On a whim, I recently set out to find some good Japanese juke, or at least juke-inflected beat work. Big surprise: there’s some great shit. Over the next week, I’ll do a short series about the country’s take on the stuttering style.
After they were the subject of the first installment, the Japanese club night INNIT tweeted me some suggestions and indadvertedly guessed the focus of part two: Picnic Women, a producer from Osaka. (On the right track!) On top of being a jitter-beat terror—"Ripstick Girl" makes a fine mess out of an ’80s gospel track, and "II Women" deftly takes on Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men—Picnic Women has a smart eye for packaging, selling (or at least mocking up designs for) his II Women EP in a pillbox, and I Can See EP as a book.
Download: Picnic Women, "Ripstick Girl"
Download: Picnic Women, "II Women"
Most of this stuff is self-released, but there's one single on Kool Switch Works, a Nippon-based label that released a solid, footwork-centric compilation last summer also featuring some great stuff from bbbbb.
And finally, here's something to connect the slightly harsher Picnic Women to the more flowery Parkgolf, the Sapporo producer celebrated in the first Japanese Juke post. They're both featured on Fogpak #5, January's installment of an every-few-months series that spans all kinds of Japanese beat music (check out track 16, by mononomonooto, for some cool snare work).