Skip to main content

Album of the Day: Half Fidelity - Andy Koyama

Half Fidelity, 2nd Edition (2022) - Andi Koyama

Treasure the times you stumble upon the record that perfectly matches the mood of the moment. Not the mood of yourself, but the mood of your surroundings--though I suppose the two are intertwined. We're on the cusp of fall. The leaves are changing. Outside, it's not warm, yet it's not cold. Today was completely overcast: a deep gray with an occasional mist to the air. And this album was, and is currently, on repeat.

Half Fidelity is consistently upbeat and melancholic, just the thing for the time of year where I'm getting ready to settle in for the winter but realizing once again that life ain't gonna slow down with me. Koyama sings "Everything's gonna be alright" at this exact moment of writing this. It's the end of track 4, 例えば僕が売れたら, and the rare English lyric for this release. Track 7, 山のあなた, is my favorite. It includes a spare electric guitar lick in the chorus, an out-of-place (and laughter-inducing) electronic squeal at the bridge, and a plodding beat from the drum machine. Much of the album is a blend of chip tune and acoustics, and apparently covers of Japanese pop songs from the 60s to the 2010s. You're not likely to recognize any tracks, but Koyama's earnest crooning begs the listener to dig deeper into a rich history.

I can't tell if this second edition is remastered or simply re-released as a second physical cassette run that I wish I hadn't missed out on, as the tunes here beg to be played as lofi as you can go with a set of shitty speakers. I also can't find any information about his only other release, Pay and Dize (2004), which is name-dropped in the description for Half Fidelity's first edition. The whole deal is a mystery, and that only adds to the appeal.

Label: Froh & Munter Records

Track for monthly playlist: "山のあなた"

Listen/Purchase: https://frohundmunter.bandcamp.com/album/fm092-half-fidelity-2nd-edition-with-bonus-tracks
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

State of the Blog (Part 1?)

No posts since October 2024 and then four since August 24? One of these posts is a random playlist and another is review of a Conan the Barbarian eBook? What’s going on around here? What’s the point of this blog? Practice is the point. I love writing, and I never write. I love creation, and I never create. So this is an exercise in commitment. Not that I have commitment issues. Rather, what I regularly commit to rarely fulfills me. I commit to my job, but if I didn’t have to work it, I wouldn’t work it. Two hours a day on the commute circuit? Two hours a day of poisoning the atmosphere and wearing down my body? No thank you. I commit to cleaning the house. To building habits and routines. To feeling productive. But that’s all a racket. True commitment is creating. It’s loving. So here I am, in a hotel room outside of Princeton, New Jersey typing these words and learning more about myself than I knew five minutes ago. I need to commit less often to the arbitrary. I need to commit less ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conan: Black Starlight (Book Review)

Conan: Black Starlight (2023) - John C. Hocking Before diving into this series of e-books, which promises to capture the spirit of the original Conan tales, I'd read very little Robert E. Howard. I've since started reading the complete Conan stories, and I've found that this one really did nail it. Firstly, props to Hocking for crafting Black Starlight to be entirely accessible to any reader despite being a direct sequel to his own Conan and the Emerald Lotus . He doesn't include an exposition dump, yet he is able to clue the reader in just enough to keep them from getting lost. What you have is an extremely accessible sword-and-sorcery tale that is riveting from start to finish. In an effort to cross the River Styx undetected, Conan and friends end up in what seems to be a ghost town, but they are soon set upon by zombies and richly described demons that attempt to kill the travelers and steal the sorceress Zelandra's supply of E...
Post a Comment
Read more

Album of the Day: Danger - Mallwalker

Danger (2023) - Mallwalker This one's been in my Bandcamp collection for a while, and despite listening a few times and digging it, I didn't realize it's a memorial to Mallwalker's late singer Sarah Danger. I jammed to it a few times and wanted more, which led me to Kerry Cardoza's moving obituary of the young punk. Mallwalker was loud, snotty, quick, and juvenile: everything right with DIY punk through the ages. Here you'll find the deadly serious "Hunt You Down" that speaks to eradicating sex pests from the scene. You'll hear gleeful nihilism with a cover of semi-obscure punk of yesteryear: Flux of Pink Indians' "Tube Disaster" (complete a with snarling faux-British accent). You'll hear the delightfully stupid "Parent Trap" ("Don't kiss your honey when your nose is runny!/You might think it's funny but it's snot !"), which would be unbearable in any other talent's hands. This is not the case ...
Post a Comment
Read more