WILT_2025-09

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 23 Feb 2025 to 1 Mar 2025.

1. RAINY HEART – Kingo Hamada
2. Crush – Beckett
3. Don’t Get Me Started (James Holden Remix) – The Smile, James Holden
4. Inside – Salami Rose Joe Louis
5. Steady – Daniel Brandt
6. Skipping – Pat’s Soundhouse
7. Seasonal Disorder – Martin Jarl
8. 抱かれに来た女 – Kingo Hamada
9. WASTED SUMMER LOVE – Kingo Hamada
10. シャワールームのある風景 – Kingo Hamada
11. GIRLS – Kingo Hamada
12. Slow Nights – Tomoko Aran
13. Kimi ha 1000% – 1986 OMEGA TRIBE
14. Must Be Lucky 〜愛の国へ〜 – Cindy
15. JAPANESE WOMAN – Bread And Butter
16. Otoko to Onna – Junko Ohashi
17. It Will Be Gone – Elori Saxl

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2025-09

Notes

RAINY HEART by Kingo Hamada came out of nowhere and it was an instant joy to my ears and sensibilities because of its strong syncopations and horn flourishes. As a bass player, the respect for the pocket is so apparent and bound to make any groove lovers locked in for the duration of the song.

There was also some delving into electronic beats inspired by Burial, because I needed yet more stimulation and accompaniment while at work. Those leanings led to discoveries of the James Holden remix of The Smile’s Don’t Get Me Started, which is a frenetic rhythmic tryst, Salami Rose Joe Louis’s Insidewhich sucks you into a swirling arpeggiated synth pool, and Daniel Brandt’s Steady, with its droning 8-note bass line driving an ethereal fever dream of beats, synths and all sorts of bloop.

Pockets of ephemerality also set in with pieces by Pat’s Soundhouse and Martin Jarl, both of which create music and moods that permeate any state or any space. 

Somehow, the playlist then shifts gears back towards the city pop beginnings of Kingo Hamada, or rather, the type of Japanese new pop from the 1980s to the 1990s that fused rock, jazz, r&b and pop into a musical fusion that distilled the precision of each genre and alchemised a hyper-focused celebration of almost clinical groove and musicianship that listens like a concentrated concoction of groovy-berry juice.

I didn’t expect to go down this hard with city-pop for this playlist, but it was a welcomed change of pace. Apart from Kingo Hamada’s work, some of these grooves go extremely hard, like Bread and Butter’s Japanese Woman and Junko Ohashi’s Otoko to Onna or they go buttery smooth like Tomoko Aran’s Slow Nights, and yet you can kind of tell that they come from a similar period of musical innovation and excitement.