What We Are Listening To: Monster Children NYC #15
Hello, my name is Naz Kawakami. I’m the new Editor in Chief of Monster Children based in New York City. Did you know that for a number of years, I was a radio DJ? You probably did because I never shut the fuck up about it. My show was called Night Drive, every Thursday from midnight to 3AM. Those were good times. A lot of sex, drugs, and partying were done in that little Honolulu radio studio. None of it done by me, but it’s still cool to think about.
Anyway, since taking this Editor job, I spend most of my day the way I spent my days as a DJ: listening to music. Some good, some bad. Some old, some new. Every Friday, I compile the week’s worth of music into a playlist. Songs we’ve been enjoying, songs we’ve just (re)discovered, and songs that offer a preview into what features we have coming out soon. Not the newest, not the rarest, just good music. The mood of the week over at the MC New York City office for you to judge and enjoy.
This week, I’m listening to nothing very exciting. I’m in a slump. Maybe it’s the fever, maybe it’s the fact that all of my Australian colleagues are at a music festival without me, or maybe it’s my summer blues which includes a general disinterest in anything that I’d normally fight over, which, though I could definitely think of ways to make it sound complex and meaningful, essentially boils down to what music sounds good and why. The slump makes this job tough. Everything is stupid. The general malaise notwithstanding, I’ve clumped together some music that I normally enjoy, heavily featuring one band that I’ve recently rediscovered: the pillows (not capitalized with purpose).
the pillows are a band from Japan who soundtracked most of if not all of FLCL, a short-lived but much-loved anime from the mid-90s which centers on a teenage boy living in an industrial town in Japan who is compelled to fight off robots and monsters that occasionally burst from nowhere because of an alien traveler in the shape of a twenty year old girl on a vespa who cursed him by whacking him on the forehead (leaving the mark of the beast, so to speak) with a glorious and mysteriously weaponized Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar. Hell of a pitch, hell of a show, hell of a soundtrack. the pillows created an immersive soundtrack that not only adds to the visuals, but fucking rips on its own and is certainly an overlooked alternative rock band of the mid-to-late ‘90s.
On the more serious note, I’ve included one of my favorite new artists, Headache (shoutout Alec Singer, I’m feeling so much), a mixture of very mushy and pushy beats by Vegyn laid on top of spoken word allegory; almost a chain of thought substance that could be misunderstood as tenuous but in fact can only be understood properly by people who used to wake up at night and have their breakfast off of a mirror. Headache is deeply impactful and immediately personal to me, and I already regret showing you, so don’t take it lightly.
Anyway, enjoy the hodgepodge, the cuteness, the suicidal thoughts, and the shooting star, on this week’s dispensing of my Spotify most recent.
(fittingly, this week’s accompanying image is a blurry (I have blurry taste) photo I shot of my friend Holden at some bar in Tokyo between Shibuya and Shinjuku back in 2017, a lifetime ago).
