Little side note I'm gonna have to push the albums you all rec'd me until tomorrow because I won't have time to today, but I still want to get a review out. Sorry about the delay.
ENTRY 5
・・・・・・・・・ -「 」(or untitled by dotstokyo)
GENRE: J-Pop, Idol, Shoegaze, Dream Pop, Harsh Noise
Release Date: January 12th, 2018
So this album doesn't come out for a week, but I found out their label was doing free downloads for the album leading up to its physical release, of course being technologically illiterate and the site being put through Google Translate I could not figure out how to get the album. Next I tried Soulseek, I eventually found the album after searching through about 15 different look up terms, but the "owner" of the file was being a stingy bitch and wouldn't let me download. Finally my savior on rym comes down from the heavens and gives me a download link to this album. What I'm trying to say is this album better be the best goddamn thing I hear come out this year. The genre's look promising and the fact that this is an Idol group (if you don't know what an Idol group is watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMR2CYhtA7s this video will also give lots of context to how this group fits in with that as an "anti-idol" group or "alternative idol") is very intriguing.
Track 1: ねぇ
Starts off total MBV with the snare hits too enormous guitars. Speaking of which the guitars sound absolutely wonderful. Loving how unabashedly shoegaze this is, it doesn't try and skirt around the fact that this is a shoegaze album that happens to be a J-Pop album.I like the vocals, very innocent female vocals (as expected) it completely works with how fun of a genre shoegaze is. The bass is prominent which I like a lot, it's not doing anything particularly interesting, just following the rote note of each chord, but it works. The third verse feels like something off of a power pop album. Man those guitars in the chorus are just huge, I love it. Damn good way to start off the album. (I also just noticed that the drums are straight up motorik, nice touch)
Track 2: きみにおちるよる
The guitar work on display here is pretty phenomenal. Oh **** yes now we're full J-Pop, the synths in the hook are just heavenly goddamn. Loving the breakbeat drums mixed with the heavily jazz influenced chords, this is more what I was expecting. Oh this one is just too fun for words, I know in a couple weeks this song will be in full rotation for me. I genuinely can't find one thing that I don't love about this ****ing track, pure unfiltered happiness. The harmonized vocals might be the thing that makes this track in all honesty, but then there's the synth, **** man I don't know, it's all god tier.
Track 3: トリニティダイブ
Starting off with some nice synths. Woah the guitars are buried in the back here and filtered to the point of being pure white noise just crashing in the background. This is more synth driven than I was expecting, but I'm almost glad it is; the whole let's put a ton of effects on guitars and call it a day is so tired at this point. This album still has that, but it has more interesting elements to it that add to the cacophony. This is both the poppiest and noisiest track so far on the album so far. Loving the hell out of the e-drums that have been on the last two tracks now, adds a whole other layer to the music that it wouldn't have with live drums. As of now the album is everything I had hoped it would be.
Track 4: ソーダフロート気分
Even more of the synth driven, let's go. The guitar work mixed with synth on this track reminds me a ton of that Crying album that came out a few years ago. The guitar has this wonderful 80'd Crimson feel as it just bounces from ear to ear. The rhythm section is really in the pocket of this crazy stomping beat. This doesn't quite have the tune that the last two songs had, but it's still pretty damn strong. This track is pure 80's, sax solo, with this bluesy guitar line coming through. Man this is why I love J-Pop so much, it completely embraces the things that have been deemed uncool over here. Yeah this one is damn good.
Track 5: 文学少女
Oh **** it's my least favorite chord progression of all time let's see if they can do anything with it. I love the guitar lines and the vocal melody, but that chord progression just gets on my nerves. Yeah this one is just a bit too far on the simple side for my tastes, I'm not listening to J-Pop to hear chord progressions I would hear on the radio over here. The vocals are pretty heavenly throughout this track, but yeah just too simple. Not a ton to say about this one.
Track 6: 星屑フィードバック
Wow that is one noisy ****ing guitar jesus christ. This one is downright punky, loving the four on the floor beat at like 180 bpm lmfao. This one is almost pure chaos, but somehow the chord progressions are still clear as day and god are they wonderful. The drums might be the most outstanding part of this track though, listen to that and tell me that man isn't going absolutely nuts. I'm not sure what to call this sort of passing chord, but it's when a guitar player is playing a Major chord and he moves the root of the chord up a half step to give the progression some sort of chromatic interest. I don't know what the technique is called, but it's literally my favorite thing in music and it's all over this track, it completely makes it.
Track 7: サイダー
I'm not gonna comment on the production because I'm pretty sure I got a pretty low quality demo, so it sounds muddy, but just based on how separated the mix is I can tell it's just my copy. This one is really just the girls singing over this intense wall of guitar and bass noise, with a real strong strong groove only really breaking in for the chorus. One thing I really adore about this album is just how damn noisy it is, I was afraid the noise element to the music would be be really really played down, but shockingly it isn't. I know they released a 70 minute single and an EP before this both of which apparently had a strong harsh noise element to them. This is their first real album and there isn't any really harsh noise it is still incredibly noisy all the way through. Loving how the drums actually add the to the guitar sound on this track makes them sound like metal guitars in the chorus.
Track 8: サテライト
Just one long chord on the guitar going on with some injections from the lead guitar. You know what I just realized it's been awhile since the synthier stuff, that makes me kinda sad, that was really nice. This one is more in line with traditional shoegaze with some obvious pop influence. It's not bad, but I think this band is at it's best when it's mixing synthpop, shoegaze, and j-pop. The guitar work on this entire album is pretty wonderful, it literally sounds like some 80's guitar god decided one day "**** it I'm gonna make a shoegaze album", which I think is pretty cool. I really wanna figure out who's idea it was to manufacture this group, because it's such a damn strange idea. Not strange because its so wacky or off the wall or disturbing, but strange in that IT IS so straight faced and serious. This is a J-Pop band who makes harsh noise and shoegaze, no frills. I love that, I wish we had more of that attitude in our aspiring artists over here. I get that this band is manufactured product, but someone still had the idea to take these niche genres and try to go Japanese mainstream with them. Because here in the states if you want to make challenging music you have to be so "anti-mainstream" that you make you never actually get anywhere and if you do want to get big you are forced to sacrifice absolutely everything that makes your sound unique. It's really unfortunate and I wish we could more people break into the mainstream with off the wall ideas.
Track 9: スライド
oops I spoke to soon here's the synths. There's even gated reverb on the drums, does it get more 80's sounding than this? Because I really don't think so. This is such a light sounding song, so up in the air and like I don't know fluffy sounding. It's just pure, I like that in a song. There's not a whole lot going on in this song, but it's just a damn solid song.
Track 10: 1998-
Apparently there are two versions of this song; there's the one I'm listening to which is about 4 minutes and will be on the physical copies, and the other is about an hour longer where after the song there's a 50 minute harsh noise outro which will be on the digital??? I don't know, but anyways here's the last song. Loving the dance-punk drums with this wall of beautiful guitar and bass. Digging this long drawn out verse structure. Oh god that hook is to die for, there's these angelic guitars lines going from ear to ear and the singing is JUST. Yeah this is easily one of the best songs on the album.
OVERALL
This is honestly way stronger than I thought it would be. The first half of the album is probably the best run of songs I've ever heard and while yeah it does lull a bit, it never really dips into bad quality. At worst I was indifferent to one of the songs, and most of the **** I loved.
7/10