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Best Music I Discovered Last Week #04

One little but proud single discovery of last week is going to be the Japanese musician Kaho Nakamura and her 2018 album AINOU. It’s a very energized jazzy pop with bits of jazz and folk here and there. I enjoyed every single song more or less, but obviously there are some that stroke to me in a very special manner. Like the song GUM, was the first that made me want to sing along. Her playful manner of singing really makes an entertaining listening experience, she is clearly a talented singer and deserves more attention! Other songs that I really enjoyed and can endlessly recommend further are: SHE’S GONE, 忘れっぽい天使 and 永い言い訳; I struggled to find those songs on Youtube, but as far as I know they’re all available on streaming services (spotify link)

[daiixin]

Best Music I Discovered Last Week #03

Rather a shy amount of discoveries this week, only two South Korean r’n’b-ish / indie pop-ish artists, a male one and a female one, but I really enjoy listening to both of them so far! As per usual also on Reddit.

I will first start with a great voice of Rad Museum and his 2017 debut EP ‘Scene’, a good half of which I instantly added to my playlist after first listen. His voice is soothing and passionate, approach of the sound arrangement is really creative and variative, very flowery, altogether it makes enjoyable and relaxing upbeat evening music to me. He mostly sings in Korean which adds obstacles, but nevertheless I love it. My two stand-out songs will be: ‘Dancing In The Rain’ which was my first song of him and I couldn’t get myself off it, and ‘Over The Fence’ which opens the EP in a great manner, imo.

I still haven’t checked all of OOHYO’s music due to lack of time, but I randomly went through some of her songs and they were an absolute blessing to me. She already has a plenty of EPs behind her name, and even a wiki page(!), therefore I’m looking forward to getting through all of them as soon as I can. She is a singer-songwriter, sings a lot in English with her godsent voice, just try listening to her! Two songs gonna be: ‘Piano Dust’ and ‘A Good Day’, with a dreamy, melancholic, maybe somewhat nostalgic vibe in it.

[daiixin]

Best Music I Discovered Last Week #02

Here comes the second week and let me start with some cool updates for my last week’s post! Until today mainly Soundcloud based Korean pop duo ‘Dosii’ announced their first self-titled LP with a plentiful of songs, I’m really excited. New Korea’s house music face Park Hye Jinreleased lyrics with translations to all of her songs from latest debut EP which makes the songs as accessible as possible to the wide audience. As per usual this post is mirrored on the Reddit.

Now to the new discoveries! First will be the Taiwanese dream-pop band ‘U.TA屋塔’ with their2015 album ‘緩飆公路 Highway Cruising’; amongst their influences you can find big names of the genre such as Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star. I really enjoyed the music arrangement on this one, it’s really heavily atmospheric and the vocals are absolutely fitting it; I struggle at choosing one favorite song from this album, but ‘Lost in Vegas’ is certainly a good example of band’s music!

I really enjoyedalbum ‘REMNANT’ by LORN, which is a distinctive ambient project with a plenty of experimental turns! It sounds cinematic, empowering, emotional, feels like a conceptual coherent piece of work and I can only recommend it further to all the fans of the genre.I will point out song ‘Out Of The Frame’as it instantly sticked out to me with all its adventurous highlights.

The newest of all these gonna be a hip-hop release of BE3K, ‘No Fake Friends* No Fake Love’. It was released less than two weeks ago and I quite enjoyed the vibe of it, it has a various and entertaining production, beats are banging and slapping, delivery by BE3K is also totally fine. If I’d compare him to other artists, I’d say he reminded me the most of Jpegmafia, and partially of Young Fathers’ Cocoa Sugar to certain extent. Certainly worth a try for hip-hopers round here. My favorite song is Why (Over M3).

[daiixin]

Best Music I Discovered Last Week #01

Lately I’ve been obsessed with Korean underground music scene, so I kinda stumbled upon many interesting and enjoyable projects this week! Plus one non-Korean discovery too, let’s take a look! This post is also mirrored onto r/indieheads

My first discovery was a Park Hye Jin with her debut EP from last month. Basically it’s a ‘house’ genre music, with nostalgic-vibed sampling and English-Korean singing/rapping, really relaxing stuff! Most people prefer the single ‘I Don’t Care’ the most, but my favorite so far is ‘ABC’, cute and simple message goes well there. In this sense I’d say she is some kind of a mixture of Palmbomen II, Yaeji and Ross From Friends, lol. Certainly excited for her next projects, this debut is really lovely!

Next will be another Korean band with the only album they released in 2016, Swiimers with a self-titled album. It some kind of shoegaze, dream-pop, trip-hop mix, I guess. There are like three versions of song ‘Woodstock’ on this album which is also probably the best song on the album, I also enjoyed song ‘Fight’, very melodic and dreamy songs with nicely edited powerful vocals, check them out if these genres speak to you!

Another Korean entry will be for Aseul with her last EP ‘Asobi’, a shame that I missed it in the year of 2018 but whatever! Something electro-popish, synth-popish, dream-popish it is, striking with positive energy and wonderful vocals, great production, very melodic and vocals are hitting the vibe. Most enjoyable songs for me were: Sandcastles and Room. But I’m quite sure whole EP is absolutely worth listening!

And for the last Korean entry we are going to soundcloud, to check the artist under the name of dosii, as she cannot be found on any big platforms yet, as far as I know. She puts her music under tags synth-pop and dream-pop which is probably a fair deal. Wonderful cinematic music and passionate singing, I don’t know how to not enjoy it, I hope they make it big and release something in the near future. Make sure to check these songs: lovememore and 여울.

Next was a recommendation from my Chinese friend and it’s Ding Ke’s album Island from year 2011. It’s a very relaxing and calm peace of music, mixture of minimalistic piano pieces with some barely noticeable electronic editing under a passionate singing in English over it. Good music for calm evening walks, or studying, or anything like this. Check the most popular song ‘If’ and you will know if it’s for you or not.

[daiixin]

Tetsugaku Letra by S. Yumeka [impressions]

Quite a peculiar piece of school slice-of-life manga. It has suffering from severe depression teenagers as main protagonists on the one hand, and on the other hand a plenty of an uplifting humorous moments with an addition of a beautiful love story. Besides rather expected life lessons that comes from this manga genre, we’re also educated about the culture of flamenco, Spanish musical and dancing tradition, quite a lot, in Japan of all places! It’s interesting to see how this specific point of interest helps and even unites a plentiful of characters in this story, and also helps them to cope with their personal problems and flaws. And it all started by an accident what actually ended up lighting up a love between two complete strangers from different schools which again reminds how every single seemingly little occasion can change a whole lot in lives of many people. And what else stroke to me, was very artistic and passionate approach of Sumomo Yumeka, scenes and pages are often drawn with visible freedom, unafraid of cutting the edges of normal and putting his own weird ideas in it (Kappa days); really enjoyed this manga as it ended up being quite remarkable on multiple facets.

[daiixin]

Finished my top 33 list of music projects last year! With a spotify playlist of 111 songs!  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1pgK5uSz8p9I2Ah04dUr22

Say Sue Me - Where We Were Together Machine Girl - The Ugly Art Emika - Falling In Love With Sadness

Death Grips - Year Of The Snitch Mid-Air Thief - Crumbling Wednesday Campanella - Galapagos Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love RM - mono

Rolo Tomassi - Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It Polyphia - New Levels New Devils yuragi - Still Dreaming, Still Deafening Lena Raine - Celeste Original Soundtrack Shygirl - Cruel Practice AMMAR 808 - Maghreb United

Metro Boomin - Not All Heroes Wear Capes Snail's House - L'été George Clanton - Slide Fit Of Body - Black Box No Cops Joji - Ballads1 Noname - Room 25 David August - D'Angelo 6lack - East Atlanta Love Letter Kali Uchis - Isolation

Rosalia - El Mal Querer Marie Davidson - Working Class Woman Say Lou Lou - Immortelle Grapetooth - Grapetooth Horrendous - Idol Riverside - Wasteland Kero Kero Bonito - Time'n'Place Kadhja Bonet - Childqueen MGMT - Little Dark Age

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Half & Half by K. Seo [impressions]

Another manga about love and death, this time it started with a death of a girl, but by an accident a boy that passed by got involved and now both of them find themselves in the realm between life and death for seven days, where they share their bodies, lives and emotions, and in the end have to decide who of them is going to die, and who is going to live further. From here on it develops in a rather predictable way, but it is certain story is written and drawn beautifully, and ending is ‘the best out of given circumstances’; author got the best out of setting he put himself in, and the piece ended up realistic and satisfying. I felt bad for main protagonist for such a series of unfortunate events and I was also unsure how smooth was the transition from death to the life after, as it felt a bit unnatural. All in all, a pretty piece of manga.

[daiixin]

The Gift of the Magi by K. Yoshizuki [impressions]

This short manga is quite a straightforward crossing of fantasy and love. When the love of his life dies, the main protagonist desperately tries to remember her forever, while she, from the heaven, does all she can to make him forget her. It’s pretty much all about the plot, while not being particularly deep, it touches unavoidable questions of death and human nature. How cursing it is to love somebody who is not alive anymore. Author does a great job depicting these things in a very simplistic manner while also adding some humorous elements to lighten it even more. The experiences both lovers make after deadly separation are heart-hurting, but the ending, kind of, gives us hope for both of them. He is able to move on, and makes the best out of her heritage; she is having a good living after death, as the ones who are remembered a lot, are having a luxurious life after death, in this universe. And she was remembered a lot.