You might know Dustin Wong (who recently played our unofficial SXSW party) through his work with the sadly defunct Ponytail or his two brilliant solo guitar releases on Thrill Jockey, or because you watched him sit in front of you and craft symphonic guitar loops for 40+ minutes, his feet darting around a crescent moon of Boss effects pedals, one hand on the fretboard and one hand picking with ludicrous accuracy or turning a delay knob or a volume knob or seemingly all of these things at once, his head bobbing, making it look easy. If you live in Japan, you’re lucky enough to be able to catch him in concert in the coming months, and for this, I propose an international Freaky Friday situation with you where we switch consciousnesses and I can walk around in your body in Japan and go see Dustin Wong perform and you can be me here writing things about Dustin Wong or doing whatever else you want.
But whoa, what we have here is something else: a collaboration between Wong and long-revered multi-instrumental Japanese songstress Takako Minekawa. After a string of increasingly experimental electro-pop albums in the 90s, culminating in the partially Cornelius-produced Fun 9 in 1999, Minekawa has laid low for over a decade now. She and Wong met at one of his shows in 2011 and began to exchange ideas and music over email before workshopping material over the following years. The pair releases their album Toropical Circle on May 15 through PLANCHA Records, but in the meantime, we get “Party on a Floating Cake” and its accompanying video. Hear Wong’s rapidfire delayed melodies weave and loop together like cotton candy pouring out of the machine as Minekawa delicately drones, coos, and chants her way back into our shibuya-kei daydreams. See watercolors and glitter and arts-and-craftsy psychedelic paper things swirl around in an animated journey not unlike, say, a party on a floating cake.
• Dustin Wong: http://influencedbysomething.blogspot.com
• PLANCHA Records: http://www.artuniongroup.co.jp/plancha/top
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