Official JPU Records News

Hello! If you're here just for the tunes, scroll down and get listening! For everyone else, read on. The JPU Records Playlist is a collection of tracks from Japan and beyond handpicked by members of bands on our roster or our staff and available on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and Deezer. For the majority of 2020 members of SCANDAL and Lie and a Chameleon took turns selecting their favourite songs and offering a further glimpse into their musical inspirations. Now, for the first time this year, the playlist is crammed with great Japanese music we've released. They're all from this...

It's with ambivalence that we update the latest edition of the JPU RECORDS PLAYLIST. On one hand, we're excited to bring out the new playlist of fantastic J-pop tracks chosen especially by SCANDAL vocalist HARUNA. On the other, we're sad to see our series of SCANDAL playlists come to an end. We've discovered some great tracks over the recent weeks, and we hope you did too! Follow and listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube Music. Similar to the playlists from TOMOMI, RINA and MAMI, HARUNA's includes a number of classic Japanese pop. Such as the very first single...

ISANA KAGAMI is back with two brand new shirt designs, exclusive to JPU Records! Celebrating the very best of heavy metal and kawaii culture, the shirt range now includes the beautiful "#5 HEAVY METAL MONONOKE" and the brutal "#4 JROCK BIG BOSS", depicted on the left side of the banner above. The illustrator has worked with many bands from Japan, including t-shirts and merch for BABYMETAL and BAND-MAID.The new designs were originally planned to be revealed at this summer's London Comic Con and Hyper Japan events. However, with COVID messing everything up and us being too excited to keep these...

Earlier in the year, JPU Records CEO Tom Smith and music producer / DJ artist Teddy Loid teamed up to judge the "Iken no?! UK?!" (行けんの⁉︎UK⁉︎) auditions. The music competition offered bands, artists and track-makers that release their music directly via TuneCore Japan the chance to perform in the UK, and have their accommodation and travel expenses, supported by the generous people at payNOAH. The competition was split into two categories; the band category judged by Tom Smith, and the DJ / track maker category judged by Teddy Loid. Out of the thousands of entries, the judges had to select...

MAMI, guitarist of Japanese girl band SCANDAL and writer of the band's ace new single SPICE, has taken over the JPU Records Playlist on Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer and YouTube with a selection of her favourite songs from Japan and beyond! MAMI's playlist takeover includes plenty of energetic guitar-pop and indie rock classics from the East and West, mixing The Wombats, Last Dinosaurs and Two Door Cinema Club beautifully with Japan's Ellegarden, Creep Hyp and Yoru no Honki Dance. There's also classic J-pop with Pocket Biscuits' 1996 breakout song "YELLOW YELLOW HAPPY", Sword Art Online song "Thrill, Risk, Heartless" from...