Curious what notable personalities in the scene think was great this year? So is TGEFM! So we reached out to some of our favorite luminaries ranging from musicians, label personnel, and more for their “Best of 2024” lists. Now, listen: TGEFM is not a taskmistress. Contributors can write these out however they want. So if it doesn’t actually look or read like a list… and sometimes it really is just a list with no other observations! Who cares?
Tokyo alt-rock trio FVRMN just dropped a new single, “OUR ONE TRUE LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD.” The band have also agreed to tell TGEFM about their favorites of 2024.
Hello everyone, I’m Jay and I ama. graphic designer/artist here in Tokyo. I’ve assembled a ramshackle list of memorable pieces from my broken year and I am looking forward to seeing your lists. When we look back will we still wonder…
Is it worth it? To unearth it?.
If you’d like to follow my art/music , you are invited to meet me HERE
BEST/WORST THING:sobriety – to be continued
BEST LIVE SHOW IS THE SAME THIS YEAR AS IT WAS EVERY YEAR:Tokyo delivers a lot of live musical excitement as the city’s hard-wired energy brings out the maniacal side both in it’s performers and fans, and every year, Shinjuku’s famous live house LOFT hosts the Halloween Ball: which is a 2 day event that features a cavalcade of hard working bands from Japan and overseas. I’ve been steadily attending this gig for many years and am still stoked for it every year. Rockabilly, garage rock, punk, surf, ska, R&B all get worshipped here under this roof to an equal degree. Usually always a life-changing spectacle and one that binds to the memory for ages to come. Come to Japan. Come and get stupider with us. HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2024: Adolescents, Fuzztones, Electric Frankenstein, Hot Laundry, and the absolutely killer shred of Tokyo’s ANGEL FACE and GUNK who ruled hard!
BFTG HALLOWEEN BALL site
HARLOT’S NEST – Memories Within The Night
My fondness for lo-fi weirdo metal knows no bounds and every year it just seems like there is so much that’s sprouting, but not a lot of it fails to both scratch the itch and ride the line into something special and truly cool. Australia has an answer to this and it’s Harlot’s Nest. Imagine the songwriting of an 80’s new wave band but melted down into a weird form of underground black metal. Layers of thinly distorted guitars and open-mic’d drums rack up a din as odd keyboard swells slowly creep in and out offering both genius and confusion within a span of minutes. This could be a darkwave synth pop album in anyone else’s hands.
You like Joy Division? You like Darkthrone? You like Harlot’s Nest.
MIDWIFE – No Depression In Heaven
The concept of simple music intrigues me. Whenever i hear any killer DJ spinning old r&B and rockabilly, it’s a great feeling how effortless it is to simply slip into each song – despite the familiarity of the progressions or the chord changes being exactly what you knew it was going to be. This MIdwife album hooked me in upon first listen and held just enough distant hooks to keep me thinking about it for weeks after. The record glows and hums with the delicate burn of a near-burned out lightbulb in a sea green hallway. Each song sitting within a nest of fuzz, haze and intrigue. This kind of approach only really works when the songs have enough backbone to support the precious frame; and Midwife does the thing that makes it mysterious and blurred out enough to keep ears affixed to the slowcore parade. I think that’s called beauty.
SADNESS – i love you
Sigh…i dunno. This one feels absurd for a 50 year old man to write about…but much to my surprise … Sadness’s split cassette with Abriction was my most listened to recording in 2023. Something about these one-person musical masterminds is generally of interest to me, but this is just insane. Sadness just keeps putting out really really hard-hitting brilliant and gorgeous music that is not just emotional…but is dripping, overflowing with elements that in the wrong hands would just be a gross mess. I admit, part of me crumbled inside on it’s release day as I saw the album was called (ahem)…i love you. I braced myself for something incredibly corny and hard to handle. Instead I found myself greeted right from the start with the trademark warmth and ultra-smartly composed songs that completely absorbed me from start to finish. It shouldn’t be this easy for some guy in his basement to put together magnum opus after magnum opus and just throw them out there on bandcamp and see who likes it…yet here we are. And I’m gonna feel dumb to admit this; but there’s a part on this album where his dog comes up to the microphone and sniffs it and for some reason, that made me cry harder than I have all year.
Sadness.
S.O.H. – Cost To Live
Best cover art of 2024 goes to this blazing little album that wastes no time letting you know that we got the best bass tone on record for any punk/hardcore release this year. Blazingly fast with a wild vocal approach that suits the crazed energy flow so well. Discharge meets Vice Squad with buckets of personality and conviction.
NILUFER YANYA – My Method Actor
I really fell deeply madly in love with the previous album Painless and this follow up feels right. Some slightly more amped up production, familiar melody lines…yet pushing in some new strange directions. Yanya’s guitar phrasing remains a highlight and her smooth smokey voice just oozes through the speakers, yet does not quite cut through the production. Subtle touches are what really keeps this album moving along and it’s a rewarding experience on the first few listens; however, it’s those repeated spins where My Method Actor really begins to share it’s singular bloom. I can’t help but be reminded of the royal smoothness of SADE when hearing the basic bones of this album; yet the art-rock approach to the production serves as the core personality to this brilliant collection of songs. Each note slowly drifts, slides, and squeezes in and out of frame; at times it feel like the album is revealing picturesque glimpses from an old home movie; it’s hazy faded 3am glory hanging like a veil. No surprise that this is an astounding follow up and I can’t wait to hear what is next.
FROG POWER – Morpheaus, My Son
Crackpot album of the year right here. Complete brain-braised-in-boiling-bongwater pop that is so skewered from reality that it almost possesses a cult appeal of it’s own design. When the gears click into place, it’s a genius pop album full of hummable melodies, but the shadows of Happy Flowers loom large over this project and the overall result is one of those albums that you might hear in your own head during one of those infamous “help, I’m lost in the supermarket and I’m tripping my face off” kind of scenarios that used to happen in the 1990’s often. Reverb-soaked and echo-laden, the music here sort of defies not just expectations, but has my head hurting when I ponder the finer details of how exactly did Frog Power get this sound? A twisted lo-fi labyrinth of essential listening that’s ripe for discovery.
SPARROW MOON LODGE – Bulldozer
This was released in January on cassette tape and has sat with me all year long. An album of graceful opaque melodies that feels like an old house. The feel of those round brass doorknobs on the fingertips, stubborn patches of wallpaper that have survived countless seasons, the creak of the pipes as the water tasks it’s time to warm up, wax remnants of candles that have gone dark with dust, and all those old photographs that no one has the guts to ever throw away. Echoes of memory, forms of past selves, and somehow managing grief all seem like central themes within these pieces. Perfectly fingerpicked folk guitar lines brilliantly intertwined with touches of organ, sleigh bells, haunting chord progressions and some spacey chords that tease at a trip towards the sky…but most of this album sits grounded right in place…right where it was made…at home.
LISTEN HERE TO SPARROW MOON LODGE
ЗВЁЗДНЫЙ ХРАМ (STAR TEMPLE) – S/T
This one took me by surprise….but it’s not a surprise at all… this is just simply how I like to hear this kind of black metal music. Literally, almost every single thing here is cut to exactly how I digest it. Odd front cover photo…zero information…no song titles, no lyrics…no band photos. Stark black and white package…but within this music lies so many layers. The hallmarks are pretty much clear and present here: non-stop whirlwind blur drumming…fast-paced tremelo guitar lines…buzzing bass. It’s all simple, repetitive…yet it builds…and builds and builds…not in such an epic way…so perhaps the more fitting word would be that it grows. The simple guitar lines that welcome the listener in somehow slowly begin to shift somewhere along the icy terrain…although it feels the same…the subtle melody shift brings a whole new shade to the sound. The drums continue to attack with a jackhammer’s pace, yet their volume is cornered up against the storm and despite the fact that they are driving the pace, they serve as a sort of brutal meditative wind that acts as both a whip to the heels and a frame within the song is contained….and yet it grows. The whole band sounds like they were recorded live for this album…yet it all sounds impeccably perfect.The guitar interplay is not flashy…there are no real solos or grandstanding displays of technique…just an impenetrable wall of torrential sound that truly becomes transcendent throughout it’s running time. The vocals deserve a mention for sure as they match the desperater howl of the music therein. The expressionistic moans, roars, and barks are that of a wounded animal seeking refuge in a desolate landscape. They never go so far as to sound off-kilter or even self-aware…it just simply adds a mystical magical poison to the pot and one that seers with the stark sting of emotional delusion. This is the kind of music that seems to serve as a fierce statement of purpose and devotion to the craft; a testament of urgency and bleak awareness, and a bizarre journey through unwavering blasts of hardships. Through this exhilarating blast of harrowing power, I couldn’t help but to surrender. Something about this sound allowed me to quietly search for that inner mirror and find an odd balance of mystery and introspective thought…even as it was blasting around me. To me…that is the prime mental real estate to camp out in when absorbing an album and Startemple dug out a corner in that cold field for me with this one.
LISTEN HERE to ЗВЁЗДНЫЙ ХРАМ (STAR TEMPLE)
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
