Make Believe Mailer 23: Mystical Vapor
Momoko Kikuchi And Vaporwave
Japanese music journalist Tomonori Shiba interviewed me recently about Momoko Kikuchi’s catalog recently being uploaded to subscription streaming, and the continued Western interest in older Japanese pop. The article appeared on Shukan Bunshun’s website this weekend, and seeing as it is entirely in Japanese (but worth your time!), decided to drop some thoughts on Kikuchi and her role in ‘80s Japanese pops newfound “cool” status online.
And part of the urge to jot it down has been thinking over what Shiba and I chatted about a few weeks back — how Kikuchi mostly gained prominence with niche web listeners over the past decade through a path that, as the years have gone on, feels obscured by algorithms and TikTok challenges.
The main reason Kikuchi has become an online point of interest for many outside of Japan is Adventure, her third full-length album. Released in 1986 right after she turned 18, it marks somewhat of a maturation for her music career. Before this, the adolescent singer tightroped between being a pop singer and an idol — her previous two albums featured contributions from a bunch of names who have become staples of the city pop sound and would appear on Adventure (Tetsuji Hayashi who also worked on “Stay With Me,” as did Jake H. Concepcion, to name just a pair)…while also featuring lyrics and “story” written by Yasushi Akimoto1. Something like “Blind Curve” embodies the glossy sound of the ‘80s while featuring lyrics apt for AKB48 (errr, I guess Onyanko Club).
Adventure aimed for something a bit bolder, and has become one of the best sonic encapsulations of what makes “city pop” stand out. It’s a collection of top-notch producers, songwriters and session players using the latest-at-the-time musical technology to craft an intricate and iridescent set of pop. The online resurgence in city pop has transformed Adventure into somewhat of an obvious entry point that’s easy to scoff at — wait until they find Angel Touch, my brain chortles — but cliche achieves that status for a reason. It’s a great album.
From Miami Virtual
The way city pop and the internet-fuelled discovery of it gets talked about today revolves around a lot of topics — technology, discovery, nostalgia, exoticization, ~vibez~. The actual sound, though, tends to be overlooked. All of the aforementioned angles are viable points of discussion — and they are also central to conversations about city pop in Japan by fans and media alike, so it’s not some Western distortion — but the actual musical side of it is just as interesting as the surprise YouTube power of “Plastic Love” or fantastical images of ‘80s Tokyo and economic security triggered by “Mayonaka No Door: Stay With Me.”
Kikuchi captures the sonic side perfectly, and in the first half of the 2010s, a very different set of artists realized this as well.
From Things That Fade
Newfound interest in Kikuchi was in the air before vaporwave really became “a thing.” Tokyo-based duo Greeen Linez, for example, nodded to Kikuchi’s “Blind Curve” via the melody of 2012 song “Hibiscus Pacific,” a number appearing on an album built by city pop inspiration.2 Yet it really blossomed with the emergence of the internet’s favorite aesthetic inspiration. I’m not sure if enough time has passed where a re-appreciation and assessment of vaporwave is warranted yet, as there would be so much to unpack (return to conversations about katakana-splattered tracklists and explaining to Tumblr kids who DJ Screw was) and a lot of that influence can still be felt.
One aspect of vaporwave that seems forgotten, though, is how much city pop and older Japanese music in general recieved newfound attention via the microgenre. It’s far thornier shaking out whether these slowed-down samples ultimately were for the benefit of the obscure artists who made them or for those who played around with the tempo3, but seeing how the city pop revival would play out and kickstart genuine change to how acts distributed their music online, it’s fair to point to syrup-thick electronic experiments from this time as early efforts in curation, before someone realized you should just slap some anime over “Sparkle.”
Kikuchi’s music, especially from Adventure, became a popular source for sampling…especially her song “Mystical Composer.” The groove for that one apepars on Dan Mason’s Miami Virtual (above), along with tracks by VHS Logos, Architecutre In Tokyo, CVLTVRΣ, Waterfront Dining and more4. Other songs from the album and her other work were also recurring, including in the speedier “future funk” corner emerged, offering a clearer bridge to the re-discovery of city pop in the back half of the decade.
Weirdly, Kikuchi’s music also was sampled by TikTok-embraced American duo Surfaces, who took Adventure’s “Ame No Realize” for their 2019 song “Grace” (above), to the point her voice even floats around at the beginning. Don’t know if Kikuchi’s music really has some sparkly charm to it inviting creators to play around with it, or it’s just easily accessible.
Whatever the reason, Kikuchi’s Adventure exists as a kind of ambassador for the city pop sound, or at least one popular manifestation of it. While it’s now being presented as something to discover on streaming or YouTube, I’ll always associate it with the time before any of that, when it was a constant reference in vaporwave, to the point of helping define its sonic DNA, even as just a small percentage.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
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Wait, What About RA MU?
Shiba wanted to talk a lot about RA MU, the fusion group Kikuchi helped start several years after Adventure. Despite a limited discography — one album, above, and some singles — I do know they developed a cult following with some listeners outside of Japan, but I don’t think they’ve developed quite the same reputation as other rediscovered acts. I know Skylar Spence aka Saint Pepsi devoted a blog post on Gorilla vs. Bear to one of their songs back in the day. Give ‘em a listen though, some real gems in there, and an interesting end-of-Bubble-approaching style towards city pop.
Surprisingly pops up on a handful of albums associated with “city pop” — he’s all over early Omega Tribe, for one.
Why local cultural media matters, example really-high-number: Japan Times writer Arni Krist Jansson wrote a feature on an emerging revival of city pop around the time of the Greeen Linez album, but hitting on a way wider-reaching sonic trend playing out at the time…and mutating into something more as the decade went on.
The “Yung Bae Dilemma”
If you’re looking for the best way to criticize vaporwave as music, I recommend listening to songs sampling the same source back to back. I generally like the genre and think it’s the most important microstyle of the 2010s, but listening to all these “Mystic Composer” samples in a row had me wondering “was there not a different record you could have played with?”