Make Believe Mailer #125: Bandcamp Friday Special September 2024
The "heavy Vocaloid" edition
I used to write a feature for OTAQUEST rounding up some Japanese recommendations for Bandcamp Friday. I’ve decided to keep doing that for the remaining installments of this campaign. Here’s a dive into Japanese releases worth your time, attention and money from the last month. Been a while, huh? Yet we are back, and here’s the September edition!
Will also take this spot to spotlight my interview with Hakushi Hasegawa, which went live on Bandcamp Daily yesterday. Get an album-of-the-year contender today too.
ex. happyender girl — Kikai Jooi Jidai - this year’s loid
The beauty of Hatsune Miku is that, at its core, the character is a creative key for many artists, allowing them to unlock feelings they might have struggled to express otherwise. Sometimes this is literally just filling a need the creator themselves couldn’t satisfy — I need someone to sing this song, oh thank goodness the digital singing-synthesizer girl can do it — but other times it is the spark needed to express some deep-seated emotion that someone alone in their room with only a guitar couldn’t channel.
The creator behind ex. happyender girl has been using Miku’s synthesized voice to create rock for quite some time now — formerly just as happyender girl — but it’s with Kikai Jooi Jidai - this year’s loid that they hit on something truly raw. They know it too, having shared a big note to go alongside the album, and it’s a revealing read. No sugarcoating here…ex. happyender girl wonders why they can’t get attention they think they deserve. Part painful, part real, part cynical — this document is an artist trying to reckon with the creative pursuit, particularly one that hasn’t really paid off yet. The accompanying album, then, is that examination of pursuing art told through Hatsune Miku, a vessel for creation.
Kikai Jooi Jidai - this year’s loid is a concept about Vocaloid as a creative tool. That’s not new ground — most Vocaloid songs are about the process of creation, with the software being presented as a means to make what lurks in one’s head become a reality. The difference here is how miserable ex. happyender girl presents this process…one does not install a program and have their life change, but rather they have to suffer. A song like “2007” presents a sweet rumination on the birth of Hatsune Miku, but it gets followed up by the decaying “2008 →,” which presents an artist sinking deeper into Vocaloid to the point they describe it as a “curse” as the years go on. Seriously, ex. happyender girl is so serious about this they’ve translated the lyrics to English to drive it home. Other songs feature Hatsune Miku basically interrogating our protagonist, while ex. happyender girl peppers the songs with references to other Vocaloid hits over the last decade, adding a sense of setting to the songs.
The charm of Hatsune Miku is the idea that anyone can express themselves with her help. This album counters by highlighting that even after dropping several thousand yen on software, that the creative process remains brutal and rarely leads to anything resembling “success.” Which, ironically, makes it a triumph. Coupled with eclectic sounds running from shoegaze to what I’d describe as “haunted tofubeats” on “Miku Append Dark,” this is a self-aware and referential work unraveling the artistic process in the age of technology, not holding any punches back, while also being a sort of audio history of Hatsune Miku (and synthesized singing…a Daisy Bell reference!). An artist digging deep and holding nothing back, positive and negative…what’s more Vocaloid than that? Get it here.
inuha — Hitorigoto
It seems a bit off to call this the “first album” by inuha, though I suppose that’s accurate depending on your definition. The shoegaze-leaning artist already lays claim to what is probably my favorite album of 2024 as the fall settles in, and now comes something touted as a proper full-length, although it mostly collects existing singles, with a handful re-recorded. I think Hi No Kakera is the one that makes time stop, but Hitorigoto offers a more rounded look at inuha the artist. Specifically, it shows the many directions they went before this year’s gem, showcasing an experimental drive that takes them into slower Vocaloid-powered meditations to fidgety meditations on CD shops. Get it here.
master kohta — Masamune
The owner of Kyoto chiptune hub Cafe La Siesta offers up two songs where the video game elements take a backseat to club-ready adventure. The slow-burning title track lets dizzy house tempos and acid spikes blur together for a near hallucinatory floor filler, while “Minds” gets even woozier. Get it here.
Various Artists — M8 FEST COMPILATION
A humble tribute to the M8 tracker sequencer and synthesizer, this set serves as a preview of an event set to be held…tomorrow at Circus Tokyo, centered around the little piece of equipment. These eight songs, though, show the range the instrument is capable of, from frantic percussion exercises (Tobokegao’s “BIKE”) to 8-bit skippers (Thron Crigger’s “Feather”). Get it here.
koeosaeme — “My future is not written in the leaves of prophecy”
Fragmented funk that sounds like it is in pain thanks to the vocal samples groaning off beneath it. Modern day Japanese experimental always sounds a little agitated…and here it comes through even in something surprisingly funky. Get it here.
S_B_B — drowning in a dream story
Creston Club head honcho S_B_B comes through with a suffocating set of noise. The title track, clocking in at nearly half-an-hour, is the showstopper, going through various phases of feedback rush and distortion to create a crushing journey. Don’t doubt the back half, though, a disorienting wave of chaos created for this year’s From Tokyo to Palestine compilation, capturing the sickness of watching horror unfold…and trying to vocalize it in the way one best can. Get it here.
aymk — “get rid of resonance”
Disorienting rave pop, but with a clear pop mantra at its center. This is a personal favorite sound combination — heavy and headrushing, but with a sweetness bleeding through all the techno chaos — and aymk does it well. Get it here.
Kashiwa Daisuke — “Infrared”
There’s a delicate piano song somewhere down there, but Kashiwa Daisuke hides it beneath electronic skitters and vocal mutations, giving this the feeling of a really beautiful transmission gunked up by electromagnetic rays. Get it here.
i-fls — Unselected Works: Lost Tracks V.4
Few independent artists boast a catalog as deep as i-fls, and in recent years the bedtown-based Garageband virtuoso has been digging deeper into their archives to find sketches and lost works to share with the world. Here’s the fourth installment, with songs dating from 2012 (!?), offering an early glimpse at the ennui-drenched instrumentals they would master in the years ahead. Not necessarily essential on their own, but important to understanding the larger picture. “To be honest, the number of ‘listenable’ unreleased tracks is dwindling, so I'm not sure if there will be a fifth installment,” i-fls writes alongside this one. So, savor this moments of experimentation. Get it here.
Maki the Veritas — Nani Mo Nai Hibi
I’m not sure what you call stuff like this or what dj twinturbo gets up to — probably whatever they damn well want to call it, and it should not surprise you that I don’t know what Blue Archive is — but I appreciate the madness within projects like Nani Mo Nai Hibi. This one hooked me in with a batshit remix of Ken Hirai’s “Pop Star,” but has me sticking around for some pretty energetic re-imaginings of…what I assume are anime songs I don’t know. Get it here.
Kettenkrad — Endless Travelogue
Hmmmm, maybe this is actually the “anime remix albums run through ten layers of memes that I don’t recognize but dig anyone” edition. Get it here.
TGNXTGVR — Tsumeato
Now how about some anime I know? Anyone who follows me is probably painfully aware at how much I like Girls Band Cry, a series I wrote about around these parts AND somehow got featured in The Japan Times. Naturally, coming across a breakcore remix album taking songs from the series’ central band Togenashi Togeari and discombobulating them. While part of the attraction is novelty and part of it is simply wanting to flip out for anything Girls Band Cry related, I also love the energy present across Tsumeato, at young creators eager to re-imagine the things they love into something touching on other fascinations. Maybe that’s what unites the final three entries on this list — the feeling of joy pulsing through every frantic anime flip, representing the thrills of using your faves to find your own style. Get it here.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies