The Japanese House - New Waves

If you follow us on Twitter you might have seen us grumbling recently about ‘premieres.’ It seems to us that music industry protocol decrees that every new song released must have some sort of premiere or exclusive coverage. Whether you’re Arcade Fire premiering your new video on Pitchfork or a lo-fi indie band with your latest slice of dirty noise streaming exclusively on some small scale d-i-y music blog, helping you to sell 50 copies of your latest vinyl release, if you haven’t got one, it seems as if you’re worth nothing in certain sectors.

But frankly we couldn’t give a flying fig about premieres / exclusives. Apologies now to bands and PR companies who offer them to us when they get an email back that says ‘yes this is good and we’re going to post it but we’re not bothered about going first with it, see if you can find someone else who this sort of thing is important to’ response. 

There’s a really great post about these things on Song By Toad called Why EXCLUSIVES!!! Make Me Hate Music. It’s kind of funny, kind of rude, but it hits the nail on the head from where we’re coming from. We're glad we're not the only ones who think this way. Basically these things are 99% of the time about desperation and attention. Have a read (and a giggle – we did) here.

Why do we mention this? Because of this new song by a new act that goes by the name of The Japanese House, who according to twitter is actually a singer called Amber Bain. A quick google search of Amber reveals that she may have released some past material under other names, although we’re unable to 100% confirm this. 

The Japanese House is due to release a debut EP Pools To Bathe In through Dirty Hit (home of The 1975, Wolf Alice and Marika Hackman) on the 27th April. But here’s the thing; it had its radio premiere on Zane Lowe last night, then its blog premiere on Noisey. So, by the rules of premieres and exclusives it’s already asserted itself as being a moderately important record by industry types.

This of course all sounds rather cynical on our part – but when it comes to the music, we’re not. Why? Because it wins. Still, the first track from The Japanese House fits perfectly in with the zeitgeist, with electronically filtered vocals and chilled studio electronics that are the equivalent of a lush pile carpet. But under all that trickery is the important stuff – a melody, and a rather alluring one at that. 

The Japanese House - Still