For a brief period before in 2020 the world went to hell, it was impossible to walk around Tokyo without seeing some kind of billboard promoting Echo, a collaborative album between mainstream J-Pop’s two most distinctive mainstays not named Ringo…

It feels weird to be disparaging about my favourite band but with no new output in almost a decade, bassist Ichiro Yoshida’s talent was feeling wasted on Zazen Boys. With his departure from the band at the end of 2017…

After over two decades of art-punk brilliance with the excellent trio TsuShiMaMiRe, bassist Yayoi Tsushima goes back to basics with a raw and dirty solo electronica project. Capturing the intensity and home made feel of that band’s early Bloody Mohawk…

Penguinrush might be Nagoya’s best kept secret. In three years, the young quartet have put out three records, all of which are unique and distinct evolutions on their sound. While Kaikuushiki doesn’t quite reach the heights of last year’s Shichijoumai…

Before his emergence as a force to be reckoned with in the Kyoto hip hop scene, I briefly met Daichi during his tenure studying art in my hometown of London in summer of 2016. We didn’t much talk about music…

Papa New Guinean-born piano genius Aaron Choulai makes the impossible look easy. As a long time fan of jazz and hip hop, I’ve always had a healthy degree of skepticism towards the label of jazz-hop, or jazz-rap. However, any reservations…

Kansai-born math rock outfit tricot have come a long way since I first became a fan around the release of 2012's Bakkyun EP. Makkuro, or Black, was the first of two full-length albums released this year, and the first to…

Hello everyone! Welcome to the TKY03.jp blog, which will initially just consist of my musings on Japanese music and the Tokyo music scene, but hopefully will expand into something a lot larger in the near future. I really wasn’t sure…

Watch this space for new perspectives in Japanese music, music artists, and trends in the Japanese music industry.

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日本の音楽作品やアーティスト、トレンドの動向など、様々な視座のもと有意義な情報をお届けします。