In the first few minutes of “Stella”, Kashiwa Daisuke uses the sounds of running water as a sample interlaced with his omnipresent piano and strings. He takes that sound, however, and breaks it up so that the running water no longer runs and instead limps. Music often flows like running water, and with this sample, Daisuke lays out his musical philosophy immediately, showing that he will take the most flowing, beautiful music and chop it up as he pleases.
If Daisuke’s piano and strings represent a piece of glass, untouched and perfectly clear, then his samples and beats represent a huge sledgehammer with which he destroys the glass and laughs as the glass shatters and falls to the ground. His aim, so precise, causes the glass to fall into a perfect shape in its shattered form, much like Picasso’s cubist paintings or Dali’s melted clocks.Each piece of glass, its own unique shape, holds inside its own musical motif. Yet as the shapes of glass all fit together, so do the motifs. In this, Daisuke creates organized chaos of epic proportions, perhaps the most epic the electronic world has seen. Review
I cannot believe an HQ version of this made it to Youtube! The random photograph in this video serves the song no justice. Stella is 35:59 long and as an entirety it is a beautiful masterpiece. Please, just click play and let it run in the background, and I promise it will pick up majestically. Kudos to you if you make it to the end! The strings are elegent, and the whole composition is truly epic, an overwhelming, powerful, and unearthly experience.
Spangle Call Lilli Line! ♥
…this band is lovely. They’re one of my favorite Japanese bands. Their songs are really relaxing with their slow-paced instrumentals that are at times embellished with smooth, gentle electric glitches to texture it to perfection. Truthfully, they weren’t much when I first listened to them, but their music really grew over time tremendously, and to this day I don’t know what I would do without SCLL! ; A ; The lead singer, Kana Otsuko is AMAZING and I can never become tired of her “wispy vocals” and unique and relaxing voice.
I’m not Japanese, but I think SCLL’s lyrics are in a fragmented style that is hard to translate and grasp (?) Maybe Otsuko also throws in her own “Spanglish” words…. oh, and she also uses repetition to create a real strange effect.
And, I LOVE their style and atmospheres. 「dreamer」 is one of my all time favorites. (/// A ///) For me it is the perfect song to listen to in the morning…especially Sunday mornings. Just look watch that wispy PV…. the song makes me feel like floating or resting peacefully.
Another thing that I love about them is that they have a lot of albums! I still cannot pick out a favorite (although I really love Purple…), because I have favorite songs ranging from the uplifting and quaint “Shower Beige” from VIEW and the lackadaisical “Sugar” from TRACE. There are still many songs by them that I have yet to listen to, and they will never fail to charm me in the future, and the old ones that I come back to are always enjoyable. (^p^)/
Matryoshka! Their band name is Russian, album name is Polish (Zatracenie), but they are Japanese. Calu, the female vocalist, has a really spine-chilling, ethereal, and ghostly voice. Many describe their music as beautiful, calming, but I find it so, so mournful and sad at the same time. But when I’m in a good mood their songs are really relaxing to listen too. This is high tier ambient music, I like to think, their soundscapes are really refined.
I think Calu sings in English, but I cannot really tell… I wish there were some photos of them without gas masks. ^p^ And yeah, in the few pictures they have they’re wearing gas masks, and somehow it is grimly fitting of their music! They’re not psychotic sounding… though.. just sad..
…and they’re not really new music discovery, for me, but I keep on returning to their unique sound and the album Zatracenie.
