Every month, scrmbl highlights some of the most noteworthy releases from Japanese artists available on Bandcamp. Sometimes, this coincides with the platform’s own Bandcamp Friday —an event where the company itself waives all revenue share and instead lets artists reap all the money made off sales.

Make it three in a row! Bandcamp Friday continues its streak today, Oct. 2, with plenty of new releases from Japanese artists to check out and (hopefully) purchase. Even if you’ve stumbled across this sometime after (or, like, before the next edition of this promotion), it’s always a good chance to discover new music.

FLYING DAIMYO — GATANA

Imagine a matsuri being held in the middle of a mosh pit, and you start to approach the whirlwind rock created by Japanese band FLYING DAIMYO. Over a handful of albums and singles, the project has offered up some of the most delirious experimental rock in the country in recent years by letting a flurry of ideas spray out over the course of a single song. Somewhere between Hakushi Hasegawa and Boredoms with moments of fest-ready bliss, FLYING DAIMYO are one of the hardest bands to pin down…which is what makes them so fun in the first place.

The two song GATANA offers a bite-size version of the unit’s appeal. The title track captures the splattery side of their rock sound, with dips into traditional Japanese sound and punk thrown around. It results in something downright pummeling, but with moments of melodic clarity cutting through the clatter. Same goes for “DRUN,” though that one is more about locking in and letting mutations play out around the edges, always keeping the hooky center in view even as electronic elements or sudden vocal detours emerge. Get it here. 

Smany — Petrichor at Dawn

It rained (or at least partially opened up) for 34 straight days in Tokyo over the past couple of months. There’s worse things in the world for sure…but this sucked, and made nearly every day glummer than it has any right to be.

This, though, proved to be a fitting setting to hear Petrichor at Dawn, a work apt for wet conditions forcing one to stay inside. Smany has always been an artist exploring the sense of inertia, first via more colorful electronics and more recently via stripped down piano works. Her latest leans towards the latter while welcoming drops of the prior, giving songs such as “Sounds” a warm glow radiating out of its sparse structure. Yet it is often a gloomy listen, at least initially. Her voice wraps around delicate piano melodies while she sings about connections that can’t be made again and death (including the particularly ghostly “I died.,” where Smany sounds like she’s communicating from the other side). It’s a listen that gets heavy, but one still moving with humanity, a reminder that even in dreary conditions something persists. Get it here.

Stones Taro — Physics

There’s a sense of club physicality to Kyoto producer Stones Taro’s first release via London label Faux Poly. That’s largely because these are among the most floor-focused cuts they’ve released in a minute, putting the emphasis on the thump that makes this feels like one to lose yourself in via its skittering dub (“Doorkeeper”) or garage-indebted swagger (“Hold On, Math”). Taro is capable of many forms, but here he reminds of his ability to get bodies in motion. Get it here. 

House Of Tapes — The Shape of What Remains

Nagoya’s House Of Tapes inspires an overuse of words like “claustrophobic” and “crushing” from me. For the bulk of their career, the electronic artist has shown how the most constricting (hey, that reads a little different) sounds can turn beautiful in the right hands. That sonic strangle creeps in a few times on The Shape of What Remains, but rather than being the center point this approach serves a more thematic purpose on what House Of Tapes says is their first suite. Here, the busier passages come only after a build set upon piano twinkles and woozy-making synth, going through passages of soft and loud. Get it here.

Kimi Shin Ryaku ♡ Kiyuuketsu Shoujo — #WITHVAMPIRE

#WITHVAMPIRE offers a testament to the bedroom possibilities Vocaloid and singing-synthesizer technology can offer. Despite a nod to the supernatural in the title and a fair amount of nods to ghosts in the lyrics,” this is a bouncy set of dance-pop with the synthesized voice of IA put in the center. There’s moments of musical aggression — ”SUMMERTIME OOPARTS” dives from jaunty piano portions to hardstyle depths — but the real draw here is hearing catchy electronic pop coming from someone making the most of this technology. Get it here. 

Hayato Murakami — Swansongs

One of the more interesting genre experiments of the current decade is "angelic post-shoegaze,” a term coined by the founders of the Siren For Charlotte imprint a few years ago. The gist of it — the emotional core of shoegaze could be carried over to the sounds of the internet age, particularly electronic styles and especially to works featuring synthesized voices as messenger. That ethos and idea has carried over to places beyond in recent times, with Hayato Murakami’s Swansongs for Lost Frog Productions being one of the finest recent examples. Detailing the minor details of a woman’s life as she heads towards her happy ending, this is a collection of delicate electronic songs sometimes touching on rock and other times closer to IDM that capture a fleeting feeling already fading the moment they start. Get it here. 

TOMC — Elan

Last, something a bit more chill…but still every bit as emotive.

Electronic artist TOMC has been dabbling in moody beats for a while now, playing in various formats but grounded in a hip-hop-inspired approach for the bulk of it. Newest collection Elan offers one of the more pure “beat” collections TOMC has made in a bit, avoiding lo-fi in favor of rich tracks featuring piano, saxophone, and more. While often smooth and soothing, instrumental touches like this give the numbers on Elan a constant longing, sometimes aching and other times warm. Get caught up in it, but don’t miss the feelings powering it forward. Get it here.