Jun Togawa is sort of like what you'd get if you crossed Kate Bush and Mike Patton. Togawa, who became known in Japanese culture
after appearing in a bidet commercial, was half of the electro-cabaret band
Guernica, which sometimes sounded
very classical and sometimes sounded
very new wave and sometimes
much stranger. Somewhat more straightforward is her rock outfit
Yapoos, which similarly varies
quite a bit in
sound and
style. Her solo work, unsurprisingly, is quite
melodramatic, with some very interesting
arrangements, both
parodically poppy and
funky. I particularly like her covers of
All Tomorrow's Parties by the Velvet Underground, Brigitte Fontaine's
Comme à la Radio, and – weirdly –
Pachelbel's Canon.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Apr 21, 2013 -
14 comments
Jon Brion gets around. As a composer, he scored some of the best movies of last decade and change –
Punch-Drunk Love,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Synecdoche, New York, and
I ♥ Huckabees. As a producer, he's worked with
Fiona Apple,
Kanye West,
Aimee Mann, and the excellent bluegrass outfit
Punch Brothers. He writes pop music like the best of them – witness
Meaningless,
Knock Yourself Out,
Here We Go, or
Didn't Think It Would Turn Out Bad for a nice sampler of his style and range. His live shows are notoriously whimsical and eccentric – he's apt to perform
Radiohead's "Creep" in the style of Tom Waits, or cover
Stairway to Heaven as a one-man band, recreating all the parts to its climax on the fly.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Mar 9, 2013 -
20 comments
You might have heard
Mike Oldfield playing during the Olympic opening and wondered, "What! Why the heck would
Danny Boyle want the
Exorcist theme playing at the start of such a grand event!" Oldfield's kept a low profile for years, so you may not remember him as the man who
literally launched Virgin Records, one of only three artists to ever knock
his #1 record off the charts with
another #1 record (the other two being Bob Dylan and the Beatles). But those teenage successes were merely the start of an astonishing career, one full of
pop music and
prog rock,
sci-fi and
New Age,
film scores and
classical orchestrations — not to mention a spot at the start of
Kanye West's recent album. His magnum opus,
Amarok, is an hour of astonishing sounds and shifting genres which must be heard to be believed. Too overwhelming? Well, there're
[more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich
on Jul 27, 2012 -
62 comments
