Lost in Translation
Yokosou, humans! Robot JP is in Japan (thanks to Robot Saleem) for most of the summer (any Japanese readers in the Kumamoto area? I'm easy to spot: white, tall, bald, the only jaywalker in Kyushu), struggling to get a better grip on the slippery eel that is this language. Also, I'm grumbling about wide-screen TV-bearing cell phones, dodging Akira-esque motorsleds, eating a lightbulb's worth of mercury in raw tuna, and checking out what's up in J-Pop land.
The style keeps reinventing itself to be the same thing, and the dinosaurs of the genre are still around (Mr. Children on tour!), but now and again a little gust of fresh air cuts through the noise. This month's new releases included the June 16th release of the 4th full length from 宇多田ヒカル (Utada Hikaru), Ultra Blue. Now, Deep River was both amazing and ubiquitous, but her next release was the english language release über-flop Exodus, which contained such utterly forgettable tracks like "You Make Me Want to Be A Man" (what?), and "Easy Breezy" (with the jaw-dropping crap-tastic lyric You're easy breezy/And I'm Japanesey...); Isaac best described Exodus as something along the lines of a bucket of donkey pee. Seriously, Utada shoulda known better - she grew up in New York and even went to Columbia for a bit.
Ultra Blue is much more along the lines of 2002's Deep River (which I posted a single from ages ago), featuring lush, melodic electronic over-production, and that J-Pop ring that was sorely lacking on the last LP. I haven't prayed at the Toshiba-EMI shinto shrine this week, so no full download for fear of company ninjas getting ahold of me, but you can listen to almost the entire album here. Here's my pick:
宇多田ヒカル - This is Love
Enjoy! I'll keep my ears peeled and see what else we can uncover over here (this was more of a White Elephant rather than a find, though it might be novel to our American & EU readers). Notoriously hard to find: good Japanese indie acts. You can swing a daikon and hit a score of awful ones though.