Sundaze 1847

Hello,


Today's Artist is the musical project of Katsuhiko Maeda, whose work blends elements of electronic, classical, and post-rock music.......N'Joy

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

At the age of 10, he was inspired by his father's collection of classical music. Not much is known about him or his background, he generally seems to avoid publicity, which has ultimately made him a rather mysterious character. His love for classical music -- which already started at the tender age of 10 -- is fairly evident when listening to his surprisingly challenging albums. He was already composing music with guitars and keyboards at the age of 13 and apparently hasn't stopped ever since. The music of World's End Girlfriend defies categorization. It combines countless ideas and genres together quite effortlessly, resulting in a weird, but exciting musical world. In this world, you can find post-rock, modern classical music, electronica, all presented in a tasteful fashion. The clichés of the genre are thankfully missing, and there's one thing you can be sure of; World's End Girlfriend will not let you rest on your laurels; he will always keep you on your toes as the music often takes drastic changes in direction without any warning.

Some artists are authentic masters of human emotion. They are able to tug at the heart, weaken the knees, and bring out the tears of even the most emotionally impassive individuals. Katsuhiko Maeda is one of the most accurate contemporary examples of a musician who excels in this craft. With a fanbase that stretches from his native Japan to the United States, his primary project, World’s End Girlfriend, has pleased the masses for seven years with its incorporation of orchestral post-rock and experimental electronica. Nearly a household name in Japan with his multi-instrumental prowess, Maeda is hardly the embodiment of a conventional songwriter. His incorporation of classical music, avant-garde production, and tumultuously layered samples is hardly the norm for an internationally reputable musician. Whether or not his cultish fan following is most impressed by his instrumental grasp or immaculate songwriting ability, there is one aspect of World’s End Girlfriend that remains quite certain. There is no other conscientious artist in activity that crafts music in the same distinctive style as World’s End Girlfriend.

Barring a few vigorous transitions in the demeanor of song production, Maeda’s stylistic flow has remained nearly the same throughout his career. Including his collaboration with Japanese post-rock veterans Mono, Maeda’s releases have been a vigorous display of his trademark tendency to present songs in a cloud of unpredictability and ceaseless turbulence. Always keeping the listener on edge, Maeda has proven that, at any moment, he can transform of an instrumentally tranquil setting into a scene of abrupt chaos  Maeda’s typical instrumentation bursts with pianos, strings, upright bass, and most orchestral instruments imaginable, occasionally laced with sound effects in the feverish vein of a door quickly closing shut, the scream of a child, or the laughter of a deranged madman. However, when Maeda shines brightly in his occasional spots of instrumented placidity, he echoes the more classic works of Ryuichi Sakamoto, yet another famed Japanese musician.

A cinematic feel is one of the trademarks of Maeda's detailed compositions (which is hardly surprising in this field of music), but it's a tad more orchestrated than the average post-rock act. His music has been featured in the Go Shibata directed film Late Bloomer (2004). He also composed the soundtrack to Air Doll, a 2009 movie by award-winning director Hirokazu Koreeda and scored the 2011 Taiwanese-Chinese film Starry Starry Night.
Another characteristic of Maeda’s work that continues to impress is his ability to produce songs that render a variety of moods and emotions. There are few artists who can make a human being as overjoyed, ardent, or terrified as Katsuhiko Maeda through the sheer art of music.

World's End Girlfriend has performed live in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Macau, Spain (twice at the Sonar festival), Switzerland, China, Taiwan, UK and the US. He did a 32 date tour of North America with Mono in 2007, with whom he also made a collaborative CD. In 2010 World's End Girlfriend played shows in Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

Katsuhiko has so many faces, so many faces and metamorphoses, and all are so different, honestly, this is Maeda's darkest work, despite the rather majestic title. There's never a moment of bright and rising beauty in this album. No awe-inspiring crescendos, or anything like that. It's just somber and downtrodden the whole way through. Good luck listening to "Nobody Comes Ghost Goes" without thinking about joining a suicide club. Anyway, as collages go, this one never stops building...

Worlds End Girlfriend - Enchanted Landscape Escape   (flac  349mb)

01 Yesterdays Light Circus 13:26
02 Breath Cannon Escape Wall 4:59
03 Old Winter Ferris Wheel 7:22
04 Lover Teresa Dead Field 1:39
05 Falling Marble Chair 6:14
06 Sheep Creep 3:41
07 Shine Hill in the Palm 1:51
08 Sleeping Under the Rainbow 5:59
09 Purple Ripple 4:10
10 Snow Crystal Lake 2:10
11 Rain Prayer 6:48
12 Grandfather Clock Heart 7:16
13 Good Morning Hellwalker 1:17
14 Wanderland Falling Today 6:47

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

Everything you hear in this album is made by Katsuhiko Maeda; The compositions, the instrumentation, you name it. He may well be one of the best unknown modern composer of our times and there aren't many people that know of him or his works. The Lie Lay Land pretty much speaks for itself. It's post-rock like no other and it stands out aside from the bunch. The first time you listen to this album you won't even recall it being post-rock at all. It truly defies categorization. Derivative is a word that doesn't fit in World's End Girlfriend's context. But enough about that, let's talk about the album

The first thing noticeable is that Katsuhiko Maeda plays a wide variety of instruments even more so than previous World's End Girlfriend releases so it's very well orchestrated. The album also has an excellent mixture of electronica effects and more heart warming instrumentation. As I already mentioned in my review of Farewell Kingdom by them, they don't rely much on guitars as other bands. The guitar here has the same roll as the trumpets, horns, pianos and all other instrument played. It's also a pretty demanding album to listen to. It's rather unpredictable and you won't know what to expect next while listening to it, but that doesn't detract the beauty of it or the flow of the album, instead it makes it more demanding and engaging to listen to and it will keep you coming for more. Another great improvement in their sound is that none of the songs sound alike. Every song develops in its own distinct way. One of the best way to describe the atmosphere of this album is dreamy. I don't think there isn't an album that fit this description as well as this album except for Sigur Rós' Agaetis Byrjun, but they sound NOTHING alike so be warned. The album has a mystical feel to it as well. From the name of the album, cover, song names (Garden In The Ceiling, Unspoiled Monster, Phantasmagoria Moth Gate) to the actual sound and cinematic feel, The Lie Lay Land produces wonderful movie-like images of wonderful and surrealistic places that you will only find in dreams and movies. Plus the emotional factor of their melodies makes it all even more wonderful to listen to.

Worlds End Girlfriend - The Lie Lay Land  (flac 427mb)

01 Phantasmagoria Moth Gate 6:00
02 We Are the Massacre 5:45
03 Satan Veludo Children 8:39
04 Garden in the Ceiling 6:39
05 The Owl of Windward 5:20
06 Scorpius Circus 10:17
07 Song Cemetary 3:27
08 Give Me Shadow, Put on My Crown 12:02
09 Black Hole Bird 14:06
10 Unspoiled Monster 6:30

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

Hurtbreak Wonderland avoids sounding mournful and instead relishes in hallucinative fantasy, conjuring an Alice in Wonderland type of narrative as suggested by the astounding cover art. The songs here are instrumental but are far removed from conventional rock dynamics, opting for wild pairings of melodic strings and intense electronic beats, creating a swirling experience similar to the work of Venetian Snares. Songs like “Birthday Resistance” and “100 Years of Choke” move from pleasant, classically inspired compositions into bombastic freak-outs, creating dramatic transitions that are often dizzying in their execution. Most of the album carries on in this fashion, as gorgeous piano, harp and brass fills are layered over the vivid drum and bass patterns.

Hurtbreak Wonderland is a beautiful and original record that clearly breaks new ground in the post-rock genre. The cornucopia of instruments and noises used here leaves plenty of room for continued exploration. In short, WEG has created a deep and dreamy effort that begs for multiple listens.

Worlds End Girlfriend - Hurtbreak Wonderland  (flac 399mb)

01 Wandering 1:49
02 Birthday Resistance 5:23
03 100 Years of Choke 13:22
04 Grass Ark 10:14
05 Ghost of a Horse Under the Chandelier 7:56
06 The Octuple Personality and Eleven Crows 10:32
07 Breath or Castle Ballad 3:15
08 Bless Yourself Bleed 10:32
09 Dance for Borderline Miscanthus 4:39
10 River Was Filled With Stories 10:13

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

This isn’t what Katsuhiko Maeda should be doing, he kind of got rid of everything that made people interested in WEG to begin with, it is not a bad record but it is a bit too bland, soundtracks do have their limitations because they cannot distract from the movie. There are plenty of slow, beautiful and relaxing passages to be found in his previous output. This album consists solely of such passages. It also introduces another quality previously unknown to  World's End Girlfriends output, it can become boring. The glitches, the twists, the sudden chanches in speed and volume, the whole orchestral and electronic madness, everything that made World's End Girlfriend one of the most exciting artists of this decade is missing. It is a beautiful soundtrack nontheless and it probably works well with the movie.

Worlds End Girlfriend - Air Doll OST   (flac  341mb)

01 Wake Up With The Wind
02 The Day Of Birth
03 Grant The Prayer
04 Umbrella
05 The Slope Of The Cavity
06 Reflect The Light Shadow
07 Intersection
08 Colors Of The Adventure
09 Records Revisited
10 Road
11 Dream Birthday
12 For Scattered
13 Wazu Rain
14 Is A Little Trot
15 Into The Water
16 100 Years Of Choke
17 Days Is The Question
18 Some Answers
19 Wind Recurrence
20 Breathing
21 Water Line

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

And as a bonus, Air Doll the movie, but it comes with a warning; you might never look at blow up dolls or people that use these the same way again.


Korean actress Bae Doo-na is superb in Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda's Air Doll, it's based on the Japanese manga The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl and tells the story of a life-size inflatable doll used as a sex object for a lonely waiter who finds a heart and becomes a real person. A deep, thought-provoking, beautifully filmed, and well acted piece of Japanese cinema. Bae Doona is magnificent as an inflatable doll that develops a soul and falls in love. Hirokazu Koreeda wows once again with his deliberate film making, effectively commenting on social problems dealing with urban life.


Hirokazu Koreeda  - Air Doll (mp4  865mb)

New version up with English Spanish and Italian subtitles available now

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx