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September was a month of exceptional Japanese electronic music. MicroM’s “Hotel Without a Name” diced art pop with bits of electro and IDM; Mimi Mirai released their debut, the patient, jump-up festival…
By Ed Cunningham
Aside from the highlights below, Mnst’s (the duo of Soichi Terada and Manabu Nagayama) collaborative EP with Kero Kero Bonito’s Sarah Bonito Nijiiro Waaludo shows how much one can mess with and…
Saturday nights were meant for music and dancing with friends. Since Covid-19 took away two of our favorite things to do on the weekend, Tokyo Weekender launched TW Live House. On the…
By Nick Narigon
Hideyasu Moto published his first comics in Garo, underground manga’s cult favorite magazine, in 1995. The magazine had peaked in the ’70s, but the meeting of Moto and Garo would yield some…
By Taylor Stewart
Taking the stage in matching black-trimmed white dresses and black high-heel boots, three women in their 20s evoke a long gone era of swinging, smoky Shinjuku haunts populated by gangsters, spies, movie…
By Mark Farmer
Coming out the other side of a stricter summer than usual, it seems that this month every artist decided to drop whatever record they’d intended on releasing earlier in the year. Among…
After a month of seemingly infinite album releases by Japanese musicians, accompanying them has been some unmissable tracks. August’s indie picks have been most sublime: as well as the Mitsume track below…
Thanks to the global new coronavirus pandemic Tokyo’s revered live houses won’t be hosting live bands any time soon. We at Tokyo Weekender miss watching our favorite bands perform, so we did…
By Weekender Editor
Usually with rock albums it takes a good amount of time, a couple tracks, to build anticipation. The;Cutlery’s water ; echo, released this April by Japanese indie label Zankyo Record, takes about…
Thirty-five years ago today, 520 people onboard JAL Flight 123 from Tokyo to Osaka tragically lost their lives in what remains the deadliest single aircraft crash in aviation history. Due to faulty…
By Matthew Hernon
Aside from my favorite Japanese songs of July listed below, worth mentioning are Awich’s furious hardcore hip hop banger “Shook Shook,” Seiko Oomori’s typically fast-moving, genre-juggling “Singer-Songwriter” and Tricot, whose “Omae” shows…
Twenty-year-old Noa Kazama dreamed of becoming a K-pop singer when he was young. Supporting his goals, his family moved to Korea after the Tokyo native graduated from elementary school and, there, he…
Spoilt for choice by the number of excellent releases in July, there is a Japanese album for everyone. Nippon Columbia’s collection of traditional folk songs from Awa (modern-day Tokushima), Hundred Views of Awa,…
As the pandemic related health and safety restrictions continue, live houses are left out and facing permanent closure. We speak to eight people in different positions across the music industry to find…
By Lisa Wallin
Andrew Sloman has the weathered voice of a true troubadour that carries listeners through stories of love, loss, hope and exuberance, but you won’t hear it on the singer-songwriter’s latest EP titled…
In bare terms, city pop was, like Shibuya-kei or kayokyoku, simply the name given to define another era of Japanese pop music. At first glance, its features of funk, disco, R&B, soul…
The last time we talked with DJ and producer Risa Taniguchi we met over beers at an izakaya in her hometown of Nakano. This time around there were no salarymen or occasional…
June has been another month of pitches for summer blockbusters and teasers towards oncoming albums. Beating another lush hint at Tendre’s upcoming record, two anarchic tracks from Mom and a new tune from…
