If the stark, digital landscapes conjured up by the likes of Perfume and Capsule leave you looking for something a little more human, then the slightly soulful strains of Shiho Fujisawa might be what you're looking for.
Having been a DJ and producer for a few years, Shihio Fujisawa released the first full length of her own material in 2008. Featuring a host of guest vocalists, her music is a mix of slamming club beats, spiced up with some world beat flavor, occasional big-band samples and a decided lack of robotized vocal performances. Instead of running everything though the magic auto-pop-star box, Shiho lets her guests actually use their own talent to bring some original feel to her productions. A bit more reminiscent of the original funky house tunes of the early '90, Shiho's music is a bit more mature and fashionable than the average teen dance honed to an emotionless science by Yasutaka Nakata.
Her time as a DJ really shows with tracks like "Uniting of Gene" (Krupa, I'm assuming) "Music Rainbow" and "Drum Crazy for DJ." Maybe that's what sets her apart from other out-of-the-box acts. Her music, while at time just as wooden as the rest, still manages to sound like someone more interested in getting people to shake their asses than sell songs to TV adverts. Sure, her second album breaks all of these rules, with plenty of auto-tune and much more polished and compressed sounds, but the soul it still there. Yet the dark-wave synth-pop of "Sentimentalizm" and the delicate twinkling of "Freesia" prove that she's still much more than a one trick pony. Which makes it all the more interesting to see what she does next.
Happy Hour
Official Site
MySpace
Releases:
Funky Girl - 2009
Happy Hour - 2008
Funky Girl album promo
Happy Hour Live
