It’s a little disconcerting when you receive a message from new band and then find they’re so new that their followers could hold meeting in a telephone box if they could achieve a quorum. (Non-British readers probably don’t know what a telephone box is; let’s just say it’s small.)
I don’t think the fan following will remain insignificant for long. I reckon there’s a demand for their variety of melodic ambient electronica which owes nothing to the likes of Brian Eno and which somehow manages to work dream pop into it.
Rinjin is a new project from Norway, consisting of Christoffer ‘Chris Le Pop’ and Frøy. (How do you say that, Fruuuy?) Music evolves in many different ways and in this case they were neighbours sharing the same garden when they met and that explains the band name, which translates as garden in Japanese.
Well I’m turning Japanese, I really think so, based on this, their debut single, ‘Just us.’ You can often tell from the first song whether they are likely to strike a chord and they do exactly that from the get-go in the way they introduce the instrumentation systematically – glockenspiel (I think), drums, some sort of synthesised sound, and a dominant bass guitar in as structured a way as ‘Tubular Bells’ ends.
It sounds like it is about to gravitate into an up-market dance track but then the simple story begins and it seems only to be one of misunderstanding and a desire to know what the other partner wants.
But you can’t help be conscious there is a lot of instrumentation in here, in a song cleverly constructed and built in the chorus around an unfussy guitar chord progression that catches the attention.
‘Just us’ has the casual, laid back, confident feel that doesn’t automatically attach itself to a debut track.
I don’t know if they’ll be big in Japan tonight but I do reckon they will soon be making waves on their own turf.
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558844492720
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rinjin.band/
