WL//WH Premiere: JAPAN REVIEW Fictionalize the Alter Ego of “David Chicane” [Blackjack Illuminist Records]

WL//WH Premiere JAPAN REVIEW

Building on the noise-drenched, motorik soundscapes of their 2021 debut “Kvetch Sounds”, Japan Review return with an ambitious, genre-hopping second album, ‘The Slow Down’, a new full-length collection of experimental pop songs expanding on their unique approach to texture and melody, delving deeper into the electronic influence of Broadcast and Apparat fused with the likes of The Notwist, Beach House, Hood and the Microphones to create dense, hypnotic songs led by fuzzy, reverb washed vocals.

WL//WH is very happy to host the Glasgow, Scotland-based Electronic Shoegaze two-piece Japan Review, made up of Genna Foden and Adam O’Sullivan, the latest arrival in our dearly familiar Berlin‘s label Blackjack Illuminist Records, run by Alexander Donat, for the premiere of the second single “David Chicane”,

a title originated from a happy accidental reference to our friend who helped us produce it. We don’t call him that… it’s not really a nickname either… but it’s a fictionalized version of him that someone wrote into a novel as a pretty thinly veiled insult, which we all thought was pretty funny…I suppose we’re on a mission to ensure David’s fictional alter-ego has a greater cultural presence than David himselfthe band explains

“The Slow Down” LP cover artwork

giving us another intriguing glimpse into Japan Review’s upcoming sophomore full-length album, “The Slow Down”, due out on November 24, 2023.

David Chicane existed in another form and we played it live when we were a four-piece a few times but it never quite came together. We ended up ditching half the song and replacing it with something brand new which is partially inspired by a record called “Maj Deegan” by the band Wandering Lake. I’m not sure it’s available anywhere anymore, but when it came out in around 2010 I just loved everything about it.the band adds

Equally nostalgic and alienating, “David Chicane” channels lilting tinny high hats along with a ceaseless, hazy and distorted shoegazing guitar flow, blurring into a stirring mirage of sparse off-tempo, knocking percussions, meandering humming bass lines, shimmery magnetic strumming, and radiant echoing sad ripples, layered with break-through piercing and droning keyboard overtones, wistfully reverberating around a lost and dreamy vocal, longing for balance and belonging amid a light fuzzy and chirpy background noise of disenchantment.

Japan Review‘s forthcoming second LP, “The Slow Down”, is slated for release, on Cassette/CD & Digital formats, on November 24, 2023, via the Berlin-based DIY label Blackjack Illuminist Records.

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