If total number of plays need to be considered for any favorites list, Wai Wai Music Resort ran away with my 2019. Whether because I needed to concentrate on work or simply wanted a stereophonic sound trip bound for endless summer, WWMR 1 delivered pure breeze. It’s also the surprise crown jewel of Local Visions’ previous 12 months, as no release under their umbrella better captured the ethos of what they are about like this one. City pop has become the big bright neon core of how many people (at least online) see older Japanese music, and while plenty of great stuff has received newfound attention, it results in a distortion about just how varied this corner of Japanese pop could be. Wai Wai expand the memory pool to include resort BGM, easy-going tropical lounge and the type of music you’d find on those JAL records that are like “the sound of the Grand Canyon” clogging up Hard Offs. Of course, it isn’t quite that — it’s their own read on the type of forgotten albums you have to buy guidebooks to learn about, given a specific setting thanks to samples of airplane intercom chat and a pace made for vacation. And that’s all an illusion today, something Wai Wai wink at with standout “For Lonely Drivers (F.L.D.),” a fake radio transmission promising warmer climes to solitary highway travelers (and maybe for music critics…”tropical synths,” adjective lovers rejoice). If we are always doomed to misremember the past, Local Visions exists to at least offer new interpretations on these misconceptions, while reminding of the escapist power it holds. Get it here, or listen below.

#9 FNCY FNCY

Blah blah the ’80s blah blah blah economic bubble blah blah help me forget about Trump. I’ve done my fair share of thinkpiece-ish reflection on Japanese artists digging into yesteryear for their sound at a time when that stuff is celebrated/fetishized abroad, but this pseudo-academic farting around would be totally unfair to FNCY. These songs are just a blast, and would be at any point in time. whether the sounds used to construct them were on trend or not. The three artists involved in this semi-supergroup have done pretty well together in the past (and uhhh not so hot)…but never anything like this, where the trio pull air-light bounce out of “FNCY Clothes” and flip chilly sparseness into something luxurious on “silky.” Chinza Dopeness has never sounded more in it than he does across FNCY, while Zen-La-Rock’s Wolfman New Jack voice is always something to behold — sources say he sounds like that when just talking too, which is like you found out Jim Davis actually owns a cat named Garfield.

But this is a victory lap for G.Rina above all else, a creator diving into city pop and other bubble-era sounds since the Aughts, and turning relics into crystal for more than a decade now. Few of these artists — the people who kept plugging away at these sounds after their heyday ended and everyone moved onto, what, Shibuya-kei and Eurobeat — have yet to enjoy any recognition despite continue to explore once-abandoned sounds. Yet all of the top-tier tunes here heavily involve G.Rina both vocally and as producer. Just check the glistening skip of “Aoi Yoru” or the smoother skip of “Konya Wa Medicine,” all of which hit on exactly made all this ’80s pop stick around in so many people’s heads long after its popularity faded. Alongside the two rappers, she found the perfect vessel to really make this sound shine. Listen below.

#8 Tohji angel

May 5, 2019: Nothing makes you feel all 31 years old like squeezing between two shirtless dudes covered in face tats and colored, mulleted hair. The Tokio Shaman event at Shibuya WWW, though, is all about youth, from the fans cramming up every inch of space to the rappers taking the stage to perform over emo-spiked beats while sporting Marilyn Manson t-shirts and, in one artist’s case, something closer to a medieval coat of arms. I’m painfully out of place, but thrilled all the same seeing a community blossom right in front of my eyes in a way I’ve only seen with things like Maltine, INNIT and CUZ ME PAIN. People in or just out of high school are moshing along and shouting right back at every performer, though nobody gets them as geeked up like Tohji. He’s the penultimate rapper, and the whole time the crowd bobs along when they aren’t thrashing, phones held up to record every second he’s visible. There’s a whole universe of inked-up kids here, but he’s the brightest star by far.

August 9, 2019: A Starbucks in Kichijoji isn’t the best place to ponder about the state of Japanese hip-hop, nor is it the ideal setting to listen to a kid jab at your ears with lines like “I’ve got knife so I’ll stab you.” For a long time, I avoided Japanese rap owing to the language barrier, and gave it the benefit of the doubt as a result. As my comprehension improved, so did my willingness to give it a go…and the results were not good. So much Japanese rap desperately wants to mimic every detail of the American artists who created the genre, resulting in derivative works that urge you to just listen to Migos. With few exceptions, all that vocab flashcarding failed to reveal new depth to Bad Hop or whatever, but rather only made them seem cornier. Plenty of artists here used rap as a delivery mechanism and found interesting angles on the genre, but they often were grouped more closely with J-pop than hip-hop.

Tohji offers the welcome shift, the first true great hope with this genre in Japan in the 21st century. He’s still indebted to American artists — wherever in the world you go, they invented rap and that’s a fact that can’t be ignored — but he’s not worried about sounding like them. He sounds like Tohji, all nervy energy and Godzilla screams and “I’ve got knife so I’ll stab you.” Lyrics here are both goofy nonsense designed for those WWW circle pits (“Snowboarding,” “Rodeo”) and emotional spelunking (“mamasaidloveme,” “on my own way”). Posturing is no fun, but Tohji and friends embrace wilding out together over having to try to impress American label reps or 88Rising or whoever might encounter them. angel is Tohji’s first big summary of self, part rave up and part mutation on the whole U.S. SoundCloud rap movement. It’s all his, and hearing it for the first time feels like seeing a whole new vista emerge for Japanese rap.

January 15, 2020: Months later, angel still marks the biggest development in Japanese rap since that first Yurufuwa Gang album. People are starting to notice…Tohji has one more appearance on this list, while No Jumper of all places debuted the “Rodeo” video at the very end of 2019. What comes next…who knows, but anything seems possible at the moment. As long as Tohji holds true to what made his first mixtape such a thrill and what gets all those kids bouncing along in whatever livehouse he plays, he’ll be OK. Listen below.

#7 Koutei Camera Girl Drei Dawn By Flow + Be There EP

Idol music isn’t designed to last. Save for the self-contained pop entities that “graduate” (read: shed) old members and replace them with new ones to keep the brand humming along, this corner of J-pop thrives on the ephemeral. Groups come, groups have a brief moment, groups end. After 2019, add Koutei Camera Girl Drei to the pile of finished idol-pop projects, with one of the weirder legacies to sort out. They aren’t like Especia — which while always under mainstream radar did carve out an online niche — nor are they like the dozens of “underground idols” occupying weekday slots at livehouses across Tokyo. The group played internationally multiple times, but have next to no impact on J-pop, idol or even indie communities. Their core sound — their schtick, in idol terms — was a mix of rap, electronic and, at the very end, dancehall. Their songs were frequently great, with last year’s stunning New Way Of Lovin’ elegantly fusing rave, acid, house and other corners of dance music into the world of idols (woo-woo cheers intact). Dawn By Flow and the Be There EP built on that…and then proved to be the bookend to their existence.

What a double punch to go out on with, though. Dawn By Flow features one of the riskiest sonic developments they could have taken — they embrace dancehall, with one member of the trio frequently swerving into a vocal delivery going heavy on how MCs in that genre sound. It’s a landmine in waiting for like a dozen reasons (though hearing Chet Hanks recently reminds, oh Koutei Camera Girl Drei is probably fine) but they manage it, adding a dash of a genre rarely (ever?) seen in idol music to come through in songs that go heavy on the Jamaican roots and more bleary-eyed floor fillers like “Speed Test” and “Taiwan No Men.” This is the area where the group still excels best, as they move deftly over acid squelches on “Movin'” and shiny garage skitters on “Seek.” There’s also the acoustic guitar bounce of “No Reaction,” the sweetest song they’ve ever found themselves in. Dawn By Flow builds on New Way Of Lovin’ and expands on all the exciting idol-meets-bliss-out that release hinted at, with a whole new sonic risk thrown in that they land. It’s Be There, though, that’s the coda. That one’s all about the title track, a rap number every bit as seismic as angel, albeit from a very different place. Here’s a concept central to idol music — togetherness and teamwork — applied to hip-hop, the end result being one of their most confident moments and one of the most swaggering idol pop cuts of the decade. Idol is ephemeral, but the music and mindset left behind can carry on. Listen above, or below.

#6 Hakushi Hasegawa Ea Ni Ni

Musical dexterity doesn’t automatically equal good art…but listening to Ea Ni Ni makes me want to scream “how the fuck is he doing that???” I’ve seen this guy live and can pull up videos of him zipping through songs on YouTube, but I’m still not totally sure how he manages it beyond being young. Maybe the internet is to blame. Hasegawa is one of the many creators dotting this list emerging post-Maltine (who have released his work before) and post-netlabel, though few capture the frantic and topsy-turvy pace those online imprints championed at the start of the 2010s like Hasegawa. Ea Ni Ni mixes a jazzy heart with a message board brain, with nearly every song present offering the audio equivalent of a gym consisting of only trampolines. To continue the metaphors, imagine if Enon Kawatani’s flirtation with trackmakers resulted in some horrible accident where his body spliced with Pa’s Lam System’s hard drive, creating a Frankenstein capable of marrying breakbeats with squeaky toys squawks and on-point singing. That after nine songs of madcap creation he closes with “Neutral,” which is just Hasegawa and his piano in all its skeletal beauty, is half flex and half heartfelt closing gesture. Simply trying to work through this paragraph drives home for me why I love this — it’s so fun to listen to, write about and play around with mentally. And Hasegawa sounds like he’s having a blast too. Listen below.

#5 Nariaki Obukuro Piercing

Don’t rush into making “The Best Albums Of 2019”, I’m here ‍

— (@nariaki0296) November 18, 2019

Most year-end lists are ready to go by November 18, and everything that comes out after tends to be like a bonus. Even with this list, coming together in mid January 2020, something dropping on December 18 feels like its pushing it, especially at this point in ranking construction. Piercing, though, isn’t your normal rushed-out holiday offering. On last year’s Bunriha no Natsu, Nariaki Obukuro practically drew from a personal journal, loading songs up with the type of details about sipping tequila in front of Studio Alta and exploring far off climes that sound ripped from an Instagram feed. That debut was him digging into himself, Nariaki the only voice save for one platinum-level guest. Piercing touches the same intimacy, but rather than confessional, Obukuro aims for the abstract. Songs break apart into different acts — “Turn Back” moving from wispy guitar reflection to warped hip-hop, “Down The Line” teasing balladry before blowing open — while interludes pop up to either offer pallet cleansers (“Bye’s” chorus) or make for connectors that send ripples through what could be single songs (“Snug” into “Three Days Girl” being a particularly riveting link). Other voices abound, and almost feel like actors helping to make Obukuro’s world come alive, whether they offer chin-up pep (Kenn Igbi on “New Kids”) or a little extra existential jolt (5lack on “Gaia”). Tohji plays the role of swagged-out Puck on “Tohji’s Track,” which is just a whole song given over to him to do his thing.

Obukuro, though, remains the guiding force, and Piercing offers up as complete an artistic statement as one can hope from someone in the margins of J-pop. Frank Ocean remains the obvious inspiration, but songs here don’t sound like Channel Orange cribbings (no “Goodboy” in sight). Rather, they pulse and shuffle forward while Obukuro navigates thorugh them with a voice that goes from rapped lines to swaying lines revealing the emotional oomph within (and why Sony would roll the dice on this guy at all, even if he keeps throwing out curveballs). Maybe this is all the album equivalent of new car smell, but by the time Piercing reaches those faded piano keys opening up “Gaia,” I’m all in on this slightly bent bit of spiritual surrender. Check back in a few months, but this one feels like it will pass the test of time, and stand as one of the more ambitious J-pop projects in recent years. Listen below.

#4 Pasocom Music Club Night Flow

The craziest part of watching Pasocom Music Club go from desktop music creators uploading straight onto SoundCloud to duking it out against some J-pop big boys for a CD store trophy is learning how much depth these two have. A project that started out making sleek dance-pop riffing on elements of Japan’s musical past soon revealed itself to have some pop bonafides, clever twists on vaporwave and straight-up dancefloor bops. While nowhere near as prestigious as a CD shop award, Pasocom can now lay claim to a three year streak of landing in the Make Believe Melodies’ top 10, with every release offering a new wrinkle to their sound. Night Flow nudges the synth-pop of Dream Walk into the crowded streets of Shibuya and forces it to miss its last train home. Tracks opt for sparseness and a chilliness apt for anyone trying to find a good place to sit at 2 am while still retaining a certain excitement for what’s possible. “Air Waves” dashes ahead but always feels a little more mysterious than the duo’s brighter past (those electronic breezes whipping through probably go a long way to that feeling), while “Motion Of Sphere” slowly builds up towards no particular release, but rather a dance number gaining momentum through new developments. It’s all very nocturnal but never unsettling, and guest vocalists swing by to add welcome human warmth. Inoue Warabi is the MVP, adding sweetness to “Time To Renew” and nailing this middle between longing and anticipation on standout “Reiji No Machi.” With Night Flow, there’s no reason to worry about pop accessibility or ponder what city pop means in the Reiwa era, because this is their most well-crafted set to date, and that’s all they need. Listen below.

#3 Noah Thirty

What am I going/to do?

Noah had it all figured out. Her 2015 full-length Sivutie burrowed into itself to escape a world becoming rapidly noisier. Four-plus years on and countless developments that make those messy days seem downright inviting, everyone seeks some kind of escape when they aren’t opting to dive straight in to the now. It has been especially true when talking about Japanese music, which has seen older artists and rare releases from the Bubble days enjoy newfound life as many listeners outside the country (and, really, within it) seek escape to a time seen as far more pleasant. “An optimistic spirit buzzed through the music in neon-bathed, gauzy tableaus coated with groove-heavy strokes,” goes the description for one compilation, and few of those words apply to now.

Thirty turns to the past for inspiration, but doesn’t dwell there. Ayuko Kurasaki primary inspiration is the Tokyo of today, which also happens to hold plenty of the Tokyo of yesteryear and is constantly moving towards the Tokyo of tomorrow. It’s a in-flight magazine cliche that carries truth to it — Japan’s capital is a place that can, at least from the right angle, feel out of time. Thirty peers back, but rather than go for the obvious horn blurts and cruise-ready synths, Noah explores sonic ideas you’d find on Chee Shimizu’s record shelf. Songs here see how much motion they can wring out of the least sounds, with “18 Karat” and “Melting Blue” using space as a tool just as vital as the percussion or synth swirls wisping over them. “Xiangziji,” the album’s swiftest number, offers a slightly more guarded interpretation of city pop / “new music” songs about cities in the early evening flickering to life. There’s an excitement, but also the feeling of something already fading away (which perfectly describes Tokyo in 2020, where many landmarks of the ’80s are being replaced). This is nostalgia in motion, and a reminder that the past isn’t a place you can visit if you buy pricey re-issues, but rather an ever-present part of today that just happens to be growing smaller. Thirty, for all its complicated feelings and Dip In The Pool-isms, chooses to live in this moment, whatever it turns into. Get it here, or listen below.

#2 Fuji Chao Desert Dessert

In some ways, Desert Dessert broke this blog. It appeared a week before this site entered the barren period it now finds itself in, and loomed large over those few hours I had where I could actually try to get something up. Fuji Chao’s music has always been tough to figure out, mostly because few artists in Japan mainstream or underground like herself are pulling from such a personal place, of being young in modern Japan. Her songs are littered with small details that set them in a journal, while she’s often used samples of cartoons and TV shows to offer further emotional punch — along with just screaming and crying when needed. Desert Dessert builds on this and couples it with the best music she’s ever surrounded herself with. It seemed necessary to really try to do this one justice, at least in my mind. I’m still not sure how I can go about doing that.

Enough cop outs, let’s try. Fuji Chao expresses her world in only ways she can, and manages to leave a small creak in the door big enough for anyone to step in to listen to her tumble through these thoughts. Songs here are loaded with references to cat-shaped jewelry, meals at Chinese restaurants and, on “Bedtown No Uta,” practically offering an anti-tourism guide for suburban life (eating an ice cream cone from McDonald’s constitutes a win). Yet they also come clouded with heavier emotional wondering, both in terms of relationships and existential dread (opener “Robot” crams it all there over an unnerving shuffle). What’s new this time around, though, is the best backing music she’s conjured up yet, adding extra urgency and oomph to every number here. She tries out a sing-song delivery on the upbeat (but touch more philosophical than it lets on) “Occult Flower Shop,” and her skippy tone gets extra lift from those samples violin melodies breezing beneath. “Nothing Sad” and (especially) “Cream Puff Dream” use blown-out sound to transform hoppy dance-pop numbers into Candyland nightmares (and…note…this album can get pretty funny too. Sometimes when coping with the realities of existence, you gotta laugh at the little things). Other moments, like “Sex Motel,” sound like memories already fading away.

Make Believe Melodies is always going to have a soft spot for the bedroom artists creating sonic worlds wallpapered by emotional unease and sliced-up samples, who manage to capture a very specific situation in a way that can hit many more the same way. Desert Dessert is the best example of what Fuji Chao does, done with her best sonic choices in tow. I’m still not sure how to really capture how it connects, but it makes me want to keep going to figure out just how to do it. Get it here, or listen above.

#1 dj newtown West Members

Netlabels are dead. “Around 2010, I think the internet music scene really existed separate from the indie and major scenes,” Maltine Records foudner Tomad told me back in 2016. “But now, lots of artists become big from Soundcloud or Bandcamp. In a way, everything is internet music. It isn’t really special anymore.” That sounds quaint compared to 2019 (and whenever this blurb actually goes up), when subscription services gobble up all they can and musical trends move at the speed of TikTok. It’s not negative (though there are plenty of negatives) or positive (got that too)…just different, and maybe a little overwhelming. The web is everything, and music can feel like another digital fly trapped in it. The idea netlabels celebrated at the turn of the decade — of building an alternate world — feels antiquated now that the platform has become the center.

Talk about great timing for dj newtown to return. Eight years after last releasing new music, the project that arguably stands as Maltine Records first breakout creator returned with West Members, 11 tracks built around his breakbeat style born from 2chan and life in cookie-cutter suburbs. It could have just been a nice bit of nostalgia — and to a degree, it succeeds on this front too — but dj newtown’s newest offers something much more ambitious. It’s a look back, a dissection of existing work, a (very) brief history of J-pop in the 2010s, and a celebration of internet sound. Nothing better summed up 2019 in Japanese music…and no album had a better run of songs either, with each of these numbers elevating above thinkpiece bait and being real bangers.

West Members finds the dj newtown project slicing apart songs from another prominent netlabel act, tofubeats, and transforming the familiar into something new. There’s all kinds of layers here — I’ll point towards this special interview that tofubeats conducted with dj newtown, which not only features great details like this actually intended to come out in 2018 to celebrate 10 years of newtown, to a sorta glimpse into who has master rights of tofubeats’ catalog. And, of course, there’s the whole identity thing, which gets addressed right away with a not-so-serious line about blog posts being “fake news” if they say tofubeats and dj newtown are the same person (who can relate).

Let’s just not even worry about parsing out that, because you don’t really need it. This is the avatar for the early netlabel ecosystem drilling into the song catalog of the first netlabel act to crossover to mainstream J-pop, where he’s still locked in today. And from familiar tofubeats songs, dj newtown finds completely fresh angles on them that reveal all kinds of depth. “Fumetsu No Kokoro” transforms from a fizzy drama opening theme to the haywire “IMM (FUM),” where voices malfunction into delirious new melodies. “What You Got” becomes a slow burn as “WHA” while “Yuuki” from Fantasy Club turns into pitched-up mist as “YUU.” That West Members covers the entire history of tofubeats — and, maybe accidentally, J-pop in the 2010s — and reveals the malleability of his work is a bonus. You get returns to pre-Warner releases like “Touch” and “So What” (that one offering the best departure with “SOW,” breaking idol-adjacent pep down into some molecular-level fanfaire), and then that time Dream Ami stumbled into his zone (“POS” turning “Positive” into a nice skittery dash) before reaching an artist happy to put himself in the spotlight (watch post-truth dread turn into house escapism on “SHO”).

Few artists J-pop or underground can boast a catalog of songs in the 2010s as durable as what tofubeats cooked up, and what West Members reveals is he’s also a pro at moments begging to be revisited over and over again. This is dj newtown’s strong point — they find a few great seconds or an irresistible bit of Auto-tuned sing-rap, and transform that into a jam all its own —  and here they pinpoint the hookiest instanes from Yusuke Kawai’s works. Those can be syllabic yelps, half-second horn blurts, keyboard workouts, or so much more. The little minute-long interludes have more fun playing around with familiar sounds than some Oricon-top-eyeing singles ever do. If you just drop into this one sans context, you’ll still have a good time, because it’s built by somebody with a knack for transforming single details into big tunes, working from among Japan’s best collections of songs.

Thing is, it’s also the perfect collection to celebrate the 2010s as they fully zoom into the background. Turns out missing that 2018 goal and letting this transform into an awkward “11th anniversary” release was fitting, because so much Japanese music now sounds indebted to the netlabel community dj newtown and tofubeats represent. I’d reckon at least 90 percent of the artists on this list owe some influence to one of those acts or a bigger constellation like Maltine — whether they actually released on a netlabel or drew sonic inspiration directly from tofubeats (Pasocom Music Club, Native Rapper, Mom, Yunovation, plenty more). Yet that also applies to how artists use the internet in Japan today, whether it’s Fuji Chao turning a Bandcamp page into her own alternate world or a major-label act like Nariaki Obukuro surprise releasing a genre-skipping album free of the usual J-pop concerns.

Netlabels are dead, but netlabels are also everywhere as the ’20s start, both represented by the artists making moves on all levels of the Japanese music industry or the ethos of creator-centric art starting to become the norm. I’ve already written about this over at The Japan Times, with a focus on Vocaloid, but it’s true of Maltine Records and the dozens of other netlabels abounding at the start of the 2010s. A wave of young artists who grew up with the internet are now creating their own music, and often doing the bulk of it by themselves, able to retain their vision. Nothings perfect and plenty of negative forces present hurdles — familiar biz hangups, the unease of lending so much power to tech-first platforms, a little thing called capitalism — but right now, this web-born attitude to creation has made me feel genuinely optimistic about where the country’s music communities are heading.

West Members packs all of those good feelings about the possibilities of the internet and music into one place. Part of it is revelery for what was — the .zip files, the browswer-crashing special sites, the parties that reminded that this URL world moved into IRL (and still does!) with all the sense of community intact, the sweat-drenched interview I did after a Pa’s Lam System show at one such gathering. Yet it’s also built from the creativity, remix-minded culture and general fun that continues to permeate out of it, and makes looking forward actually kind of exciting. Between them, dj newtown and tofubeats helped build this, and remain every bit as plugged in and on top of it today. Get it here, or listen below.

Take a moment to appreciate how timing really is everything, and how many artists could have shot down a different path entirely if you wind the clocks back or forward just one year. It’s not hard to picture a reality where Chelmico are closer to idols like Lyrical School or Rhymeberry if they emerge closer to AKB48’s peak, or they get pushed to be more traditionally hip-hop if trends break right. Yet the pair popped up at a sweet spot in the mid 2010s where they could develop their genre-hopping approach to rap, and when they did reach the majors they didn’t have to fill any pre-determined boxes, but could be a social-media age take on RIP SLYME and Halcali’s hip-pop.

Fishing is the pay off, a Warner-backed full-length showing Chelmico’s versatility in all its sonic and emotional breadth. The duo’s main inspiration point — the aforementioned RIP SLYME — can be a divisive one in how the J-pop up rap, with plenty to critique. Chelmico, though, nail all the positive points, glueing tag-team verses to earworm hooks. The backdrop doesn’t matter, as they can dash alongside electronic skitters on “Exit” or work within the confines of something approaching eyes-down indie-rock on “12:37.” The pop highs on Fishing are their best to date, highlighted by “Switch” and “Summer Day’s” bounce-house energy, but it’s the more deflated numbers like “Balloon” and “Navy Love,” where Chelmico turn their usually chipper style towards heavier feelings that really make this album their breakthrough. It’s them taking risks and not always hitting — no song on any album featured here or after is as bad as “Beer Bear” — but the willingness to go for it comes through clearly, and results in one of J-pop’s brightest spots in 2019 and something perfect for the times. Listen below.

#19 Okinawa Electric Girl Saya And AX Chastity + Mayhem

Focus put on Japan’s experimental and noise music communities gravitates towards the old. The past 12 months saw two podcasts about Merzbow briefly emerge before the gruff distortionist expressed his hesitation. While that one probably says more about the impending podcast bubble than anything else, it was a reminder for many Japan’s more left-field corners stopped in 2001. That’s a little too cynical — hopefully, Foodman occupies the same space as, like, Phew, in 2044 — but still, in a year so focused on nostalgia for old Japanese music, it was nice seeing someone like Okinawa Electric Girl Saya keep releasing cacophony into the world. The idol-turned-experimenter transformed folk songs from her native chain of islands into apocalyptic releases and conjured up barely-there sine freakouts across a lot of releases this year, but these two Terminal Explosion albums made in conjunction with AX capture everything making her such an exciting name. Chastity gathers a bunch of guests to join in Saya’s noise, ranging from Foodman to CRZKNY to Araki Takara, but solo creations like “Black Rain’s” piano-powered unease and “Saya Goes To The City’s” sweltering take on dance music that really underline her skill. Mayhem fills out that corner, with an especial focus on her dissonant and loud side. Get them here, or listen below.

#18 Mom Detox

Actually, hold on a second, this one pairs nicely with….

#17 Native Rapper Trip

Genre as a concept isn’t dead, and it would be a bit silly to lean in too much into that idea…at least for the moment. Thing is, younger creators from all over the world are less worried about genre, and what they should and shouldn’t do. That’s been especially true in 2019 — to the point of being exemplified by the most ever-present song in Western pop — and a trend all the more prominent in Japan, going from the top with Kenshi Yonezu and trickling down to performers like Mom and Native Rapper. These two don’t sound alike, but they sound alike as well in how they openly play around with different styles to create something all their own…and aren’t afraid to kick it up later. By the end of the year, Mom released an honest-to-god acoustic folk album, but before going full coffee house (for a little bit) he released Detox, a 15-song bout of whiplash swinging from skeleteal Auto-tune rap to jaunty pop bordering on regional theater. Still, the focus on Detox falls on hip-hop, whether delivered straight-faced on “6” or wrapped-up in springy pop like on “Boys and Girls.”

As the name implies, that style is even more central to Native Rapper, but whereas Mom approaches music from a grab bag of influences you could easily find at Tsutaya, the Kyoto artist is grounded more in the world of netlabels. He’s put out a handful of great releases so far, but debut album Trip works as the Native Rapper mission statement, with a shared interest in hip-hop, dance, synth-pop and references to golf course features coming across clearly. That he pulls in like-minded creators such as Yunovation and Lulu to help make this a reality hits even harder at the greater point of what’s happening across the board. Mom and Native Rapper offer mid-level snapshots of a greater sonic trend, but few at any spot of the ladder did it with as much joy as these two. Listen to Trip above or get it here, and listen to Detox below.

#16 Le Makeup Aisou

Trying to live in the moment is a doomed cause if you don’t also wrestle with where you were — and who you were — in the past. Osaka’s Le Makeup had a productive 2019, launching his own label called Pure Voyage (responsible for a very good, just outside of this list debut from Dove) and, in a collaboration that is jarring at first but makes a ton of sense the more you think about it, worked with rapper and Mall Boy gummyboy. His best moment came via his own project, which since 2017’s Hyper Earthy has been focused on looking inward and capturing the everyday experience via synth haze, guitar strums and increasingly his own voice drifting into the center. Aisou only sees his own singing become more vital to the song, whether fading away in “Bangkok” or coming through clearly on “Horns” or “Delay.” The guitar foundation remains, here adding an emo sheen, but those notes also get interrupted by scrambled electronics on “Delay” or distorted snippets of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” beaming across “Frosted Glass” and adding a weird feeling of something familiar mutating into something unknown. Aisou explores Le Makeup’s entire musical history up until now, including early forays into Caribbean-born rhythms on standout “Galfy,” which perfectly fuses his beginnings with who he is now. That’s one of his most honest explorations yet, and gives Aisou even more weight. Get it here, or listen below.

#15 Suiyoubi No Campanella (Wednesday Campanella) And Oorutaichi Yakushima Treasure

Gotta hand it to KOM_I — after nabbing something approaching mainstream attention in the mid 2010s with nervy dance-pop anchored by her rapped flights of fancy, she pivoted Suiyoubi No Campanella towards a space where she could actually sing over ornate Kyoto-indebted backdrops on last year’s Galapagos, accessibility be damned. She went places even mistier and less occupied in 2019 — Yakushima, a green-blanketed island off Kagoshima, and YouTube Premium. Yakushima Treasure came coupled with an original series funded by the folks at Alphabet, and being behind one of the paywalls people seem least interested in entering made this collaboration with Osaka oddball Oorutaichi feel like a blip from a project that was formerly palling around with SMAP and Tamori. Not that ease of access would have gotten her back on Music Station. Yakushima Treasure is Suiyoubi No Campanella going off the grid to chant and explore ancient Japanese court music. “Underground Ritual” surrounds itself with the sound of waters and birds, giving the skitters and disorienting singing that follows a sense of place that makes their spiritual (or demonic) qualities all the more potent. “Vessel Unbound” is KOM_I singing over shamisen strums, recorded in what sounds like a found Walkman. “East” focuses this mish-mash of the old and the natural to create an out-of-time fever dream reminding how even KOM_I operating in experimental mode deliver more energy than most. Nostalgia is big all over right now, and the last 12 months saw notable dips into really old Japanese sounds courtesy of Minyo Crusaders and Meitei. Yakushima Treasure though offers a far better read on the ancient sounds of a place by being unafraid to let them morph into something different and strange, far more abstract than what they were, without ever pushing away. Suiyoubi No Campanella and Oorutaichi went into the wild, and came back with a gem. Listen below.

#14 Tsudio Studio Soda Resort Journey

Once again, let’s step outside, get some fresh air and go over the inner thinkings of the guy writing this an hour before he needs to be in bed. No album sparked more excitement over at Make Believe Melodies’ headquarters like Soda Resort Journey. Tsuido Studio’s Port Island already made my top ten last year, but time has only made that one feel like more of a revelation, the rare debut that feels like an honest shift in how nostalgia, the internet and vocal manipulation can be played around with to create something new that builds rather than exploits a past long gone. I really wanted to hear how Tsudio Studio would follow that up. Problem was, I had to wait to December to do that.

Just over a month later, and Soda Resort Journey sits at an odd juncture. It’s the sound of Tsudio Studio polishing up their songwriting, and zooming in on Port Island catchiest moments to build something that’s aware it will appear at Tower Records. It’s URL going IRL, complete with ballads, multiples of ’em! Though they keep the fuzz around the vocals and the general sonic palette remains the same, which also makes this feel like Port Island blown up bigger. I’m honestly still not totally sure what I think of it — it could be a top-ten inclusion a year from now, or I would have just spun the first one 100 times instead — but I do know the highs hit on all the same thrills, and remind that whatever path they go, Tsudio Studio will kill it. Few can find a modern interpretation on city pop that retains the glitz while also making it apt for Reiwa like they do on the sax-accented “Kiss In KIX” and the rush of “Dragon Taxi,” while also working so well with guests such as Yunovation (again! what is this, the tenth time she has showed up on a release on this list?) and Local Visions’ crew Crystal Cola and Mandark. “Squall Lover” pushes towards spiritual experimentalism, while slow jam “Like A Ruin” gets…intimate? Here’s the one thing I know for sure — Tsudio Studio is one of the most promising creators going as the 2020s get underway. Listen below.

#13 Sayohimebou Shenzhen DIVA

Mea culpa…I completely missed Sayohimebou’s Crystal Aimai from last year, only coming across it after Maltine Records released Shezhen DIVA. That one is nuts, with its mix of hi-def electronic shrapnel and samples basically offering something that’s close to Vektroid’s god-level FACT mix. This shorter 2019 release isn’t just landing this high up as compensation for my oversight — this one packs in Sayohiimebou’s hyperactive genre-blending into a tight package, hitting on what would happen if French touch went through hyperdrive and what might happen if talkbox funk could be created through genetic engineering. Japanese electronic artists have been obsessed with texture and individual sound, and Shenzhen DIVA’s take on this movement is to zoom into the very DNA of an ASMR video to figure out what makes everything tick. Best of all, trying to reduce it to just one thing proves near impossible, because it feels like almost everything. Get it here.

#12 CHAI Punk

CHAI revel in gestures teasing nonsense that prove to be insightful. “That’s a love song, yeah, but it’s way too early for us to talk about loving someone else,” the band told me back in 2018 about “Horechatta.” “But we could totally write a love song about gyoza, which is something all of us love.” On newest album Punk, CHAI have gone from odes to dumplings and fried food to self-love.

There’s a lot to dissect when looking at how CHAI became one of the few contemporary Japanese artists going to get enough outside attention to warrant a Tiny Desk Concert and a Narduwar interview — you could squeeze some good newsletter writing out about their major-label in Japan/indie-label in the States approach, or how they reminded that the best way to get coverage from English-language websites is to go to them — but let’s also not overthink it. On Punk they make catchy and slightly oddball songs about work and curly hair that are actually about modern-day struggles and embracing you for you. No worries if you missed it, because they wrap it all up in rock clap-a-longs, funk struts and keyboard woozers. Pink was solid, but everything goes up a level here, from the tongue-in-cheek new-wave freakout of “Great Job” to the locked-in chug of “Curly Adventure.”

It’s that extra dimension really ramping it up. Beyond the silly sampledelica and movie-villain cackles serving as mid-song interludes, Punk finds CHAI becoming more confident to move beyond more songs about food and bad boys in order to really dig into that whole neo-kawaii thing they bring up in interviews. This is an album about embracing everything you are both past, present and future (on, natch, “Future”) without ever getting preachy about it. Rather, they just live this truth and show how fun it is to be you, curls and all. Listen below.

#11 i-fls Not Beautiful View

Convenience store…apartment building…bus stop…hair salon…another hair salon…school…city hall…train station. I’ve been in Tokyo for so long now that the scenery of the suburbs feels exotic whenever I’m zipping by it on a train or car. That was once my reality, though, when I first came to Japan and found myself living in a bedtown nearly equidistant between Osaka and Nagoya. Everything moves so fast in the capital…it’s so cliche, but I do often look back on those days where I resided somewhere only known for having the largest salamander center in the country. It’s not quite nostalgia, because that implies it was simple. It was quiet…not simple. If anything, that just made the thoughts all the more complex, and probably shaped me into who I am more than I ever could have imagined.

For the better part of this decade, i-fls has captured that bedtown ennui and ecstasy better than anybody, via simple melodies constructed in Garageband that reveal a lot of emotional depth. Selecting one single release to sum it up would be foolish, since this is a long-running project and my favorite series to come out of indie Japanese internet music since I moved here. Not Beautiful View isn’t better or worse than anything that came before it, but it’s like checking in with an old friend, or making a quick stop over in the quiet community you used to live to see how things have changed (or, most likely, not). Yet there’s something extremely comforting in hearing those computer-generated melodies racing along, whether they spur longing (“chiaki breeze”) or hope (“the (nobody) theater”). Having listened to i-fls since 2012, there’s some personal investment here that makes Not Beautiful View all the more wrenching. Yet I don’t think I’m alone. Get it here, or listen below.

Near the start of 2019, Yasutaka Nakata shared the theme song he composed for an anime series about Virtual YouTubers, sporting vocals delivered by the digital influences themselves. It sounded a lot like Nakata trying to mimic the innocent bleeping of Snail’s House. Consider it a weird twist, considering Snail’s House’s Alien Pop finds him channeling his love of Perfume and other feelings-flowing electro-pop into original songs. For this year at least, point for the molluscan. The latest entries in the Alien Pop series offered up dizzying dance songs borrowing not just from the Nakata playbook but also French touch. “Cosmo Funk” and “Planet Girl” surrounded unintelligible syllable chirps with synthesizer flurries adding a glow to every track. “Invader” reimagined “Night Flight” as something Yusaku Maezawa might fund, while “Fusion” saw Snail’s House get more delirious than they’ve ever tried before, with the same songwriting intricacy coming through. Snail’s House put out a lot over the course of this year, but these two saw the project achieve a bubbly new high. Get them here, or listen below.

#29 ΔKTR Push

Lo-fi hip-hop beats to melt your brain too while still getting in plenty of relaxation. ΔKTR digs into the crates to find intriguing samples, and then breaks them down to a molecular level to find the juiciest passage, even if it ends up warping said music’s original DNA. Push determines just how smooth a song can get before it turns into a vapor trail (“To Be Or Not To Bop”) while also deducting what it takes to create something that sounds like snorting gold (“Eeeasy”). I don’t even have to stretch out this metaphor, because many of Push’s best moments are just down-the-hatch easy beats that work wonders without any MC going over them. Yet it’s that thrill of hearing ΔKTR transform existing music into a series of what-the-fuck moments that get the imagination racing that makes him such a fun artists, and one reminding how beats don’t have to just be background. Get it here, or listen below.

#28 CVN I.C.

Nagoya gets a bad rep for being the most boring place in Japan (give or take the nationalistic controversies that break out there on a yearly basis), but it has low-key been one of the best cities for music in the 2010s. Most recently, it’s a hotbed for experimental creators, so much so that Foodman could host a short documentary about the city for Resident Advisor that celebrated its off-beat nooks and crannies. “I think Nagoya has had a major impact on my music,” CVN’s Nobuyuki Sakuma told me this past summer. Since getting out of Tokyo — and leaving the memory of early-2010s project Jesse Ruins in the Setagaya suburbs — Sakuma has changed up his sound as CVN, moving away from icy industrialism to a more sample-indebted approach placing him closer to the sonic quilting that fellow Nagoya residents Foodman and Woopheadcrlms get up to. I.C. offered the best version of this constantly mutating sound, resulting in high-definition constrictors like “You Argued For Justice” while also showcasing a newfound appreciation of space on “Zen Of Equilibrium,” a number full of unsettling details but anchored by a shuffling beat. Boosted up further by plenty of great guest spots, I.C. solidified CVN’s place in the modern Japanese experimental community, and showed that getting out of the city can be a pretty good move. Get it here, or listen above.

#27 Yunovation Hogaraka Ni

Osaka’s Yunovation cashed in on all that potential that helped her crash the outer border of our list last year for Hogaraka Ni. In a lot of ways her debut full-length album just builds on that EP, down to including the charming melodica jaunt “Roki Store” and highlighted by a new version of “Aruteido Aru” which dials back the drum skitters in favor of piano melodies and synth squiggles. If that EP showed she was more than a whizz with an instrument primarily played by kindergartners, Hogaraka Ni shows just how intricate her creations can get, whether they are finding space for banjo plucks or brief horn blurts…or carving out a big chunk of space for her to deliver a signature melodica solo over. Get it here, or listen below.

#26 Sawa Angstrom DdTPt + Of Food + Level + Ice

Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, electronic trio Sawa Angstrom’s 2019 output felt more like a group spending 12 months working out a lot of ideas and seeing what would stick. Turns out, though, their constant experimentation is the selling point. These EPs document one of the stronger years of constant tinkering from a project that approaches sonic texture in the way a lot of creators tagged as IDM do, except by adding in a human element offering plenty of warmth and none of the snobbery “intelligent dance music” implies. Songs burst, ripple, belch, skip over themselves, and simply drift. On one extreme, they offered one of the most delicate reflections via “Tape Loop’s” skeletal skittering, but only a few months later they broke out more forceful percussion to craft “Sweet Impact,” an upbeat dance-pop number. There’s no reason to force out a unified album in the streaming era if you don’t feel like it, and Sawa Angstrom’s quartet of EPs showed one path creators could travel without having to lose that desire to play around. Listen below.

#25 Yoshino Yoshikawa Ultrapop

Few words get overused and deployed incorrectly by music writers like “pop.” Take it from me, somebody who hears anything that gets jammed in my head and I’m ready to throw those three letters around without thinking twice. I’m not alone though, and seeing how much more now falls under the pop umbrella — “Old Town Road,” pop! “Bad Guy,” pop! “Where’s My Juul??,” probably I’ve been writing this list I don’t know what the hell is happening. Yoshino Yoshikawa has always gone the extra step of describing his jaunty synth-pop as “ultrapop,” a term separating itself from the more general word but leaving enough space for people to figure out just what it means. Now he’s gone and created a primer to ultrapop with Ultrapop, an often bright and bubbly affair doubling as a career retrospective. He provides new versions of numbers that helped define what Maltine Records was in its early days (“Entertainer”), and also cuts from his releases on Zoom Lens which saw him opening up his world even further (“Yumetatsu Glider”). The new songs unfold in a similar Technicolor hop-scotch, playing around with vocal snippets on “Popcorn Stand’s” pogo and delivering one of the more emotional lyrics Yoshikawa’s penned on “Strange Dream.” The best detail, though, comes in how Yoshikawa celebrates similar creators both old and new, calling on the likes of LLLL, Yunovation and more to join in this ultrapop party. No need to worry about a concrete definition of what that is when it’s so fun to just get swept up in all the good cheer. Get it here, or listen below.

#24 For Tracy Hyde New Young City

Two years ago, Tokyo’s For Tracy Hyde released what I’d say is still their to-date masterpiece he(r)art, an indie-pop epic managing to capture the melancholy and joy of Japan’s capital, music and even For Tracy Hyde itself within its movie-inspired frame. Like most sequels, New Young City knows what works and sticks primarily to it, down to keeping the same cinema-inspired pacing (complete with opening logo sequence) and vaporwave-indebted interlude. It might lack the same emotional oomph that the first time around had, but you’ve gotta trust people who know what they are doing, and For Tracy Hyde can turn all those sonic and emotional elements into indie-pop both capable of dashing along or leaving more space for the words to chip away at tender hearts. Sometimes you just want to return to the things you enjoyed, whether it’s catching up with your favorite film characters or dipping back into teenage emotions. Listen below.

#23 Carpainter Declare Victory + Future Legacy

The past has always been present in the music producer Carpainter creates. U.K. garage and 2-step served as fundamental sounds early on, and as he’s added his own futuristic touch to them he’s helped establish his own character that has made him in demand for both Tokyo-area parties and top-level J-pop performers needing some youthful edge. This February’s Declare Victory followed in the footsteps of previous Carpainter releases — the influences were clear, but it was about him adding his own flavor to each track (see the dramatic chug of the title track joined by some electronic gurgles, or the relaxing synth swoops surrounding “Enrichment Center”). Like in the past, Carpainter created numbers overflowing with great musical detail, and letting them absorb you through headphones or during a night out was half the fun. Get it here.

Which is what makes Future Legacy such an interesting development for Carpainter. Not to drag you down into the world of press releases, but this full-length release specifically referenced the Japanese rave sounds of Carpainter’s youth (or at least what would have been playing if he was old enough to get into clubs back then). Bits of Ken Ishii and Takkyu Ishino have appeared in his space station garage before, yet here he was being more deliberate in acknowledging those who came before him, resulting in new sonic turns he hasn’t tried before in an effort to honor the past while also building his…well, see the title. Both stand on their own fine, but when played back to back you find an artist in a very interesting moment, confident enough in what they’ve done up to now on Declare Victory but now measuring themselves up with the greats from their same area code on Future Legacy and pushing themselves a bit more. The one knock against it? I’m more interested in seeing what comes next now that the challenge has been accepted. Get it here, or listen below.

#22 Acidclank Apache Sound

Sometimes you just need to clear all the noise away and seek out new ideas in the silence now available to you. Yota Mori’s Acidclank project used to be a full-on shoegaze experience, taking cues from the gloomiest corners of England to construct reverent indie-pop smudged in feedback. No shortage of groups scattered across the archipelagio try to recreate Loveless, but Acidclank had a much better grasp of what made shoegaze hit than most.

Apache Sound finds Mori flipping everything around, and part of its appeal lies in how he’s scrubbed off all the fuzz in order to get more sparse. There’s no waves of feedback on the title track, just a machine-generated beat, some synthesizer notes and Mori’s own voice run through filters to give it a constantly buzzing feel. “Dubs” features a slight static on the edges, but nothing approaching the guitar-created cover of the past, as now only various vocal affects coat his voice. “Ghost Box” features rap samples and a generally funky melody, for goodness sakes! Acidclank’s stretching out here, using a new set of tools to explore the same emotional terrain, and nailing it (“Funeral” and especially “Downtime Acid Jam” offer his most imaginative work to date). All that room allows for some interesting sonic and personal explorations, and it makes the finale of “Addict of Daydreaming” — the one moment where he lets the guitar fuzz wash over him — cathartic. Get it here, or listen below.

#21 Kenji Ai No Hibiki

At somepoint in the near future, people are going to start looking at the experimental music communities that emerged across Japan in the 2010s and be in awe of what bubbled up. A lot of the names central to this have been celebrated around these corners before — Foodman, Woopheadclrms, CVN (just a few numbers up!), Koeosaeme, emamouse, Toiret Status — but the most unified front creating sample-centric splurts of chaos was Wasabi Tapes, which went and (I think) deleted the majority of their releases from the internet. This is going to make telling the story much harder — and deprive a generation of music nerds the chance to get sucked up into Pachinko Machine Music — but traces remain out there. Like labelhead Kenji’s Ai No Hibiki, released via Absurd Trax and condesncing the Wasabi Tapes experience down in a way only bested by DJWWWW (which, also, Kenji). Music box melodies careen into snatches of folk songs while birds hoot off and slime boils. Radio station bumpers play off even though the world around them crumbles apart, leading way to a warped rap beat that refuses to go out. ASMR whispers fail to deliver the promised effect because someone is playing Modern Warfare really loudly in the other room. Yet from this splattering of sounds Kenji finds surpirsing melodies to build around, and even if they only last a second before combusting, he’s located some surprising beauty that can even make room for guests like Metoronori to step into for a few seconds. When Ai No Hibiki isn’t chaos, it’s stumbling across serene beauty, like on the hiccuping piano number “Kitano Blue.” It plays at the same pace as social media, always introducing something new and unafraid to Tweeticide ideas, but rather than bemoan this speed, Kenji finds something worth saving within. Get it here, or listen below.

Bump into someone walking down the main shopping arcade in Koenji and you have pretty good odds that they play in either a shoegaze band. Few styles have persevered in Japan like this corner of rock, and as a result standing out from the field can be a deeply difficult task when so many MBV acolytes abound. Universe Nekoko offer plenty of feedback over the course of Kimi No Youni Ikiretara, but it’s the lessons they gather from another longstanding style — indie-pop — that elevates them a step up. Despite all the noise, shoegaze taps into the same teenage melancholy the best twee pop grazes. They leave space for those feelings to come across on the title track and highlight “Like A Raspberry,” holding off on any sonic fireworks in favor of drifting. It makes the moments they do rip it open on “(I’m) Waiting For The Sun” all the more effective. Get it here, or listen below.

#39 Various Artists Digital High Life Compilation

The big asterisk I’d stick next to my 2019 in music — I didn’t get out to nearly as many live shows or events as I should have or really wanted to. This pang of guilt popped up frequently during end-of-year parties, where new people meeting me excitedly asked “how many shows do you get out to in an average week?” Now, I have plenty of good reasons not to — you try staying out past midnight when an infant prone to erupting into tears when someone opens a door too loudly waits at home! — but it does feel like a big change. That’s why a compilation like this one has stuck around so much in my head, as it gathers regulars converging at a Shibuya party and tries to offer a kind of recreation of the vibe for us bound to the house. A lot of fantastic comps from 2019 could fill this need, but between Boogie Idol crafting crystaline jingles between tracks, future funk mutations courtesy of kissmenerdygirl and re-imaginings of the familiar into new party starters via DJ FFFTP, this one hits also scratches an ever-present itch for folks playing around with the past and ideas of nostalgia. Get it here, or listen below.

#38 Yuri Nijuuichi Seiki No Rinri

Beats have, in recent memory at least, become pure background noise, a slightly crackled soundtrack for wrapping up our chemistry homework and/or feeling vaguely wistful for childhood. Whatever helps you ace your class or helps you through the doldrums of adulthood, that’s great. Thank god for artists like Yuri, though, who show how the sound can be unnerving and unpredictable rather than too chill. They let listeners float off, but little details like a sudden shift in percussion or synthesizers mimicking toy laser guns snap ’em out of it to remind that everything is always changing. They also call on guest rappers — including Tamana Ramen, with a handful of EPs from this year also worth checking out — stepping into the void to show how they can exist in this space without sounding anything like you’d expect. Get it here, or listen below.

#37 emamouse Eye Cavity

Tokyo’s emamouse has constructed an entire wonky world all their own, and finding an entry point in can be daunting. That’s not just because you have to contend with a Bandcamp page littered with releases and a bunch of other albums and EPs funneled out to the world via other labels. Rather, it’s because emamouse’s bedroom-based mix of synthesizer, guitar and sing-talk always feels part of a bigger overall place, but one where every corner has its own character and specific landmarks. This also makes them the only artist on the list that put out multiple releases in 2019 I don’t feel comfortable grouping all together. Go experience the spacious reflection of floating wide Luffa and their surprisingly bleak collaboration with Nicolò Desolation, and whatever else they put out that I’m blanking on because I don’t have an emamouse specific spreadsheet. I’ll go with this Spring’s Eye Cavity as their finest 2019 moment, showing off emamouse’s knack for turning off-kilter melodies into jaunty sonic trips over crayon roads, while also coming off as their most personal work to date (as they told me, this one was inspired by the feeling of being hot to the point of passing away after a bicycle ride, prompting some deeper reflection). Get it here, or listen above.

#36 Paellas Sequential Souls

Someday, I’ll look back at my life and remember that there was a multi-month period where Paellas commercials played on the jumbotrons around Shibuya Scramble. Few arcs have been more unexpected — at least to me — than watching the Osaka band play their first Tokyo show in the ever-cramped Shibuya Home livehouse to, just under a decade later, calling it quits following a brief fling with a major label and some surprisingly high level exposure. They came up at a time when smooth, Kanagawa-based “new city pop” was filling the air with easy-breezy meditations on hanging out and drinking coffee. I like taking it easy as much as the next person, but Paellas took the tight melodies of that style and shoved them into the shadows, adding an unease rarely sneaking into the type of rock that broadcast into one of the busiest street crossings in the world. Sequential Souls provided one more heavy walk back home after last train. They played around with sparseness on songs such as “Mellow Yellow” and “In Your Eyes,” letting the feelings walk into the streetlight-glow of the center, revealing new dimension to the group. Plus they could still get a rock number tipsy, evidenced on “Horizon’s” stagger or the quicker dash of “Searchlight,” the closest they’ve come in quite some time to returning to the zip of their Ano(t)raks days. This one doesn’t feel like an ending, but Sequential Souls will have to play that role. Which sort of seems fitting, actually, for everything to not be wrapped up tidily. Listen below.

#35 Puni Puni Denki Mirai Addiction + Wonder Underground

Trying to define what the internet sounds like is an impossible task, but credit to Puni Puni Denki for trying. Mirai Addiction and Wonder Underground highlighted her versatility, and found her creating and collaborating to create albums that hit on major sonic elements that we online-wrecked types know so well. It’s more clear on the prior, which goes from maximalist dance music trying to suffocate you to a future funk-indebted skip on “Imaginary Boi” to plastic funk provided by Pasocom Music Club. The ones she made all her own — which make up all of the latter — recalled a time pre-Tumblr, when acoustic guitars and bossa nova covers of things made up a large chunk of YouTube. For all the click-ready sounds though, Puni Puni Denki found ways to subvert (“Empty Castle” being closer to tyrant than benevolent leader) and celebrate (“Life Is Super Dope”…it is!). As the year went on, she revealed even more new sides, but something about the variety of these two made for her best 2019 output, and a surprisingly poignant way to reflect on web sounds as the 2010s came to an end. Get them here or listen below.

#34 Dos Monos Dos City

One of the points Dos Monos stressed to me when I talked to them this past summer in the wake of Dos City’s success in certain online music circles was that they weren’t part of Tokyo’s hip-hop community. That reason probably explains why this fever dream of Frank Zappa samples, horn squanks and shout-outs to Hibari Misora and Hideo Nomo managed to charm YouTube critics, Daikanyama hipsters and rap heads in equal measure (and me). That’s a dangerous statement, but Dos Monos aren’t appropriating but rather finding a new perspective on an American style that is often just imitated by your more boring Japanese MCs. Dos City tightropes between headier lines about society and experimental beats, but never gets lost up its own asshole. These three are still tag-teaming in and out over these things, and having a blast just going for it over these backdrops. Get it here, or listen below.

33. De De Mouse Nulife

Let’s step outside from the blurb-churn for some inner monologue: one of the biggest challenges for me trying to do this list is how much great music came out (or literally just emerged suddenly) in December. Even if we chill and admit that dude, it’s just a list you are making instead of figuring out your taxes, relax, trying to make sense of something that just saw release is tricky. This becomes much more of a problem in the top ten, but I bring it up here because I can easily picture Nulife rocketing up to that tier in a couple years. It might even be De De Mouse’s album to date, though that’s some real recency bias coming through. This is the electronic artist’s eight album, and after sticking with electro-pop fizz over his last couple of releases, De De Mouse placed a little more attention to the percussion underneath all those chopped-up vocal samples to create dance-pop for final-stage Crossfit, with a few breathers riffing on French touch and Friendly-Fires-ish tropical pop. That he still manages to wring all kinds of feelings out of these tracks — joy, sadness, “Regret,” melancholy, optimism — despite how swiftly they unfold is even more impressive. I think it’s his biggest departure since A Journey To Freedom and one of his finest, but maybe I’m rushing into it. This seems fair for now. Listen below.

#32 Kiki Vivi Lily Vivid + Sukisha x Kiki Vivi Lily Over The Rainbow

Blame it on the arrival of the Reiwa Era, but once all the nostalgia for Heisei parted away it felt like everyone started trying to figure out who would appear as the face of a new generation, like Yoshihide Suga was going to hold up a banner saying “Aimyon” on it. It’s going to probably take until the next epoch arrives to really make sense of what hasn’t even happened yet, but out the gate the shared quality of so much new pop is something pretty common all over the globe; happy to dabble in all kinds of styles, focused on the personal but with clever twists, detailing a city existence. Kiki Vivi Lily isn’t quite on the next-big-thing discourse like other young Japanese artists, but her two albums from 2019 make a strong case she should be factored in. Vivid unfolds with a lets-give-it-a-try attitude, but uttered by someone who seems really good at pretty much everything they give a shot. She pulls off sunny-day rock that imagines a cheerier Mitsume on “Brand New,” melts into herself on the half-rapped lazy river of “Waste No Time” and serves up tender indie-pop on “Copenhagen.” That’s not even touching on when she cedes the spotlight to let producer Sweet William show off his beat chops on a rework of her “AM 0:52.” To close out the year, she teamed up with producer Sukisha to stretch her sound out even more. Here, she out neo-city-popped everyone with “Rainbow Town’s” funk skitter, and went full glistening on pop gem “Pink Jewelry Dream,” her strongest number to date and what she should put right on top of her application for Music Station. Forget Reiwa, that one just sounds timeless. Listen below.

#31 DJ Fulltono, CRZKNY and Skip Club Orchestra Draping Series

There was no shortage of great Japanese juke to highlight in 2019, but it’s hard to beat this year-spanning project that brought together three of the foundational creators in this dance music community to riff off one another. Each of the producers taking part in every installment of Draping has their own defined approach to juke — CRZKNY aims for the pulverizing bordering on gabber, DJ Fulltono strips it down to the basics, and Skip Club Orchestra goes for a more vocal-heavy formula — and each of them dabble in this at times. Yet they also use Draping as a chance to explore different ideas…or even give a go with the other participants style. Get them here, or listen to the first installment below.

I wish I could point to some sharp and biting reason for this — Blogging is dead! Music journalism is on life support! Just like what you like, man! — but the real reason is far more boring. Life simply got in the way. I had a kid, work became far more outsized even before that became a reality and time suddenly became scarce in a way I never would have imagined when I started this in 2009 between repeat-after-me drills in far-off Mie. I’m thankful for all the above, but to make it work the starting point had to suffer (to the point I’m actually blogging about most of the same artists I would here over at Otaquest now because…well, that pays, and this has always been a not-for-profit site, first for personal beliefs but now because I have zero idea who would advertise for something like this).

All fall, I knew I still wanted to do this annual exercise — which, if you are new (welcome, thanks for reading that intro which probably confused you!) entails me, the only person working on Make Believe Melodies save for the few people who take pity on me to help with the WordPress nitty gritty, highlighting my personal favorite Japanese albums of the year. Thing is, I’m not sure what comes next. I’ve told myself “this is the week I find more time to blog” for most of the last three months, and then that tumbles down a chute. I’ve started seriously wondering if this site’s time has come…or, at the very least, having it mutate into something different, whether that’s fewer posting or becoming something else entirely (get in on the newsletter boom before that crashes?).

What keeps making me feel pangs of guilt and still pushes me to want to get back on this, however, is surveying Japanese music in 2019. I haven’t encountered a year as stacked for the country’s musical output in my time living in the country, to the point where I seriously came close to going wild and making this 100. Then I realized that the world probably doesn’t need to know Tacoyaki Rainbow made my 98th favorite release of the year and kept it a tad tighter. Still, so much fantastic stuff came out this year both on the top level of J-pop and in the indie-adjacent spaces this site primarily covers that I went into list season not having two or three favorites for the top spot, but closer to 11. On top of that…and here’s some industry side-eyeing for those seeking a touch of the dramatic…I believe English-language coverage of non-English music has mostly gotten worse over the decade since I started out, save for maybe Spanish-language music and some corners of K-pop (though…that’s a whole different door to open up). Congratulations to CHAI (on my list) and Otoboke Beaver (#54…told you it was cutthroat!) for grabbing Western attention, but there’s so much more happening here just totally ignored on a wider scale that deserves to be screamed about, even if it’s coming from some small dorky digital corner of the web. I guess my voice hasn’t gone out yet, at least.

Which brings us back to what I say every year…follow along, listen and see if you find something you love that normally wouldn’t hit your radar.

#50 Mikazuki Bigwave Hoshizora Romantic

The very idea of young Japanese artists being inspired by non-Japanese proponents of future funk to dig into their own country’s musical legacy to create hop-scotching internet dance music has always been a funny proposition. Yet at the same time this niche genre saw a split between creators evolving beyond the find-obscure-Japanese-disco-and-make-it-faster origins of the style and those choosing to stick with simply jacking ideas from scarce sources, Japanese future funk artists hit a stride, highlighted by kissmenerdygirl and Mikazuki Bigwave going up a level in 2019. The latter’s Hoshizora Romantic in particular highlighted tremendous growth, with the uptempo city pop-sampling crowd pleasers now joined by tracks drawing from less predictable places (the first voice you hear here? Courtesy of Hikaru Utada chipmunked up) and originals channeling French touch. They even dabbled in moody atmospherics on “Kaiki Sea Princess,” a track highlighting newfound openness. The same energy sticks around, but Mikazuki found new ways to get it flowing. Get it here, or listen below.

#49 SNJO Diamond

Another year, another chance to crack open all these books I bought about vaporwave and gush about Local Visions. No label or collective in Japan has been as consistent as this bunch, and if I did share that top 100, you’d see the likes of Feather Shuttles Forever and Upusen get some love. This isn’t the last time Local Visions will come up on this list, but SNJO’s Diamond does highlight a big shift from the 2018 crop of releases they gave the world. Those offered the perfect opportunity for mental gymnastics, playing around with internet iconography and the sounds of bubble era Japan in a way nobody else anywhere is. It’s thinkpiece fodder, and I love it. Yet in 2019, Local Visions’ artists weren’t as interested in stroking philosophical urges but rather leveling up to create damn catchy music. The Kyoto producer behind this project captures this well, using synth shimmers and machine beats to craft a collection of songs at time intimidating (“Graphite”) but mostly dazzling (“Fly,” “Alive”). Guests such as Sola The Luva and mukuchi added extra warmth to busy synth-pop, though SNJO’s own digi-glazed voice could carry this songs on their own. No reason to go too deep when the hooks just dig their way into your nogging so effectively. Get it here, or listen above.

#48 Teen Runnings Hot Air

The sonic palette Syouta Kaneko uses in Teen Runnings has changed dramatically over the past decade, but the angst at the center of his songs still comes through whether backed by distorted guitar or synths born to be in a Club Med ad. Hot Air finds Kaneko taking over the project entirely after years as operating as a band, and this shift resulted in cheery tropical sounds making up the bulk of songs such as “Hair Wax 95” and “Baby G,” with room for experimentation also nudging him towards uneasy plastic pop (“Smart Disc Promotion”) and rave ups (“Feeling Happy”). Yet all that sunshine sure could feel synthetic, and the one major carry over from early Teen Runnings albums and Hot Air was a far more downtrodden set of lyrics that used those seaside sounds as a foil to the downer vibes lurking within. Listen below.

#47 Lyrical School Be Kind Rewind

Give me an idol group offering up a loopy gimmick for their album, and you’ve got my attention. Now do the same, except said outfit actually can’t settle on what it is they are doing over the course of said release and that it comes with goofy skits that prove charming the more you hear them. Hip-hop idols Lyrical School presumably set out to make a set of songs centered around either movies or Michel Gondry — advance number “LAST DANCE” stuck to this, complete with Sweded video — but Be Kind Rewind goes all over the place, setting itself up as an “uninterrupted live performance” on the imagined Michael Matt’s Young Hit Studio, though it only takes six songs for a commercial break. Whatever is going on here…and dear goodness it gets absurd with the final skit…works, because variety looks good on Lyrical School, as they weave between boom-bap and dance pop (“Love Together Rap”). Songs feature all kinds of weird details that raise them above ’90s-worshipping tracks, while “Enough is school” and “Tokyo Burning” display more swagger than most major label doofs hoping people don’t notice they are biting Migos wholesale. This is idol pop done right — fun and at times bewildering, but always offering a new perspective on the familiar. Listen below.

#46 Haretokidoki Tsuioku No Nebula

Nostalgia can be complicated, or you can call up your most neon-soaked synthesizer melodies and create some bubble-ready earworms for a new generation to daydream over. The pair of Brinq and Misatsun make their inspiration clear on their debut full-length as Haretokidoki, drawing inspiration from 1980s idols like Wink and Miho Nakayama, with a few modern touches dropped in for good measure (though even the “smooth rap” courtesy of Ken Kobayashi on “Tell Me” feels very “Tokyo Tower” in its deployment). They do it so well, though, that it’s hard to knock them for being so obvious about it, at least when “Kiss Me” heart-races forward and captures nervous energy as well as any of those whirlwind pop hits could. Listen above or to two songs below.

#45 Sakanaction 834.194

There’s two really good albums lurking within the doubled-up package that is 834.194, and when those alternate reality releases poke through it’s tough to deny. It seems safe to speculate that Sakanaction either scrapped or just decided not to release something gathering all the singles they were putting out post Sakanaction, which saw them building on that one’s dance-meets-rock emotional catharsis via still-excellent cuts like “Eureka” and “Hachisu No Hana.” Then Ichiro Yamaguchi transformed into 2010s Sugiyama Kiyotaka and started morphing Showa sounds into modern blockbusters, with a healthy dash of humor thrown in to really push it through. On their own, these two sides of Sakanaction — teen-courting rockstars playing around with laptops, and Omega Tribe 2019 respectively — would make for great albums, and as one jumbo offering it still delivers plenty of peaks. It also just gets bogged down by some meandering electronic passages and ballads, so many ballads. It’s a best-of album where they had to scramble to justify the biggie-sized packaging. Those best-of moments, though, are better than a lot of band’s entire catalogs combined, and demand this one still land somewhere on the list. Listen below.

#45 Haruko Tajima kawaiiresist

Internet culture seeps over into almost all music released today, to the point where an artist completely rejecting the web’s impact or networking power for their music would probably be met with confusion. It’s not surprising to listen to long-running left-field pop spitfire Haruko Tajima let modern online culture totally subsume her latest album, but it is a little surprising to hear her do it so well. Like someone raised on Youtube suggested videos, she skips from Autotune-submerged rap to Velfarre-ready Eurobeat on late highlights “Astral Gal” and “TikTok Angels.” As that last number hints at, the lyrics also offer plenty of insight — or at least play around with ideas found — on life in the digital age, along with some new takes on Japanese street fashion (her current push — New Wave Gyaru). Even divorced of all that social media mumbo jumbo, it’s still a dizzying listen. Listen above, or get it here.

#44 Various Artists Carole & Tuesday Vocal Collection Vol. 1 + Vol. 2 + “Kiss Me” and “Polly Jean” Singles

The past ten years could really grind down one’s love of music if you didn’t keep cynicism at bay. Forget the industry around it itself — I spent large chunks of the latter ’10s bummed out hearing ideas that originally cropped up in SoundCloud-based dance music suddenly soundtracking YouTubers trips to Target, and generally feeling let down that music felt more like an extension of celebrity worship. Leave it to an anime to make me feel gushy about it all again. Shinichiro Watanabe’s Carol & Tuesday celebrates both music and the music industry in such surprising and heartfelt ways, without ever needing to cast any one sound or idea off as evil. While the main characters play keyboard and acoustic guitar, the show never turns into a “this is what real music is all about!” rant, instead giving plenty of nuance to the EDM producer, the digi-shined pop star and even the people working behind the scenes (they manage to make a plot about AI music complex, a fresh glass of milk after the overcooked TV dinner of seeing Zola Jesus and Grimes yelling at one another on Twitter). It’s not about what music matters, but that music matters.

It goes a long way by having actually good songs all over the series…and from artists very much in this blog’s comfort zone, both Japanese and international. These compilations don’t feature everything — contributions from Thundercat and Denzel Curry are absent, and I’d feel wrong not including the opening theme songs “Kiss Me” and “Polly Jean” which finds Nulbarich and Leo Imai penning effervescent pop that has mostly evaded their solo careers, and becoming some of 2019’s finest when the voice actors give it a go — but they get almost all of it, from Taku Takahashi and Banvox doing what they do best to Maika Loubte really flashing her potential via skeletal dance-pop…in French!. G.Rina pops up to pen a boogie jam sporting one hell of a guitar melody, and whoever composed those two fake fka Twigs songs, just incredible work nailing the vibe while also actually sounding catchy. It all ties back to the central point — nothing here is half-assed or presented as the “evil commercial song” but rather part of something bigger waiting to sweep you up in if you let it. Listen below.

#43 PellyColo Solar Powered + MouManTai EP

A Hollywood blockbuster doesn’t have to be automatically written off just because it’s stuffed so tightly, as long as the people making it deliver the goods in an enjoyable way. PellyColo’s Solar Powered could be a Rise Of Skywalker type of wreck in the wrong hands, an hour-seventeen-minute slow burner built around an 80’s sound palette and sci-fi references. Yet anyone who worked closely with Especia can’t miss, and despite a long run time PellyColo nails almost every second of it. He’s at his best when shrugging off any ironic posturing to deliver bounce-along pop anthems such as the title track and “Feel That Fire,” the latter begging to be DeLoreaned back to appear over some kind of training montage. Just as important are the small moments that make everything flow smoothly, whether in the form of “Can I Help You’s” grocery-store-ready bliss or “Strike Now’s” funk sprint. PellyColo does so well that the following MouManTai EP feels like a welcome expanded edition. Get it here, or listen below.

#42 Templime And Hoshimiya Toto Watertank EP + pureness

The past 12 months saw Templime really gain some steam in the world of udnerground Japanese dance music, with their work done in collaboration with singer/Virtual YouTuber? Hoshimiya Toto, who adds warmth to their colorful take on garage. This set of EPs highlights their potential, especially when working alongside a great voice, but they really crash the list because of “Take Me Out.” It was a fantastic year for Make Believe Melodies’ favorites putting out mesmerizing singles — Seiho’s “I Feel Tired Everyday,” Perfume’s “Saisei,” Oomori Seiko getting the chance to show the world what her mind looks like on Hello! Project — but these relative newcomers came out with my favorite song of the year, a 2-Step number beating nervously just in time with Toto’s lyrical longing. It’s resigned and a little bit deafeated, but still giving itself over to the thrill of those seconds where it all seems possible. It’s also a triumphant reminder of the netlabel ethos pumping through Japanese music (stay tuned…) and a hell of a greeting from a promising trio of artists. Get them here or listen below.

#41 Spangle Call Lilli Line Dreams Never End

Everything vanishes in what seems like a flash, and it sometimes feel like all we can do is keep pushing for that one brief time in the light. What will be your “Damn, Daniel” moment, what will be your “Old Town Road,” what will be your TikTok set to nightcored Koda Kumi? Can you even manage that? Spangle Call Lillie Line present an alternative path to art and maybe living in general if you really want to overdo it (hi there). They’ve been prodding at the same guitar-based sound for over two decades now, and the music on Dreams Never End sounds distinctly them. Yet as they’ve done for all of the 21st centruy, the trio keeps playing around with this formula, seeing how much they can strip away and what small new additions — a new rhythm-machine beat here, some organ wooze there — can fit into there world without losing the melancholy feeling of walking around a Tokyo suburb at dusk wrestling with all those thoughts that don’t change. Maybe they say it best here…after all these years, they are “still three,” and still figuring out what they can do. Listen above.

The best releases on NC4K have a kind of out-of-body vibe going for them, with the sounds making up their dance tracks feeling just a little hazy and untethered. That’s present on blackglassG’s Common Story EP, where the wooziness comes across subtly and in a way where the fun never gets cancelled out. The title track does this best of all, with all kinds of sounds crossing paths — bass, guitar, glassy percussion being just some of what comes through — but everything working just right although it all sounds a step off, too. Get it here, or listen below.

So far in 2019, there have been two prominent J-pop songs about J-pop itself, at least to some degrees. Teenager SASUKE practically gives the industry an entire pep talk with a song going to great lengths to tell you J-pop will never end (raising the stakes significantly with a line about how “Japanese people will also never end.” Long-running pop group Arashi, meanwhile, finally were allowed access to the internet to push “Turning Up,” a surprisingly bouncy bit of afternoon dance pop. The most memorable line, though, comes at the hook, with Arashi singing “turning up with the J-pop.” It’s weird seeing this industry now trumpet itself so loudly, trying to channel some enthusiasm out of mid air.

Xinlisupreme’s “J-Pop” comes at an interesting moment. It isn’t about J-pop proper, but really about celebrating the “feeling when I first plugged a distortion effects unit into a guitar and the music played from an amplifier,” according to an email sent to me ahead of the song’s release. Rather than embrace the noisy style of last year’s I Am Not Shinzo Abe, Xinlisupreme opts for a more disorienting mish-mash of sound, featuring Mac-speak-like English discussing the grim economic realities of Japan to life as a hikikomori, with Japanese speaking brushing by too. The music is sparse, barely there, more like a mist letting all these combating thoughts float around, with only a few harsher moments popping up for a few seconds to pull people out. It isn’t a direct celebration of music or even a critique, but rather the experience of wrestling with multiple thoughts at once and trying to piece something together from it. It’s complicated, and that’s way more real than any trumpeting. Get it here, or listen below.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are calling it a day! Whatever SoundCloud rapper playing around with J-pop ideas or weirdo electronic texture lover captures my attention, indie-pop is always going to be foundational for me (can’t shake those teenage years!) and this was a group hitting on that feeling even as adolescence zoomed out of view. They also are up there with The Drums and Mac DeMarco as having this huge impact on the Japanese indie community. Indie-pop has never been lacking in the country — like shoegaze, it will never vanish from the musical DNA here — but The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart offered an entry point for a new generation of kids looking to make rock with a tender side.

Nagoya group Belinda May cite them as a major influence, and “Everyday In Love” makes that reference point all the more clear. It’s a jaunty number skipping ahead and peppered by melancholy lyrics that never tip into pure sadness but hide something complicated. That’s not exclusive to The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, but “Everyday In Love” does feature plenty of connecting tissue to that group, and serves as a reminder that their influence will carry on going forward. Listen above.

On the one hand — it remains incredible how much Yunovation can pull off with a melodica. The Osaka artist’s calling card is her proficiency with the instrument, and first album Hogaraka Ni shows just how deft she can be with something most people view as a toy foisted on easily distracted pre-schoolers. “Roki Store” remains a sunny-day charmer featuring a skippy melody refusing to settle down, while “Town Fair” pairs her melodica notes up with a stroll-ready beat and some guitar splashes to create something a touch more reflective in its emotions. Best of all is “Nanba Night Out,” where the instrument manages to capture all the ups and downs of an all nighter when matched up against some swift electronics.

On the other hand though — Yunovation is so much more. Last year she revealed loftier ambitions via one of the year’s stronger outright pop offerings, with her singing pushed right to the center. Hogaraka Ni builds on this, with one of the first sounds coming through on the album being her own voice talking about the sky. She even strips down “Aruteido Aru” so that her words play a more prominent role, replacing the hop-scotch rhythm of the original with an airy electronic backdrop unfolding at a slower speed. It’s a risk — especially considering how fantastic the original recording was — but she makes it work, revealing a new perspective on the song while also showing she can hold her own.

Both sides, though, are connected by Yunovation’s love for music. Hogaraka Ni is an album focused mostly on celebrating sound itself, with the words appearing on “Constant T” and “Wannasing” offering odes to the feeling having music as personal safety blanket or vessel for expression brings on. Though even the ones focused on just her melodica carry the same vibe, with her entire approach here being so upbeat as to cut through any of the cynicism the modern music landscape can bring on. Get it here, or listen below.

I’m not sure how many more words I can pull out of my brain to praise “Take Me Out,” the nervous centerpiece of the pureness EP and a huge breakthrough for everyone involved in this song. It’s tough to capture this fizzy moment playing out inside somebody before anything happens in music, especially when a certain sense of melancholy underlines the whole thing. TEMPLIME and Hoshimiya Toto nail it though, creating something with plenty of energy but constantly turning thoughts over in its head. Song of the year contender!

The rest of the EP doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Take Me Out,” but features an uptempo opening track that is more in line with the colorful garage TEMPLIME were making prior to this. Then you have one very lovely swerve in “Eraser” which finds all three players…creating an indie-pop song? It does reveal that their galloping Technicolor dance music features plenty of elements of the twee-er side of life, though it still comes as a welcome curve. Get it here, or listen below.