Hello, welcome to the Digbox. This is a [potential] blog(!) series where a person throws down a few epic jams and talks about them a little bit, or a lot. List is digs, and all that. The only rules I’m gonna set for it are 1) no more than nine songs, to keep this succinct for the readergang, 2) this is primarily about songs, not albums or other things(?), and 3) at least most of the songs have to be really, really good for reasons that aren’t ironic. Cool: Digbox: begin:
[Digbox – colourised 2021]
Spangle Call Lilli Line – “Mio”
This song is mid-key the catalyst that got me writing this to begin with. Its name is *deep breath* “Mio” (phew) and it’s one of the best and most sophisticated dream pop songs I’ve heard in a long time. I’m obsessed enough not to want to write on it any further. Ugh. Let’s start on the surface: this ultra-clean style of production is something I usually associate with overbaked bilge, but Spangle Call Lilli Line’s veteran songwriting chops, flair for killer melodies, and sensitivity to balancing sparseness and intricacy in a complex arrangement give them the footing to knock this one out of the damn ballpark. Take that, shoddy indie-lounge!
“Mio” is teeming with great melodies and instrumental nuances, but there’s never too much going on at any one time; it has the hooks…
Back at university, I remember there being a point at which my dissertation tutor told me to put the whole thing on hold and read up on the meaning and application of arthouse. I spent approximately two hours of my life reading relatively uncomplex definitions and unpackings, but damn would it have been easier if he’d just sent me away and told me to check out Blonde Redhead (I’m sure he could have done, too – he pitched surrealist film to me using Pixies lyrics and half the reason I originally asked him to help me out was over a rant we had about the bonus tracks on Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising, but I digress).
Sorry, what’s arthouse?
One big hybrid, innit. A bastard product of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art that’s not pure enough to satisfy elitists, too edgy to sell to the mainstream, but an exciting box of treats for anyone who doesn’t mind getting their paws a little muddy. It derives most of its innovation from pastiche and appropriation rather than groundbreaking originality, and the styles it draws from are often both a little behind the times in their sourcing and a cut above in the way they’re dealt with. Bonus points for any cross-cultural, trans-geographical or oh-it’s-quite-hard-to-label-comprehensively content, all of which amounts to a notoriously broad collection of categories. You get the picture.
Sorry not sorry for the wank onslaught, but all this fits Blonde Redhead down to…
Ichiko Aoba has a new single and – shock horror – it’s gorgeous and utterly spellbinding. Listen to it.
For those unfamiliar with Aoba, the usual deal is that you sit down and press play, and then she appears like a magical headphone fairy for an hour (give or take twenty minutes) with her excellent guitar and her excellent guitar technique and pretty much nothing else aside from her voice, with which she sings songs so pure and intimate that you’d feel like you were the only person in the world who could her them even if they were being broadcast at deafening volumes on loudspeakers in the middle of Shibuya Crossing or wherever.
“Seabed Eden” differs both significantly and subtly from the Aoba precedent. On an immediate level and in the softest of revolutions, Aoba has swapped her guitar, once her inseparable confidant, for an electric piano. It’s obviously striking that she’s literally playing a different instrument, but the greatest change here is the melancholy minor 7th-fest of a chord progression that she follows throughout; in a similar way to how her January single “Amuletum” was immediately evocative of classic Studio Ghibli soundtracks, this progression is unusual for Aoba that it immediately screams of a real world precedent outside of her own quiet universe (in this case, the wistful melodic jazz of Erroll Garner’s “Misty” and the fifty zillion descendent numbers you’ve heard with or without realising it). Ichiko Aoba hasn’t lost her magic touch – this track is…
In August 2020, Sputnikmusic emerged from its longstanding morass of thesaurus metal and folk diarism, spurting to sufficient heights of credibility that it became possible to review unofficial Soundcloud demos without pulling the tier-Z faux pas of punching above our weight. Some would suggest becoming a not insufferable writer and “saving the w**k for the bathr**m fl**r” before exploiting this field of journalism, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. This is Sputnik’s biggest opportunity since sliced bread. In we go:
Better known as the vocalist for glitch pop/indietronica/post-anime/neo-alternative folktronica/dream pop group Macaroom, Emaru is an enigmatic lady who dances like a fucking weirdo, nailed whisper pop as an artform before Eilish apologists took out a loan on critical legitimacy, and runs a solo project on Soundcloud for obscure tracks and semi-developed drafts. Her new song “よるのみち” makes innovative and unconventional use of the platform by being a worthwhile piece of music released there in 2020.
It comes from an artistic mind so cutting edge that the majority of Americans will be flat-out incapable of understanding her, something I could tell immediately by the fact that she is wearing a mask in her profile picture. Her speaking a language that demands constant contextual awareness for basic comprehension absolutely in no way compounds this. Maybe this song will mark a renaissance for Soundcloud (it won’t). Does Soundcloud need a renaissance? I used to think it was going the way of MySpace, but then a girl…
This feature is part of a hopefully ongoing series aimed at exploring the discographies of interesting and/or important bands whose wider body of work is often overlooked on this site. There will be lots of words and a few pictures, but the main deal is that if a band features here, they are good and you should listen to them! And if you already jam them, hit up the comments and explain where and why this is wrong! Get going!
Few projects inspire childlike wonder quite like San Francisco’s Sweet Trip. Comprised of multi-instrumentalist/programmer Robero Burgos, vocalist Valerie Cooper and a slim roster of session contributors, this project’s respective forays into indietronica, shoegaze, IDM, glitch and dream pop are so richly atmospheric and emotively crafted that they breeze effortlessly over listener preconceptions and strike to the heart of that early-teen feeling of awe at the sheer expressive and imaginative power of music. For those whose childhoods followed the correct timeline, this should align neatly with your first-time-hearing-Dark Side of the Moon memories.
Fortunately, Sweet Trip come with none of the teenage baggage – there’s something deeply cleansing about their approach to simple melodies and sophisticated arrangements that, even at their most intense or erratic, never fails to make me feel as though some previously unnoticed weight has suddenly disappeared from my shoulders. Roberto Burgos has a talent for imbuing mechanical sounds with a human…
This feature is part of a hopefully ongoing series aimed at exploring the discographies of interesting and/or important bands whose wider body of work is often overlooked on this site. There will be lots of words and a few pictures, but the main deal is that if a band features here, they are good and you should listen to them! And if you already jam them, hit up the comments and explain where and why this is wrong! Get going!
“I saw Stereolab in Bellingham and they played one chord for fifteen minutes / Something in me shifted / I brought back home belief I could create eternity.”
This is unfortunately not my anecdote, but rather a disconcertingly well-timed snippet from Phil Elevrum’s reminiscences on the new Microphones album. It stands out as the only moment on that record that I paused and rewound on first listen last night to confirm that I had heard it correctly, and it solved the problem I had been grappling with as I came to the end of marathoning the Stereolab discography: how on earth do you go about writing a fresh introduction to such an iconic, influential and well-chronicled band?
Fortunately, Phil was so kind as to answer this question by (probably) confirming my loose theory: pick out any forward thinking artist active in the indieverse over the last two and a half decades or so, and…
Haru Nemuri is a Japanese singer and rapper based in Tokyo. Her style is self-described as hip-hop with the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, and her2018 debut Haru to Shura became a viral cult classic, leading to a successful Europe and UK tour in 2019.
She was scheduled to tour America for the first time in March, but all performances (including a SXSW appearance) were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These have been rescheduled for a September tour. Her new minialbum LOVETHEISM released digitally March 20th and was followed up with a 12” vinyl on June 12th.
In between all these developments and rearrangements, Haru found the time to chat with Sputnikmusic about her release and her experience as a Japanese artist on the world stage.
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JohnnyoftheWell/Sputnikmusic: Hello!
Haru Nemuri: Hello!
How’s it going in Tokyo?
While almost all the music industries in Tokyo have not turned back to normal due to the Coronavirus situation, some people get on trains every morning as usual. I think what they think about this situation depends on their standpoints.
Your tour was cancelled, but you managed to reschedule – thank goodness! Can you tell us what it was like for you when things got chaotic and all your plans started changing?
It was so disappointing to postpone my first North American tour and I cursed this terrible situation. Like an insect waiting for the spring in the ground, I could do nothing but sleep and make music in my room.…
