Music

Here's where I get to talk about my favorite music and artists! My tastes run from Alternative Rock, Classic Rock and City Pop to various types of electronic music (synthwave, vaporwave, dreampunk, future funk, trance, chiptune, etc.) I've also been a fan of J-pop and J-rock since I was a teen. And recently, I've become somewhat of a Bandcamp junkie, with a focus on more indie, obscure artists, especially in the dreampunk and future funk genres.

On this site, I want to focus on highlighting artists and bands I like that few people may have heard of. I hope it'll lead to more people discovering some really good music!

Pirokalpin

My current favorite band! The name is a romanization of Pilocarpine, which is the name of a medicine that treats dry mouth. I discovered this band, interestingly enough, through an Amazon Japan music recommendation e-mail. The richly illustrated album covers caught my eye and piqued my interest enough to listen to some samples, and what I heard blew me away. The guitar work is amazing and creates a sort of ethereal, psychedelic feeling like you're going to other worlds like the ones on the album covers. And the vocals are rich and full, as if the singer is performing a more serious, classical-styled song, but it's rock!

Jinn

Another favorite band, somewhat similar to Pirokalpin in sound, but the vocals are more angry and raw. I discovered this band through an old anime mp3 website (their first single was an opening to an anime I'd never heard of, and still don't know to this day) and was amazed by the guitar work. I'm a sucker for guitar solos, and Jinn's songs have them in spades! Sadly, I think they're no longer performing as a band - their last album release was in 2013, and haven't released any new songs since then. They're also a little obscure - at least half of their songs aren't on Spotify (and the ones that are on Spotify are mixed in with another artist with the same name) but their CD albums aren't too hard to find and not too expensive.