Japan Soul

Japan Soul is the music collective of Jason Paul—vocals, guitars, bass, programming, DaVe Lipp—saxophones, bass, guitar and eclectic instruments, Matt McMurry—keys, synth and programming and Tyler Graham—drums and percussion. Japan Soul seeks to create transcendental music that synthesizes art, dissent and euphoria through music. Japan Soul’s Plastic Utopia LP, is an artful protest of the times. “The album is mostly a compendium of my thoughts on these troubled times,” says Jason Paul. “The conceptual premise of Plastic Utopia is that we have slipped into an apocalyptic alternate universe caused by a rift in time that began around the year 2000. 911, Iraq, the great recession, accelerated climate catastrophe…it feels like in the 90s we were on course to avoid all these terrible calamities. Things are no longer as they should be. On Plastic Utopia, Japan Soul gives voice to the artistic resistance of this dystopian world. The songs are like landscape vignettes of this moment in history. Time seems to move backwards and forwards and I think our eclectic pop reflects that. The songs are designed to be sticky, cloaked in irresistible hooks, so a listener can simply enjoy, dance and sing along to this album. Maybe it's a bit of a trojan horse, where a deceptively a catchy hook reveals a hard truth. Even for those who don't pay attention to lyrics there's an emotionality, a euphoria, that will make these songs memorable for anyone.” Constantly evolving, Japan Soul draws on styles as diverse as art rock, sophisti-pop, electronic dance music and funk to create euphoric music.