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Japancakes, "If I Could See Dallas" (Kindercore)
 
Japancakes are a diverse assortment of musicians, more of a "group" than 
a "band" it seems, devoted to playing hypnotic, extremely repetitive music. I 
found a recent EP of theirs, Down the Elements, to be quite intriguing, and 
this disc is of approximately equal caliber. However, both don't seem to 
completely deliver the goods.
 
The album starts on a rather ineffective note with "Now Wait for Last 
Year," which is rather stagnant and boring, before getting the ball rolling 
with the excellent, violin-led 6/8 jam, "Elevator Headphones." Here, as on 
the other good parts on the disc, repetition becomes a compositional tool to 
mesmerize the listener and propel the piece instead of boring them as the 
first did. Thankfully, most of the album's songs fall under the latter 
category (some overstay their welcome and fall into both, like the overlong 
but still excellent "Elephants").  Still, the blunders are fairly minor 
compared to workouts like "Vocode-Inn." 

As I stated earlier, be forewarned that the music is extremely 
repetitive! However, for those listeners who can get past that (or actually 
enjoy it), this is a quite good album. ~Jon Dharma Murphree~ 





Japancakes, "Down the Elements" (Kindercore Records)

    Japancakes are an American band characterized by subtle variations on 
extremely long, drawn-out repetitive sequences. I can't find a musician list, 
but the band seems to be mainly the typical guitar/bass/drums/keyboard set 
augmented occasionally by other instruments.
    The first song, "Version 1" starts with a laid-back, almost ambient 
groove with cello buried underneath waves of ethereal keyboard noises. For 
most of the song's 6 minutes, the rest of the ensemble plays basically the 
same thing over and over again. This is fine with me, being a fan of the 
similarly hypnotic German band Can, especially since they manage to take the 
music somewhere within this context.
    Next is "A.W. Sonic," rocking out much harder though equally repetitive. 
The main difference is that this piece features an actual melody, or at least 
a memorable melodic keyboard figure repeated over and over again before it's 
finally buried by the juggernaut roar of the ensemble at the 8-minute mark, 
leading to a satisfying climax.
    Third is "Sputnik," a more keyboard oriented and (appropriately) spacey 
venture, heavy on aquatic sound effects. Fortunately, it dies out around the 
3-minute mark, saving it from unnecessary tedium. 
    The final title track begins with electronic bleeps sounding suspiciously 
like the old video game Metroid, plus more aquatic noises. These eventually 
take backseat to keyboard pads, arpeggios and soft drones, which slowly begin 
interlocking in a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of sound.
    I'm not sure what my final opinion on this music is, but I've tried to 
describe as best I can so you can decide yourself. Definitely a worthwhile 
thing to investigate, though. ~Jon Dharma



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