Artists
Album Info
Release Date: 2024-10-04Label: Small But Hard Records
Berlin based, Japanese born artist popon presents her debut album ‘Improvised Monday’. Recorded in Berlin and peppered with field recordings from trips to Japan (throughout the record you can catch snippets of birdsong, children’s voices - most often her niece - as well as her own voices making an occasional appearance). Despite popon’s roots in Germany and Japan, her music has definite traces of the UK - prang, skunk fuelled (star dog fuelled?) echo and clang bring to mind CR7 chambers or memories of the future. popon spent a lot of time in Bristol and cites the DIY scene t(here) as a major inspiration. Throughout the record there is the almost constant hum of Bristolian low end pressure, but equally present are the metallic clanks and dubbed voices of punk / post punk.The record plays out with horror film narrative - last track ‘emmaHOOY’ serving as a kind of uneasy closure. We are left with (arguably) the sweetest and most melodic section of the record just as it closes, but there is still a sense of dread (cut to Jack Torrance frozen in ice), N.B there is a ‘bonus scene’ for those that buy the tape.
popon has managed to do something remarkable in distilling the essence of UK paranoia, Japanese punk minimalism and the non stop kinetic fwd propulsion of Berlin, making it something completely her own.
Amos Childs
released October 4, 2024
-All tracks mastered by Goh Nakada
-Artwork by NKUB
-Title text by Nao Sugitani Milic
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