Soto - “Soto EP” (Creation Centre)

Experimental J-Pop | Two of the four members of experimental Pop-outlet Soto made a first impact on me with their debut release for the Creation Centre Netlabel under the name of Oto. Situated between LA and Kyoto, equipped with a certain focus on Folk and Pop, Soto took a good step towards traditional song-structures, slightly moving away from pure sound design and tapestry.

 

 Soto - "My Blue Plane" [4:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Actually, there is a rather big amount of Westcoast-Pop within this tiny EP. “My Blue Plane”, the last of the four tunes, brings forth a strong Beach Boys flavor, dressed in an introvert shoegaze outfit. Simon & Garfunkel came to my mind, too. You can’t beat beauty, that’s a fact, no matter how many generations passed! Make sure to catch all the little noise, flutes, guitar and vocal-layers… stunning, ethereal.

But there are three more songs to be heard. The opener “Playful Day” is a Animal Collective-style meditation on delay and reverberated clusters of guitar, just fine. “Only Star” comes off as a surprising mixture of smooth Jazz-vocals (Japanes language), chamber Pop and loose snippets of rhythm. The violin introduced here is more prominent deployed in the third tune “Orange”. A sweet and innocent Pop-song with melodica, strings and fine guitars-noise in the back, super.

The haunting artwork was done by Ryoko Uchida (no infos though…).

MP3 Pop Music Download

Direct Download: Soto - “Soto EP” ZIP
Netlabel: www.creation-centre.com
Artist Website: www.otosound.net

About the Author

This article was written on Friday, March 7, 2008 by Bettina Rhymes. Bettina Rhymes is the journalist alter ego of Sven Swift. Swift runs the established CDr- and Netlabel 12rec.net and acts as a Netaudio DJ every now and then. Next to his job at Phlow Mag, he writes reviews about free music at RUBored.org. Read more articles written by Bettina Rhymes.