BY MC GALANG
For our ongoing ‘THIS SIDE: ASIA’ playlist series, we’ve picked (mostly) underground music gems from Japan, our latest music showcase host from a few weeks ago (c/o Sakurazaka Asylum in Southern Japan). We’re very humbled and honored to be a part of this year’s Trans Asia Music Meeting 2020, which we will feature soon.
As always, we went through a lot of great music and curated the first volume for Japan, which combines a couple of newly discovered favorites and old ones. We’ve also included some Japanese artists we caught live in Okinawa (Lucie, Too), Seoul (omni sight), Singapore (KOHH), and Manila (tricot). Unfortunately, there are a couple of artists whose music aren’t on Spotify or seems to be not updated as of this writing, including Okinawan hip-hop crew Akazuchi and experimental duo Cinema Dub Monks, whose current material on Spotify doesn’t do justice to their live performances. There’s a lot more from Okinawa alone that we’re not able to listen yet since we have their music on CDs (and we are faced with the dilemma of finding a working CD player at the moment).
We have so much variety of choice cuts in our second playlist in the series: there’s your Japanese math rock, electronic pop, glitch, boom bap, grime, alternative rock, indie rock, jazz/fusion, funk, and good-old pop music—and then some. Once again, enable your crossfade option to at least three seconds. Listen continuously. As always (and as a general rule), our playlists are curated from start to finish: no ham-handed lumping of ten-plus songs in random sequence that generally ends up ruining the mood or vibe.
Enjoy.
Stream THIS SIDE: JAPAN VOL. 1
We just had to add this cut from Akazuchi:
PHOTO SHOT IN NAHA, OKINAWA IN JAPAN (DURING 桜坂 SAKURAZAKA ASYLUM IN FEBRUARY 2020)
You might also enjoy: THIS SIDE: TAIWAN VOL.1
