Best Albums of 2012

Yes, I know 2013 is almost halfway through. I also know I haven't touched this blog in a long time. Whatever. I'm a walking contradiction! Anyways, I recorded this best of 2012 podcast awhile ago and thought I'd post it with my write-up as well. Enjoy!

Best of 2012 Podcast

sora - echo

mother - 1990

tetola93 - 腐敗の一死報国

saisa - Faith In Ordinary

birth - 音楽は変わった

My Top 5 Releases of 2012:

Sora - 灯台の上で待つ
     - I feel almost a responsibility to put this first. Sora split up in December, playing their final show after almost 10 years (I saw one of their first shows in 2003). Before they left us, they recorded a proper album which is the true summit of their monumental climb to perfect their sound. From their beginnings as crucial Japanese screamo, through their delvings into post-screamoish rock, they finally hit at this ultimate sound. Japanese style indie rock, but intense in a way that only epic screamo bands can be. Vocals which are passionate and emotional, but smooth and nice on the ears. I loved this hard when it came out, and on 12/31/12 with no close contenders, I have to call it my Best Album of 2012.

Mother - the Living Dead
     - After a demo in late 2011, Kyoto's Mother release their debut album through Impulse Records and ruin everyone else's hopes of making better music. The vanguard of a newly coagulating Japanese sound, Mother builds on the shoulders of predecessors like Turbostaat and 1000 Travels of Jawaharlal. They dabble in the same genre as Infro and Eye, but this debut album really cements exactly what they are about and where they're going. Fantastic album.

Tetola93/Visyaaa split
     - My first listen of Tetola93 left me in total confusion. Emo-violence? Singing? Thrash? I couldn't wrap my head around this mass of chaos, emotion, and melody that was blaring through my headphones. But it was addictive, like crack. Each song was only the good parts. No lukewarm bridges or lousy verses. Short, sweet, and perfect, I had to re-listen to each song over and over and over. This split in particular is their newest and greatest. Tetola93 is essential; they are the shape of Japanese screamo to come. Visyaaa is good too, but unlucky being paired with another band that overshadows them so much. Tetola93 played their last show in 2012, but our in the process of recording an LP to be released by MeatCubeLabel in 2013.

Saisa - This Empty Space Returns Your Solitude
     - Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I don't mind listening to really good "imitations." So, to get it out of the way, Saisa sounds a lot like Sigur Ros. This is not a bad thing. From there, Saisa develop their own sound from the Sigur Ros-ian mold to deliver some of the most soothing, soaring, peaceful, passionate, heavenly, earthly sounds this side of Tokyo. And they do it all with three people. Keep It Together Records released this, their debut EP, on cassette last year. It's one of those incomprehensible moments where a band that should be playing stadiums is actually completely unheard of. Anyways, this is worth it and was really one of the best things out last year.

PS Burn This Letter - Written There For All
     - Something like 3-5 years in the making (the songs were recorded in 2009 I think), P.S. Burn This Letter's first, final, and only release finally makes it out on 7" & CD-R. This band seemed to be custom made for me. Members of Gauge Means Nothing, Tiala, and Box the Compass. This EP (Single?) sounds exactly like you would expect. Carefully crafted emotional hardcore reminiscent of late-90's, early 2000's Ebullition and Japanese screamo acts. In many ways I've moved on to shorter, faster fare, but these songs take me back and do it so good.

Short List (Good albums worth your time & hard-earned money):
Alt Of The Society - Yobikakerukoegakieteiku
     - Debut EP of this Tokyo act, mixing Envy/Heaven in Her Arms style post-rock screamo with Sora-like, intense singing. Pretty blown away by this and the band keeps getting better in their recently release split with Nonrem. I listened hard.

Birth - Ishiyo
     - Finally, a proper full length from these guys. The heavy grooves really surprised me, adding a new dimension to their 3cm tour influenced sound, and making their songs surprisingly danceable. You know you wnat this.

Stubborn Father x R3-N7
     - A complete surprise for me. I'd only heard one song from Stubborn Father before, so this split was so good to hear. Complex and cerebral grindy, thrashy hardcore. Stubborn Father is a visionary band. On the other side is R3N7's most recent crusty demolition trip. The songs are good, but can get monotonous. Odd to see a band go from screamo to synth-spazz-whatever to crust.

Low-Pass - Trimurti
     - Release on cassette through Keep It Together Records this year, Low-Pass's most recent album is finally accessible to the world. Some of the smartest and smoothest instrumental rock heard in many, many years.

Atata - Tatat
     - I was over the moon when I first listened to this, and it's still an amazing album. The intensity can be exhausting once you've listened to the album for awhile. Still, if you haven't picked this up, you're doing yourself a disservice.

To Overflow Evidence - また空をみるために白紙に描く日々の事
     - The 2011 Japan tsunami hit on the same day these guys were doing some final tracking for this album. While it might not technically be reflected in the recording, there is definitely a strong melancholic optimism shining through this album. A full 11 songs of pure Japanese screamo melodies with mid-tempo drums and some surprises. This was a solid album.

[Review] Atata - Tatat [2012]

I've always been of a mind that the more people in a band usually results in a more compromised sound. Too many chefs in the kitchen, stuff like that. I'm almost always right, as well. A clarity in vision and singular attention to detail can result in some of the most marvelous creations. Orchestras are ruled by the dictatorship of a conductor, Films ruled by auteurs. With bands, it becomes a little tougher. Independent bands are much more democratic affairs, and aspirations to a focused sound can fail more often than succeed.

With a group of seasoned veterans, experienced by playing in livehouses and stadiums across Japan, the chances of genius might be thwarted and a diamond in the rough appear. Atata make this claim by positioning 6 people in the same practice room and essentially letting each one play their instruments like insane people. But these are insane people all on the same drugs, all seeing the same delusion and all laughing in unison. Somehow they play together as one, as an orchestra, but each with distinct voices and no clear conductor to be found.

What's to be especially admired with each of the songs is the level of craftsmanship with which they're designed. There aren't clear choruses or verses in all the songs, and there are almost never two parts of a song that sound exactly alike. Like a jazz track, each instrument is constantly moving, improvising, and refreshing each refrain, independent of each other. The mastery of each is amazing. Angular, dueling guitars; versatile keyboards, going from buzzing moog to orchestral piano in the same song; sublime drumming that knows exactly when to hit the groove hard; bass that is as jazzy and smooth as it is deep and growling; vocals that are human and angelic at once, hitting every note perfectly. There's just a lot to their songs.

For me, music is really about feelings. What does this music evoke in me, how does it make me feel, what does it remind me of? Most music I like can evoke profound memories of important times in my life. In fact, it is one of my favorite past-times to analyze why I'm enjoying something at the moment. When I was thinking about Atata's newest album, and what it was reminding me of, I ended up making a list. Every song on the album is a different face of a single identity. Each song is its own ecosystem, and somehow I found myself lost in the myriad of memories hidden in each. Star Soldier reminded me of lullabies and Naht's The Spelling of My Solution, one of my favorite albums. Minority Fight Song put me back in college, driving down the interstate with the Get Up Kids or the Anniversary blaring from my dinky tape deck. Recito was every break-up I've been through, complete with the initial sadness and final recovery and triumph.

I say all this to express that this album is fucking great. Too often do you see bands full of veterans produce tired music, void of personality and passion. This is not one of those bands or albums. Watching their recent video for Star Soldier only reinforced the fun and passion they have for playing music for people. Every song on this 8 song album is just a finely crafted masterpiece. I've already listened to the album 5 times today, and I can see myself listening to it for months and months more, there's just so much to it.

The album is available in a couple places, that I can find at the moment. On Ototoy it is 900 yen from today (4/20) to May 3rd. After that it will change to 1500 yen. That translates to about 11.00 USD, so you might be better off just heading to iTunes, where you can get it for $9.99 or $1.29 per track. This is really an amazing album and you owe it to yourself to at least check out the video above. Below I'm posting a megamix, which has some of the choice parts from each song all mushed together. It's worth a listen too. The 3 tracks that I posted about earlier are on the album but they've re-recorded them, so there are some definite improvements. Even though there's only 8 songs, each is really long and the album clocks in at around 40 minutes.

Atata - Various Tracks [2010-2011]

It's an 'A'! Do you see it?

Atata is a band. They have ex-members of Holstein, Journal Spy Effort, and Mirror. There are 6 people in the band. You might be thinking that is a lot, and you're right. You might question the need for those extra people, but I think once you hear the unreal sound that Atata makes, you'll understand why 6 people working together can do amazing things. 

Atata is emo 2.0. This doesn't mean they're doing some My Chemical Romance shit. It reminds me of the conversion from Mineral to Gloria Record. In Mineral, you had an amazing sound and song-writing, that was executed minimally and not recorded too good. With The Gloria Record (only talking about the early stuff), it basically was like Mineral got an upgrade with more instruments and more elaborate song structures. It was amazing and so good. But then they turned to shit and I stopped paying attention. Atata does the same (without the shit part, so far) with their former bands. They take the previous sound and upgrade it. If you're unfamiliar with those former bands, they have that angular, Japanese emo sound. If you grabbed the Balloons album yesterday, it sounds similar but much richer.

They've posted 3 songs to download on their site. Sort of like a demo, but all the tracks are individual downloads. The above pic is from their upcoming album, but I'm not sure how those songs will sound. Also, for the below songs, a warning to my readers: They are WAV files, not MP3s, so you'll need a converter unless you're going to burn to a CD. Why they did this, I can't answer. It seems weird to me.

Most importantly, I know you're wondering, how do these song make me feel? Well, I say, they make me feel all warm and tickly inside. The quality of this band is impeccable. The songs are long and small worlds in themselves. Each clocks in around 4-5 minutes, and through multiple instruments, spine-tingling vocals, and complex structures they pick you up and let you down as carefully as a mother. So sweet.

But really, these are songs are worth the huge download and conversion. You can sample them below as Youtube videos. And their album should be out soon, so look out for that in May!

Fury of the Year:

Recito:

General Headquarters:

LEF!!! DUB!!!:

Download Atata Songs here.