listen closer

j-sorta-pop.

shakkazombie "siroi yami no naka"
JAPANESE HARMONICA RAP........ let me let that sink in for a second..... yes... JAPANESE HARMONICA RAP. i found this track used in a fan video someone had made for the two anime shows cowboy bebop and trigun. it's the closest thing to what i'd call cowboy rap i've ever heard... only....... it's all in japanese. so what is it? it's that melding that seemingly could only happen in j-pop, where these disperate threads. two styles of american music are melded and aren't weighed down by the inevitible full take on our culture that we have. shakkazombie has taken these bitesized aspects of our culture and realized them in ways we probably never would. it makes for something odd, funny, and oh-so-incredibly-listenable.

laughs and beats "overflowing emotions"
this starts off as a rather straightforward annoying-voiced jpop song. expect eventually you notice that she's singing in english for most of it, really really tweaked phonetic english (i'm guessing the singer doesn't actually speak english). "you're not the baby of my heart / i'm not the mommy / do you know? / can't you see?" but when i really dig this song is when it kicks into it's faux-fastforward mode. it becomes this ridiculous jumbled japanese party jam for a minute, and then switches right back to that tweaked english chorus. is this all confusing you? well that's probably because this song virtually defies description. i can tell you that i'm not even sure of the bands name, that it might be "laugh and beats" "laughs and beats" "laugh and peace" or some other similar variation. the song however, comes from a bizarre japanese-only playstation came called vib ribbon (more ultrabizarre and great laughs and beats songs can be found at that page), in which you can put in any cd and an obstacle course is formed based on the music, your character is a dancing bouncing rabbit named vibri, and you use the buttons to avoid the obstacles... no, really, i'm totally not even making it up!