I know next to nothing about Twinkle Park, but their EP touched, or been touched by tickled the right part of my brain so I feel compelled to say something about it. Near as I can tell this is a one-person band who has named the project after a stage from Sonic Adventure. Also, Twinkle Park, is, amazingly, not an emo band. I've listened to touched, or been touched by half a dozen times, and it still shocks me that this isn't true about them. Instead, Twinkle Park is a Vocaloid shoegaze band, meaning they play fuzzy synthesizer music, with a software filter and/or AI assisting with the vocals. They also seem to borrow from the sing-songy, pop-facing variety of Japanese shoegaze, as opposed to the speaker frying variety most familiar to fans of MBV, and seemingly just about every indie band from 2009 to roughly 2012. There is still a healthy amount of guitar fire raging on this album; it's just competing for space with synth melodies that sap heat out of the air like they've been carved from dried ice. And the resulting sonic temperature is overall comfortably temperate, and (I can not emphasize enough) incredibly refreshing. The melodies are tight. The production is bright. And the overall effect is captivating and uplifting. I'm absolutely smitten with the use of Vocaloid on this album as well. Even more than the crisp and airy melodies, these digitized diva dynamics give the mix a calming sense of beauty and fulfillment. The whole album makes me feel like I'm sitting in a room where the walls are made of goose down, and which is slowly being filled with a parade of kittens who deliver donuts and filled churros upon arrival. I don't think I need to tell you that this is a dream come true. If Twinkle Park was trying to get my attention, consider it got!
Buy touched, or been touched by from Pop Spirit here.