OLDTIMER [オールドタイマー] CANARIA [LIVE]

I've been meaning to write about this for a long time but I just haven't gotten round to it. Why is that? Something you feel like you want to do sometimes turns into something you have to do, and I don't work well under obligations, even if they are self-made. It's weird isn't it. A choir of weird. But that's neither here nor there is it now. We can breathe and move on. Time has ticked and that is that.

I first wrote about OLDTIMER at the beginning-ish of this year, after (and about) the release of their My Girl EP. They actually took the time to send me a package with a cute note and a few copies of the CD - all of which were hand-illustrated. Naturally I have a lot of time for them. I heard them first on a live recording of their stuff, which had plenty of energy and noise to it, and this latest song goes in much the same way: energetic and noisy.

What are they? They're a self-described "indie rock band" from Tokyo, but I'd say they're like a shoegazing indie pop rock band. Not much difference I suppose except my definition is more specific. Now, if you can accept that, let's have a listen shall we?

Straight away you're thrown headlong into a high-energy fast-paced belter of a track. The drums gallop ahead, dragging everything behind it, with singer Lilia Masami's pretty vocals floating in the ocean of noise. The guitar has a fantastic sound - this is what I first noticed. It screeches along bending out of tune and creating a sound that is quite gloriously unsettling. Gives it a bizarre alternate-reality surf-rock vibe. Listen to it though. Great guitar, really. Leaves you reeling in the spaciest of ways.

The bassline is pretty magnificent, too, let's be honest. Against the noisy screams of the guitar, its smooth sound and complex notes give the song a jolly upbeat background. A piece of pop against a noise-art installation or something. The "doo-doo-do-do" vocals do something similar as well, as do the vocals in general, giving the song a pop feeling and contrasting with the un-pop guitar. Lovely. I had a feeling that they'd get even better, and they have.

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MOONCREATURES MOONCREATURES EP

It is nice to listen to relaxing music sometimes. It can be easy to become stressed about things, because I suppose there are a lot of stressful things and situations lying around out there - the likelihood of you stumbling on or tripping over on one of these obtuse stressors is quite high. But don't worry, because music - especially that which lies in the field of relaxful chillment - can help. Just sit back and close yer eyes innit, drift off to some nice music. As William Congreve said, "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast" and a savage breast is most certainly caused from gettin' totally stressed out about everything/some things.

Of course, this is not the be-all-and-end-all of music; it's not the POINT of music, for me anyway. The point of music is... well, that's an issue for another day, and probably something really babblesomely philosophical, too. And so I introduce Mooncreatures, a band from London who make the kind of music that could carry you on a rainbow road (definitely not the Mario Kart kind) to dreamland. Well, actually, it's more of a misty road that winds around scenery that is a Gaussian blur of itself, onwards to the long shoreline of sleep.

Their self-titled EP is old-ish, but as I KEEP saying: anything new to me is new. Is it not? Anyway, it was recently released on tape via label Italian Beach Babes, but it sold out. Happily, however, that dreamy stuff is now on bandcamp and free to download. Get to it.

It's a game of three halves, or rather three thirds. Whilst all of it is masked by a heavy and heady dose of dreamy reverb and ever-expanding echoes on guitars, the styles of how this sound is delivered changes. 'Lakedrainers' and 'Coasting' have the same feel, a lean into lo-fi dreampop, a sunny-ish sound; 'Lakedrainers' has a bleak, bright-white sky beauty about it, whilst 'Coasting' seems to me more like angled beams of light cutting through breaks in cloud. Then you have the more distorted shoegaze of 'Balloon Festival' and 'Cattle Camp', the former a jangly-pulsed 80s indie number, the latter a slow-march of melodic feedback.

The last third of the EP is atmospheric ambience - '(Coast Road)' is like the soundtrack to a sunrise, conjuring with its wide modulation an actual coast road, winding and breezy; 'Meet The Ocean' is a slow-down lo-fi Balearic-style melody - think Ibiza in sepia tones. Overall, the whole thing sounds like a journey to the sea and back, however in a typically English way the beauty is bleak, smothered by clouds. Country roads snake through endless green fields towards a beige sand beach, where a grey sea laps weakly at the coast and splashes into jutting black rocks. But there's a beauty in it, something stark and wild, which is what I think has been captured quite nicely by Mooncreatures.

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IKEBANA ALONE [VIDEO]

Flau Records, based in Tokyo, seems to have been putting out some very nice music recently. There's a decent list of artists versed in many things from folk pop to experimental electronica - for instance, Twigs & Yarn, whom I wrote about on Thursday. And yesterday, from the same wonderful label, came 'Alone' by IKEBANA.

Touted as a kind of ambient shoegaze, IKEBANA is a female duo from Japan made up of Maki and En - both have musical backgrounds, though it feels as though the both of them won't be moving onto anything different anytime soon; it seems that they enjoy very much the music that they are currently making together. How can I tell? Well judging from this song, I think if anyone can play such simplistic music with such feeling it says something about how much they're getting into it.

It's a very easy song to get lost in. With all the minimalism and beauty of its namesake (ikebana = 生け花 = "living flowers" or simply "flower arranging") it sparkles in a very understated way. Try for yourselves.

The first thing I noticed about this song was its opening chord: it's exactly the same as the chord that opens 'Suedehead' by Morrissey - whether that was a conscious thing or not, I dunno; it's still a very nice chord anyway.

Speaking of the guitar chords, they are the main base to this song, always played in the same pattern yet not moving around too drastically, giving a sense of droning, almost like organ music transcribed for the guitar. The voice, softly singing over the chords, is pure-sounding, with just a little echo dabbed onto its tail-end. A simple guitar melody is pinged just after each chorus (the lyrics to which run, "Go away / alone / ooo, ooo / run away / alone / ooo, ooo" - simple and sung so prettily), the same each time, wonderfully effective and uses the space between each note to allow the sound to breathe and resonate organically. Nice.

After the last chorus the guitar chords are set to flanger, slowly warping like water going down a plug hole as the song fades away with the solo guitar still making its delicate sounds over the top, like a dreamy boat on an electrolyte sea. I nearly got swept away when I first listened to this with my eyes closed. It's spacey and shoegazey, that's for sure.

Anyway, it's from new album when you arrive there set for release 8th July - on Flau, of course.
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THE DODOS CONFIDENCE

This seems to be happening a lot these days. What seems to be happening a lot these days? Well, me listening to a song, not really liking it, then the song continuing and me quite actually liking it by the end of it. That's what you get when you browse around and listen to different stuff that you wouldn't usually actively seek out, eh? You know what I'm saying innit.

Anyway, this is The Dodos and their brand new song 'Confidence'. I hadn't actually heard of them at all but apparently they've been around for a while (you know when someone says 'apparently whatever' it really means 'Wikipediarly blah blah') and have released four albums prior to the one on which this lovely song shall appear, their fifth - Carrier, out 27th August.

But enough of talking this way, even if it was brief. Let's listen to the song shall we?

The pattern of the guitar at the beginning is nice - jaunty and cyclical; but the real treat comes with the progression of the song, rather than any particular part, because it is the progression of this song that makes it, I believe. As soon as the beat comes in, there's a new atmosphere of build-up and potential that then squeezes itself out in the form of distorted guitars with melody that bleats over the top of the crunchy electricity.

Up-tempo suddenly and the song has turned from a folk-esque number into something more resembling space rock. It becomes flighty and weighty and soaked in reverb like a barbecue doused in lighter fluid, a real pleasure for the ears. The beat becomes more hurried and urgent towards the end, the drums hammered and smashed about as the noodly echoing glass-blown firecracker guitar noodles away into noodlesome noisedom. A real surprise. And a happy one at that. Here's to listening to an entire song before judging!

You could even say that, with a title like 'Confidence', the song is reflecting the feeling of gaining gradual confidence about something - the way the energy changes from barstool to stadium in the space of four minutes, the gutsy drive of Meric Long and Logan Kroeber (the duo behind the music) becoming less and less inhibited. Well, that is the nature of confidence, is it not? No inhibitions here. And if there were any, they must have left them at the first few seconds of the song, because after that spirited performance I can't spy any shyness anywhere.

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OLDTIMER [オールドタイマー] MY GIRL EP

Better late than never. It's a nice saying, especially for those who tend to do things later rather than sooner. Ahem.

A long time ago I came across a band from Japan called OLDTIMER - at that point all they had up on their SoundCloud page were a few live songs. But what was there sounded really good, brimmed with energy and all the like - just how GOOD live music should be. I liked it a lot, but there weren't any studio recordings. Then an EP appeared and they sent it over (air mail), for which I was really grateful. But then Yes/No Music tumbled and fell and lay there twitching...

... Fast forward a few months and here is OLDTIMER's My Girl EP in all its glory. It's full of promise and potential.

Starting at the start we have 'Caravan', an atmospheric and echoing track whose juddering guitars and clean drums wouldn't sound out of place at the end of the '80s, just outside Manchester. Spacey distorted guitars swoop in the background as the plucky bassline carries the song onwards and onwards. The break brings jangling distorted guitars back, sounding expertly 'Madchester'. Vocals are clean and unassuming, lending themselves to the aesthetic of the song.

The same vocals provide the hook in title track 'My Girl', with a lot of ooo-ooo-ooo'ing going on. This is a much poppier number - up-tempo, though still with the smack-you-in-the-face distorted guitars washing over everything. Just as with 'Caravan' the verses build to a peak where the chorus sits, providing the song with a rising/falling dynamic that feels nice on the old ears. There's a guitar solo in here that screams toward the end. It's a driving song, definitely. All you need is a road and some sunglasses.

Then, what a surprise this is. 'Slowly Decaying' is a veritable assault on the eardrums. Towering, endlessly clashing distorted guitar storms all around, almost like white noise. The vocals, soft and achingly plaintive, provide a huge contrast to the gigantic guitar. In the verse, though, guitars moan like low flying and jangle quietly off-balance. It's melancholy, slow, as shoegaze as you like. The drums crescendo towards the end, just what you want to hear: it's not a mad one till the drums are going mad too.

It's tantalising glimpse into what this band can do. Production-wise, they could go lo-fi - that's why I liked the live recordings so much, the raw nature of them suited the style perfectly. Other than that, it's a fine first EP - I look forward to the next.

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