While the Japanese duo, STILL DREAMS (who we were introduced to recently with that fantastic single, “Ultra Doomed”), gets their debut on Elefant Records ready, we are advancing a few of their songs as Digital Singles. And “Live With Excuse” is an absolutely spectacular appetizer. It is one of the more intense songs from their upcoming Mini-LP, “Make Believe”, full of dense, epic, euphoric textures, b…
While the Japanese duo, STILL DREAMS (who we were introduced to recently with that fantastic single, “Ultra Doomed”), gets their debut on Elefant Records ready, we are advancing a few of their songs as Digital Singles. And “Live With Excuse” is an absolutely spectacular appetizer. It is one of the more intense songs from their upcoming Mini-LP, “Make Believe”, full of dense, epic, euphoric textures, but with an absolutely addictive and dreamy melody. As if a Phil Spector of the XXI century had made a beyond perfect pop album with BLONDIE. We can see this in the video, directed by Keisuke Maeda, that has Ryuta and Maaya surrounded by nature, playing music in a river, later letting themselves be bathed in fireworks at nightfall. It is an epic explosion of euphoria, working from the pop essence of groups like M83 and ARCADE FIRE. A wall of sound hiding major melodies, or a reformulation of MY BLOODY VALENTINE’s universe through synthesizers.
But this single also comes with a previously unreleased song, “Telepathy”, which lets their clubbier facet loose (and this time the leading vocals are from Ryuta), and evokes NEW ORDER at their most festive and luminous. All of this with an incredible new manga-inspired cover by KNN.5.
STILL DREAMS’ BIOGRAPHY: Maaya Wachi: Vocals / Ryuta Wachi: Guitar, Production
Ryuta and Maaya already had musical projects together before starting STILL DREAMS. In their younger days, they were in a quartet called JUVENILE JUVENILE, where Maaya played the drums and sang backing vocals, and Ryuta played the guitar and sang lead vocals. The group released several CDs and 7” Singles on the label Flake Records, and they shared a stage with other indie-pop bands from outside of Japan, like NIGHT FLOWERS, LETTING UP DESPITE GREAT FAULTS and HAZEL ENGLISH. Their sound already showed their leanings toward shoegaze and pop-spirited melancholic ambiances.
In 2016, the group disbanded, and in the same year our two protagonists got married. At the same time, STILL DREAMS was born, with the roles reversed: Maaya is now in charge of lead vocals, and Ryuta of the guitars and production. The first songs came about with the intention of bathing the sounds of Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin and A-HA in the indie-pop and shoegaze spirit. And all of this within a lyric landscape marked by science fiction and video games, of which Ryuta is a huge fan.
In 2018, they released their first EP, “Theories”, in CD-format on the Flake Records label, and their first live show came soon after. It took place in Osaka in January 2019, sharing the stage with the band SOBS from Singapore. On stage, the duo becomes a sextet, giving their presence its necessary organic feeling. This is confirmed on their mini-tour in Shenzen and Hong Kong. That same year, they released a second EP “Lesson Learned”, released in digital format by Melt Records, and on cassette by Miles Apart Records. In 2020, they started recording demos of their new songs, they sent them to Elefant, it was love at first sight, and we began to work together and prepare their first release on our label, a Mini-LP on 10” vinyl for our collection “New Adventures In Pop”. It will come out in 2021 and will be preceded by a series of Digital Singles.
