Artist of the Month: February: World's End Girlfriend
This is also something I hope to make a regular feature. The self-explanatory "Artist of the Month" segment.
World's End Girlfriend
Not much is known about the man behind World's End Girlfriend. All we know is that he's Japanese, he's very private, he has a parody spin-off band called "World's End Boyfriend," and his music is pure genius. Wikipedia has only this to say about him:
World's End Girlfriend is the musical project of Katsuhiko Maeda. Placing the Japanese band's music into one well-defined genre is difficult, as it blends elements of electronica and post-rock to create a unique style. His latest release is The Lie Lay Land (2005).
Just about everywhere else, you'll find the message "This profile has been removed at the artist's discretion" or something along those lines. Personally, I find something endearing about this lack of information. It makes him as mysterious and eccentric and his music.
Before I get into the real meat of his songs, I'll just lay out some basics. Most of his songs are long, ranging from three to twenty-five minutes EACH. The average length is usually around eight minutes or so. I don't know, because I haven't tried calculating it all up. Like Wiki says, his style is abstract, mixing noise, post-rock, experimental rock and electronica to creating music that is, in any sense, haunting.
Every album has a unique story that you can't quite describe fully. Not because of odd lyrics or strange words, in fact, there are no lyrics. Instead, Maeda weaves sound clips (in both English and Japanese) flawlessly into the flow of the music. Occasionaly, he will hire japanese singers, but their voices are so close together with the music that you almost don't notice that they're singing. Often times, the story is hard to figure out, and you just get certain themes or feelings from an album. The one with the strongest message, I think, is his latest album, "The Lie Lay Land." When I listen to that CD, I feel like I'm listening to a children's fairytale where something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. It feels like an old, dusty, abandoned circus. He uses very few "real" instruments in this album, save for a piano and some strings, but everything feels so together and so fragile that you can't help but be enthralled by it all. On the other hand, the album "Farewell Kingdom" uses a full orchestra in several cases, and his reliance on synthesizers, while still obvious, is a little bit less. I haven't quite decided on a story for this one, but it feels like water to me, if that makes any sense. It's very cold at times, almost impersonal, but it definitely seems to revolve around a theme of water.
At first glance, his music may seem to be what most call "ambient," and that is true to some extent. Quite a few of his songs don't have a central melody. And if you asked me to hum the theme of a song from any one of the albums that I've listened to innumerable times, I probably wouldn't be able to recall more than one or two. But that's the beauty of it! You can listen to the songs over and over again, and you'll still be surprised by loud noises, static, fading, voices; and you'll hear things you maybe missed the first time. He does so many unique things with his music. In the beginning of a song called Daydream Loveletter, it sounds like he's taken the previous song and just pressed the fast-forward button on the walkman, skipping through the piece before Daydream Loveletter actually starts. The mixing is definitely the art of his music. I've never seen anyone produce such awkward songs as well as he does. If it's worth anything, WEG is the only band in my entire iTunes folder to whom I have awarded five stars on every song.
Where to Listen to it: This is excellent homework music. If you want to listen to something while you do homework, but don't wish to be distracted by singing, this is the band for you. It definitely isn't something that you can just listen to on the fly if it comes up on your iPod while you're shuffling it. In fact, if that happens to me, I skip the song no matter how much I love it. This is a band that needs you to be sitting down and not distracted a thousand other things. It's great music to play if you're trying to get to sleep, but don't pick any of the songs that suddenly gets very loud around the middle (because that happens a lot).
Please check them out! I have two of my favorites uploaded here for you guys to try out. The first is from "Farewell Kingdom" and the second is from "The Lie Lay Land."
Call Past Rain
We Are the Massacre (Note: This has an extremely moving black and white video, but be warned! DO NOT watch it if you get squeamish watching violent deaths.)
World's End Girlfriend
Not much is known about the man behind World's End Girlfriend. All we know is that he's Japanese, he's very private, he has a parody spin-off band called "World's End Boyfriend," and his music is pure genius. Wikipedia has only this to say about him:
World's End Girlfriend is the musical project of Katsuhiko Maeda. Placing the Japanese band's music into one well-defined genre is difficult, as it blends elements of electronica and post-rock to create a unique style. His latest release is The Lie Lay Land (2005).
Just about everywhere else, you'll find the message "This profile has been removed at the artist's discretion" or something along those lines. Personally, I find something endearing about this lack of information. It makes him as mysterious and eccentric and his music.
Before I get into the real meat of his songs, I'll just lay out some basics. Most of his songs are long, ranging from three to twenty-five minutes EACH. The average length is usually around eight minutes or so. I don't know, because I haven't tried calculating it all up. Like Wiki says, his style is abstract, mixing noise, post-rock, experimental rock and electronica to creating music that is, in any sense, haunting.
Every album has a unique story that you can't quite describe fully. Not because of odd lyrics or strange words, in fact, there are no lyrics. Instead, Maeda weaves sound clips (in both English and Japanese) flawlessly into the flow of the music. Occasionaly, he will hire japanese singers, but their voices are so close together with the music that you almost don't notice that they're singing. Often times, the story is hard to figure out, and you just get certain themes or feelings from an album. The one with the strongest message, I think, is his latest album, "The Lie Lay Land." When I listen to that CD, I feel like I'm listening to a children's fairytale where something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. It feels like an old, dusty, abandoned circus. He uses very few "real" instruments in this album, save for a piano and some strings, but everything feels so together and so fragile that you can't help but be enthralled by it all. On the other hand, the album "Farewell Kingdom" uses a full orchestra in several cases, and his reliance on synthesizers, while still obvious, is a little bit less. I haven't quite decided on a story for this one, but it feels like water to me, if that makes any sense. It's very cold at times, almost impersonal, but it definitely seems to revolve around a theme of water.
At first glance, his music may seem to be what most call "ambient," and that is true to some extent. Quite a few of his songs don't have a central melody. And if you asked me to hum the theme of a song from any one of the albums that I've listened to innumerable times, I probably wouldn't be able to recall more than one or two. But that's the beauty of it! You can listen to the songs over and over again, and you'll still be surprised by loud noises, static, fading, voices; and you'll hear things you maybe missed the first time. He does so many unique things with his music. In the beginning of a song called Daydream Loveletter, it sounds like he's taken the previous song and just pressed the fast-forward button on the walkman, skipping through the piece before Daydream Loveletter actually starts. The mixing is definitely the art of his music. I've never seen anyone produce such awkward songs as well as he does. If it's worth anything, WEG is the only band in my entire iTunes folder to whom I have awarded five stars on every song.
Where to Listen to it: This is excellent homework music. If you want to listen to something while you do homework, but don't wish to be distracted by singing, this is the band for you. It definitely isn't something that you can just listen to on the fly if it comes up on your iPod while you're shuffling it. In fact, if that happens to me, I skip the song no matter how much I love it. This is a band that needs you to be sitting down and not distracted a thousand other things. It's great music to play if you're trying to get to sleep, but don't pick any of the songs that suddenly gets very loud around the middle (because that happens a lot).
Please check them out! I have two of my favorites uploaded here for you guys to try out. The first is from "Farewell Kingdom" and the second is from "The Lie Lay Land."
Call Past Rain
We Are the Massacre (Note: This has an extremely moving black and white video, but be warned! DO NOT watch it if you get squeamish watching violent deaths.)