first listen, there might seem to be a logical track break – after all, it did make for a really nice standalone edit – the nosedive into the second part feels much more significant as a transition without interrupting the flow of the song. 

Over the next few minutes of the album there’s a delicate build-up, again starting very simple and gradually developing with multiple overlapping parts.  The lyrical portion of the album kicks in here, during which the origins of life are almost chanted over the course of another crescendo, this time to an epic bout of droning rock en route to a frenetic, solo-driven flurry.  The balance between calm and uptempo, soft and thunderous, and the organic, unpredictable flow from part to part does well to conjure the image of the album’s central theme: the ocean. 

The closing portion of the album brings everything down to a strong, steady march, before fading out with clean guitars, while the presence of thick, heavy guitars as the backdrop is a reminder of the strength of the album’s concept. 

As a listening experience, “Umi” is quite different from Looprider’s two previous releases.  However, there are familiar elements from the band’s previous two albums that appear throughout – the occasional grooves and “wall of sound” guitar textures found on “My Electric Fantasy” and the crushing noise of “Ascension” – that are brought together in a unique way, further stretching the boundaries of what Looprider are capable of producing.  With the addition of guest musicians to a lineup that’s already proven itself more than capable of generating huge depth in its sound, Looprider have once again succeeded in belting out a behemoth rock album, when few other bands in Japan are seemingly willing to do so. 

Looprider’s album release party will be taking place on Wednesday, March 29th at the band’s own Pop Sabbath event at Shindaita Fever in Tokyo, where they’ll be supported by moja and Japanese shoegaze legends Luminous Orange.  You can pick up a copy of the CD, which one again features some really nice art from Nasutakeo, at the following locations: