Make Believe Mailer #138: Butter Sugar Cream
A Decade Of Kawaii Future Bass...And The Final Days Of Japan's 21st Century Cute Phase
The word that defined Japan in the first half of the 2010s was “kawaii.” After a decade where the Western view of the country skewed towards the weird and wacky, everything “cute” about the nation’s culture started catching attention, whether positively (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, Yuru-kyara), subversively (metal-meets-idol outfit BABYMETAL, a new era of Sanrio characters like the listless Gudetama) or angrily (peak AKB48). The looped sound of Avril Lavigne singing “ka-ka-ka-kawaii” could soundtrack a montage.
I associate electronic artist Tomggg’s Butter Sugar Cream as the sonic peak of this cuddly era. Critically, it’s not the end point — the playroom pop dotting his most well-known release feels like an essential influence for many producers even as the EP celebrated its tenth anniversary last week. We’ll get into the cutesy crevices shortly, but I don’t think it’s totally out of step to view this as the start of “kawaii future bass” or whatever title the genre of SoundCloud-centric maximalist pop with a huggable vibe and bright sound palette. It’s an essential work in understanding Japanese dance music in the 2010s and beyond.
Yet it’s also a touch bittersweet. Butter Sugar Cream arrived at a moment of flux for how Japan was being seen by the world. The Technicolor “kawaii” image wouldn’t vanish, but it would take a back seat to the hum-drum and eventually tourist centric. The bright, cheery energy present here would fade as J-pop inched towards something darker for the next decade. By total accident, Tomggg made a set of songs capturing a mood that would soon be tied to the past.
Tomggg started out in the early 2010s with a sound more minimal and glitchy, closer to the brainy IDM compilations of Warp than anything Harajuku adjacent. His sound gradually got busier, with contributions to the vital FOGPAK compilation series of growing bubblier but not quite with the splash of sugar to come.
That starts changing with Popteen, an EP released via Maltine Records borrowing all its song titles from assorted fashion magazines aimed at Tokyo’s fashionable women. Tomggg’s sonic palette starts approaching the cutesy, especially via vocal sample snippets made to sound adolescent or at times feline. Yet only one moment here really points towards what’s to come — the title track presents a slightly more glittery take on the soft-loud dynamics of then on trend Cashmere Cat and the rest of the LuckyMe label, beloved by the netlabel scene at this time, while “SO-EN” is more of a straight-ahead Jersey-tinged rollick. Closer “ViVi,” though, with its fanciful sashay and chiming notes above the fizzy electronics pointed at what was to come.
The songs on Butter Sugar Cream pigs out on bells, twinkles, toy piano, xylophone and other sounds that could soundtrack an Ergobaby outlet. Tomggg matches them with shifty garage elements on “Chocoholic” or the mellower swells and vocal slice-ups of “Wedding Cake.” The most notable addition is vocals. “Caramel Popcorn” recruited the very-then-in-demand Phoenix Troy for a sultry come on (“you bring the popcorn / I’ll bring the ice cream”) in the collection’s most straight-ahead sweet song sound wise.
Really, though, it’s all about the title track. “Butter Sugar Cream” is chimes, xylophones the sounds of what resemble a clock being wound up carried along by skippy beat occasionally spiked by harder EDM elements and never really slowing down (while also never plunging into a drop), topped off by a sweet vocal contribution from tsvaci1. There’s a tension between the two sonic moods, but one where they happily coexist.
The actual word I’d use to describe Tomggg’s music is “playful,” not cute. To his credit, he’s displayed a sonic versatility rather than getting caught as just a kawaii producer. Follow-up album Art Nature leaned towards a similar palette, but taken to grander places. He’s been active as a producer for others, and has a soft spot for rap remixes. Yet “Butter Sugar Cream” stands as his most popular and recognizable number. It was everywhere in 2015, and you can still see the general vibe in the comments section for the upload to the YouTube channel Aviencloud2. The general sentiment? This makes me feel so happy.
The “kawaii” music “Butter Sugar Cream” represents refers more to the meeting place between cute and the club, and boasts a history extending well before the 21st century3. Very generally, the sounds I’d associate with “kawaii dance music” emerge as part of the genre collage of Shibuya-kei — where the past got jumbled up with then contemporary house — before mutating into something a touch more daycare toy chest with the arrival of “neo Shibuya-kei” acts, including those under the Usagi-Chang label alongside Aughts creators such as Hazel Nuts Chocolate (who literlaly released an album called Cute) and EeL (whose Little Prince might be my favorite of the bunch). The connective tissue is the lingering shadow of Shibuya-kei…extending, of course, to Yasutaka Nakata.
“Kawaii” was a known concept in the 2000s — thank Hello Kitty for being the primary global ambassador for that, though Rilakkuma wasn’t slouching either just laying down all adorable like — but I don’t think it was the defining image of Japan or especially Tokyo. Like, Pokemon was “cute” to a degree but my high school and college image of the country was through video games, while media of the time focused on its perceived high-tech realities (you can watch TV on your flip phone!!!) or its seemingly “weird” nature.
That latter view bled over into initial response to contemporary kawaii music’s biggest moment. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s “PonPonPon” — full of chiming sounds but matched with Nakata’s familiar electro-pop propulsion — went viral pretty soon after the video appeared online in the summer of 2011, and a very common response was “ummmmm, am I on drugs right now???” The way it moved online seemed primarily as another example of “weird Japan,” at a time when that approach to the country still gave us doorknob licking and bagelheads.
It wasn’t though, and if anything was connecting with a new version of how Japan itself was viewed. Here’s the period where “kawaii” actually becomes global knowledge, with enough time removed from Gwen Stefani’s much-derided “Harajuku Girls” phase (captured above) where people could be curious about the Harajuku-ized version of Tokyo. Kyary — an actual child of the neighborhood — could serve as a kind of ambassador for it, though by the time she was at her J-pop peak plenty of other global stars were playing with the image. Lady Gaga seemingly took cues from her, leading to this still hilarious image, and I’ve already spent plenty of time unpacking “Hello Kitty.”
Japan entered its “kawaii” phase, with anything reflecting this mutation of cuteness becoming a draw for visitors. Harajuku was absolutely packed in the first half of the 2010s — it and Akihabara felt much more tourist-centric than Shibuya or Shinjuku, areas that feel like airport customs due to how many folks on vacation are there today — and one could visit something like the Kawaii Monster Cafe, playing into this image of the country captured in the “PonPonPon” video. Global media became fascinated by Yura-chara and listless egg Gudetama and to a degree AKB48.
Critically I think, there was an edge to all of this — “PonPonPon” isn’t weird in the sense of it being exotic, but it definitely has elements offering tension against traditional ideas of cuteness (skulls…lots of skulls). Gudetama is cute, but he’s also lazy and kind of hates being. I mean just watch Funassyi.
It was this period where Tomggg and Snail’s House and YUC’e started making strides in the Japanese electronic community, offering a similar tension in their work. If the past creators of “kawaii dance” drew from Shibuya-kei and house, this 2010s set came up in the world of netlabels and EDM…set around pummeling and often constricting sounds that created an interesting contrast to the cuddlier elements. Naturally, it would help inspire plenty more.
The rise of “kawaii future bass” or just “kawaii bass” or whatever you want to call maximalist dance music featuring cutesy chimes and anime aesthetics makes perfect sense in the years after “Butter Sugar Cream.” Coupled with Kyary’s prime and the general image of Japan as “cute” (with the emerging mainstreaming of anime also playing a role4), the intersection of EDM with the dominant visual image of the country made this development feel natural.
The experience could be…mixed. Plenty of Japanese producers got in on the sound and still do, and I find a lot of them revel in the tension between the styles being played with. I wrote a whole article for Bandcamp Daily presenting this as “grotesque” which maybe a bit over the top but is also true — a single puppy can be adorable, but a tent full of them climbing over one another towards you would be terrifying. I think creators actually familiar with “kawaii” as a concept understood this and did lots of interesting things in their music.
Not always so with those outside the country. “When I’m listening to songs frequently dubbed ‘kawaii’ abroad, there was a feeling that it was painful to listen, because it is too conscious of being ‘kawaii,” artist Aiobahn — a great example of someone who has grown in the years since I chatted with them for Bandcamp — told me at the time. Makes sense — any nuance of “kawaii” and its history is often lost in exchange for a more obvious reading of it. That was true of “kawaii future bass” and it was true of dominant tourism at the time…and still is, which does remind it wasn’t a new phenomenon. There’s always an udnerstanding gap between countries, and as Japan experienced a new wave of interest from abroad, that grew quickly and took on outdated Harajuku fashion.
Yet as it tends to go, I kind of look back fondly on this time, only becuase it was so fleeting in the end. Even as “kawaii future bass” became a thing and I could write features about it, the way people from outside Japan viewed the country changed. The hyper cute idea gave way to “calm Japan,” of Marie Kondo and Terrace House and books presenting Japan as the home of seemingly hundreds of “Japanese arts” bound to make your life better. Even that era seems in the rearview after the pandemic — tourism has exploded and mutated in new ways, with art powered by anime and Vocaloid culture. The Kawaii Monster Cafe in Harajuku closed, but visitors can stop by a huge Ikea or the Fender Flagship Store.
“Butter Sugar Cream” stood as a highlight musically of this kawaii-centric time, managing to both bake in everything that came before it while also helping inspire what came next. It really is sweeter with time.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2025 Spotify Playlist here!
A very good artist in her own right…and now creating music for the extremely adorable stop-motion Cinnamonroll series Sanrio debuted on YouTube recently!
Now here’s a real 2010s relic…YouTube channels uploading songs in the style of Majestic Casual.
Back in the day for Red Bull Music Academy, I attempted to offer a deeper plunge into “kawaii music,” if you want something taking an even wider view.
See also the rise of “future funk,” less cuddly and much more tied to retro anime.
every time you do these netlabel album retrospectives i feel so seen. popteen is so special, and this album is as well
I will miss that early kawaii future bass era fondly, it was a such wild time - no other era would it be possible for me to see YUC’E three separate times in the US in one year