#kpop jpop lofi and vgm
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tagged by @njaems to list the first 10 songs played from my Spotify wrapped/apple replay when shuffled! ty mel!!
INVU - taeyeon
crimson sunset - masayoshi soken
face my fears (english version) - hikaru utada
butterfly kiss (from persona 5) - cover by lofi lia
glitch mode - nct dream
neath dark waters - masayoshi soken
the voice in my heart (from Violet evergarden) - evan call
0x1=lovesong (i know i love you) - txt
blue dream - yu-peng chen, hoyo-mix
pink blood - hikaru utada
tagging @hyukxs @noramoons @lixesque @crispy-chan @mxxndreams (no pressure ofc only do it if you want to <3)
#tag games!!!!#no skz at all LOL even tho they were my top song#it’s fine tho bc this is a very accurate representation of my listenings in 2022#kpop jpop lofi and vgm#even if you don’t know final fantasy xiv please go listen to the ost it’s gorgeous#masayoshi soken is a god
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HCMJ’s Favorite Albums of 2019!
Listen to a mix featuring these albums here: HCMJ’s 2019 End Of Year Mix
Other Favorites:
David Bruce - The North Wind Was a Woman
galen tipton - fake meat
upusen - Highland Ave.
BLACKPINK - Kill This Love
Starkey - Earth EP
Lamp - ‘A Distant Shore’ Asia Tour 2018
AWITW - She Walk Alone う者姻
Seaketa - Gion ぎおん
SNJO - Diamond
BONNEVILLE - AFFORDABLE LUXURY
20) Gareth Davis & Scanner - Footfalls
I first found the experimental composition/clarinet music of Gareth Davis in the early 2010′s during my initial dive into the Miasmah catalog. Teamed up here with another electronic musician/clarinetist, Footfalls uses long, poetic waves of deep woodwinds and synth improv to describe hauntingly desolate environments. It only seems fitting to start the list with one of many bookends on a decade in the grim, cold grey of Philadelphia.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
19) Barker - Utility
Arp and delay-driven rhythmic expression that recalls late-era Kraftwerk, building a pristine sci-fi future with ear-pleasing, rich, and laser-sharp production. Like disembodied trance or house music searching for a strong beat that never comes, Utility is absolute, skillfully-stated synth pleasure.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
18) Sean McCann/Seth Graham w/Kymatic Ensemble - Split Series Vol. IV
Seth Graham’s Gasp was a big favorite in 2018, here condensed and re-imagined for chamber ensemble. Sean McCann’s “Vilon” finds a blissful middle-ground between electronic ambient music and traditional western instrumentation, like a poignant hymn sung somewhere far away, while the new “Gasp” arrangements are full of expressiveness and surprises.
BANDCAMP
17) 猫 シ Corp. & t e l e p a t h - Building a Better World
Deep bass pulses and distant rain welcome us to a familiar comfortable place, but as the unmistakable sound and melodic freedom of telepath’s original synth work bends its way over rolling toms in the reverb-soaked hifi opener, it becomes clear that this album is something new and special. Full-on new age drenched in an endless downpour, it’s a huge and beautiful world that’s blissful to be lost in.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
16) Various Artists - Oneironaut
Another rare case of a compilation that is actually worth listening to, Japanese indie powerhouse Local Visions assembles the best talent from the sax-loving, jazz-infused, post-vaporwave electronic underworld of Japan and beyond in the indomitable Oneironaut comp. Notable contributions from Utsuro Spark, upusen, Tsudio Studio, tamao ninomiya, and countless others deliver a hazy daydream.
BANDCAMP
15) wai wai music resort - WWMR 1
Also from Local Visions comes this special collection of tracks caught somewhere between “lost LP found in a record crate” and “bedroom 4-track” - two distinct lofi flavors that mysteriously meld seamlessly on WWMR 1. It sounds new and old, youthful and mature, and full of affection for love and the music it references.
BANDCAMP | SPOTIFY
14) EXID - Me & You
There’s something about this mini-album, a Christmas time snowy nostalgia as the sun sets on another chapter of life (and era of kpop) in tracks like “나의밤” and “WE ARE..,” the Jamiroquai funk of “내일해 (Urban Mix),” or club igniting title track - EXID may never exist in this form or at this level again, and like so many of my favorites this year it reflects the recent history of its genre brilliantly.
APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
13) Fire-Toolz - Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace)
Field Whispers is the stunning next step in the evolution of Fire-Toolz that feels completely at home on the finely-curated Orange Milk. Extended sax-soaked dreams collide with splinters of music jumbled and broken, elegant and disjointed, all bouncing off each other while still leaving room for moments of soaring guitar and dreamy synth pads.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
12) Hakobune - The Last of Our Time Together
With over 50 releases (4 just this year!), Hakobune’s discography can seem like an impenetrable wall of ambience, but like classics Seamless and Here and Love Knows Where, The Last of Our Time Together stands out - monumental and multi-dimensional - a slow dance skidding along the frozen surface of an endlessly deep, rich sea of emotion.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
11) FM Skyline - Advanced Memory Suite
As nostalgic electronic music continues to evolve and find itself elevated in the hands of increasingly-focused musicians, FM Skyline delivers a joyful retrospective on a decade that gave new life to so many old sounds. Exploring the inner recesses of our memory and delusion, Advanced Memory Suite turns the page on a decade of chillwave/synthwave/vaporwave/whateverwave. It’s a hypnotic monument to the modern renaissance.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
10) emamouse - Black place on the edge
It was a huge year from the prolific Tokyo-based visual artist and musician emamouse, whose non-stop creative output continues to challenge the very nature of reality. Black place on the edge was a standout favorite this year, layered and mysterious - incidental music for the surreal dreamworld described in mou’s most unnerving illustrations. Like waking up and finding yourself trapped inside Quest 64.
BANDCAMP
09) Koeosaeme - Obanikeshi
My favorite Orange Milk release of the year, Koeosaeme delivers another absolute hurricane of hyper-detailed, sensory-extreme, buckshot-to-the-face arrangements. The sheer amount of data on this album is staggering, with more musical information packed into a few minutes of its blissful chaos than most full length albums combined.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
08) Jaeho Hwang - Non-self 비자아
I was super fortunate to play a show with Jaeho Hwang in Tokyo during this year’s Neo Gaia Phantasy tour - his immense set started so intensely it’s as if the entire room was cast under a shamanistic spell, hypnotized by percussive expressionism, drawn to the light of digitally melting faces and occult rituals playing out on the screen behind him. Non-self 비자아 is without mercy and full of powerful and primal energy.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
07) Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
Natalie Mering’s subtly expressive, velvety voice on its own is enough to make anything she touches turn to gold, but her songwriting is so masterfully dialed in on Titanic Rising it’s as if Harry Nilsson came back from the dead to write a new volume of pop rock ballads to get us through the next 50 years. It’s an album dripping with love for all the best parts of the 1970′s (Stardust-era Willie Nelson, early ELO, “Lost Weekend” Lennon and friends, etc), but also showcases the compositional chops to match and sometimes surpass its musical lineage (e.g. “Picture Me Better”).
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
06) Monari Wakita - RIGHT HERE
Off the heals of last year’s jaw-dropping Ahead!, ex-Especia Monari Wakita continues to defy modern conventions while asserting herself as one of the most powerful female voices in jpop. “エスパドリーユでつかまえて” sounds like Hitomitoi when she was a rising star, FRIEND IN NEED continues the new jack swing flirting, “やさしい嘘” sounds like it’s begging to be sampled by a future funk artist, and the lead-off single “Just a Crush for Today” is somewhere in a stop-and-go freefall between Billy Joel and Sonic R.
VIDEO 1 | VIDEO 2
05) Yeule - Serotonin II
Beneath the subtle power and diffusion of a voice like an extra-dimensional Julee Cruise, Serotonin II’s beautifully bleak paintings of the world it carefully constructs are reflective of Yeule’s transcendence into the artist’s next form. Crumbling brutalism under a blinding white sky, aliens in a graveyard - the romance of eternal torment in the spiral - all in dark room illuminated by a computer monitor sometime in the 00′s.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
04) The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6
The final release for this multi-year project, capturing a mind being lost to dementia, also marks the end of Leyland Kirby’s multi-decade spanning Caretaker project - a project that has had an immense impact on my perception of the limitlessness of music. Now completed, Everywhere at the End of Time towers as a 50 track, 6.5 hour journey from dreamy lucidity to terrifying confusion and darkness.
BANDCAMP
03) Tsudio Studio - Soda Resort Journey
Tsudio Studio brings a contemporary frame to leisure fantasy. Instant classics “Kiss in KIX,” “Asian Coke Light,” and “Like a Ruin” expand on the electro-bossa pop of Port Island, while surprises like “Beijing Cat” expand and explore new worlds of sound. One perfect chord after another, from start to finish, Soda Resort Journey is bubbly and delicious to listen to. Play it looped, close your eyes, be where you’d rather be.
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
02) Minuano - Butterfly Dream
Lamp vocalist Kaori Sakakibara’s side project Minuano is like some mutant variant of Lamp - equally complex while slightly less disorienting arrangements (although there are a few re-worked Lamp classics on here), tighter pop sound, stunningly immaculate vocal production - all while maintaining the unique orchestral jazz pop that makes both bands such a euphoric joy to listen to. “Memory of Soda Pop” was my favorite track released by anyone this year.
BANDCAMP
01) EQUIP - CURSEBREAKER X
This was the year of EQUIP. No better story for this year, no better sound than CURSEBREAKER X - the songs from this album will always bring back a thousand memories of smoke-filled clubs, dark forests, and snow-capped mountains from across Japan - the building promise of absolute freedom and a happier tomorrow as we all lived the Neo Gaia Phantasy.. But even without my personal connection to the music, the hardware-driven “perfect sound” VGM and EQUIP’s signature cassette tape destruction has never been better balanced than it is here - it’s loud, and filled with unforgettable melodies and unknown lands. It’s monumental and iconic and will stand the test of time and it was my favorite album of 2019!
BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY
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