Let’s take a little time to dive into Japanese netlabel history. Producer Mizuki Wada has been present in this online community since the start of the decade under the name Miii. His first notable release came in 2010 via the pioneering netlabel Maltine Records, when they served up Miii’s Sunlight Disco EP. The title track offered up some pleasant melodic dance music, but it was the second number “Dump Your Bassline” that predicted where he would go over the next ten years. That one embraced rattling bass and an all-around aggressive attitude to create a rumbler. Since then, Miii has added more dramatic flair to his repertoire, but always making sure those drops that sounded like malfunctioning jumbo jet engines found a place inside his work.
Last year, Miii released Mythology, a short album that saw him go all in on this storytelling flair via buzzing electronics. Taking cues from ancient Greek stories, Miii channeled head-rattling noises along with a flair for celebrating the texture of sound to bring ideas such as “Hades” and “Minotauros” to reality. Listen to that release below.
One of those aforementioned numbers, album closer “Hades,” recently got the video treatment, which happens to be the first Miii song to get a clip all its own. Consider it as a modern take on the Greek version of hell, starting off in a hostess club before taking a dark turn en route to some BDSM-inspired torture. Watch it below.
It’s an attention-grabbing clip, but what makes it really work is how it matches up just right with Miii’s original track. “Hades” punches hard right away, lurching forward on a menacing beat that slowly grows in intensity. A quick vocal sample serves as a buffer before Miii pushes the song into a bass-rattling drop, and then doing the process all over again. It’s a claustrophobic cut, and it serves as a visual representation for his sound. His first video ever captures his sound just right — took a while, but it was well worth it.