Make Believe Mailer 67: PAS TASTA "Good Pop"
Some Would Dare To Say..."Great Pop"
PAS TASTA — Good Pop
To get a clear snapshot of Japanese music in the 2020s, listen to Good Pop. In just over 20 minutes, the debut album from web-connected electronic supergroup PAS TASTA finds space for indie-rock vocalists, ‘90s nods, Virtual YouTubers, heart-on-sleeve HyperPop, THE FIRST TAKE, EDM, netlabel memories and crowd samples that make you feel like your at a monster truck rally.
Good pop should be inviting, so Good Pop welcomes everyone and every sound into its orbit.
That communal feel comes across through the DNA of the group itself. PAS TASTA consists of electronic artists hirihiri, Kabanagu, phritz, quoree, Amane Uyama and yuigot, who have been active for varying periods of time in a multitude of projects, but often working alone. Their solo works have offered plenty of energy, but something feels different in this setting, an urge to bounce ideas off of one another and joy in seeing what they can pull off.
A bit of a stretch when it comes to comparisons but…it’s like watching Jackass, and seeing that crew go bonkers when their plans come to fruition. Instead of high-fiving because they launched Johnny Knoxville off a huge ramp into a lake, it’s about the thrill of blowing up a song midway through or somehow cramming a moshpit-ready rock breakdown into a song featuring a talking peanut.
Yet for all the dizzying moments of sounds clashing and songs seemingly coming apart at the seams, PAS TASTA does a remarkable job keeping everything on track. Album standout “peanut phenomenon” goes from breezy Flipper’s Guitar pastiche indie-rock into summer matsuri stomp into nu-metal detonation into VTuber rap into…nervy spa music?…but despite all of these shifts that main melody holds it together so it never seems too chaotic. Early release “sunameri smoke” features a literal SFX boom midway through (to much cheering), but besides that the six creators have come together to make…good pop. Really, really good pop, with a playful side.
This isn’t an out of nowhere development, but rather a continuation. Nearly every member of PAS TASTA released music via netlabel Maltine Records in the mid to late 2010s, whether as a featured artist or as part of a compilation, primarily their 2020 HyperPop comp. These are young artists who emerged after Maltine went from a digital bulletin-board escape into something intersecting and influencing mainstream J-pop.
Good Pop is a tribute and celebration to the power of netlabels…but not really the online component of them that seemed so freeing at the time. There was always more than the internet.
*deep breath* OK, so I try not to share the above video, the very first YouTube upload from Japanese media company Lute, focused on the 10th anniversary party for Maltine Records recorded back in 2015. That’s because I appear in it around the 2:50 mark…the very nice Lute folks came up to me for an impromptu interview. Problem was…I had just left the floor after a particularly killer Pa’s Lam System set, and I was sweating profusely. God knows how many beers deep I was at this point. Ten years-ish on, I can appreciate my relative skinniness compared to today BUT that’s about it.
This video…and, much to my terror, my specific segment…resurfaced on Twitter earlier in March after user @zippu21 shared it to help explain what netlabel music is (now deleted…bless your soul). I tried not to look, but it reminded of something vital to understanding the full power of netlabels in their prime, a concept which does seem outdated in an era where everything is digital and the utopian vision of an alternate Web-based music world seems as far off as flying cars. But that doesn’t matter, because netlabels were about community, online and IRL.
Maltine Records put on the best parties. The internet still leaked into these physical world get-togethers — the very first one I ever attended, in an old Kabukicho host club, featured a corner dedicated to people on computers while others walked around the floor streaming themselves — but there was a real sense of place and connection to them. As time has gone on and more space has developed from them, I can also see they were perfect capsules of a specific moment in Japanese music — when web-based communities truly became more than alternate spaces, bleeding over into mainstream J-pop and reaching a whole new audience.
The overall mood of Good Pop is bubbly joy, even in its more melancholy moments (see closer “zip zapper,” starting as a bittersweet meditation on solitary time at home before mutating into lurching dubstep…and then discombobulated bossa nova). Sounds ping-pong off of one another, with the members of PAS TASTA just in love with seeing how sounds go together and how familiar song structures can be spruced up with hiccuping percussive touches or scattershot anime voice samples tossed in. There’s brief moments scattered across the album where you can hear PAS TASTA talking with one another — most clearly at the end of the album — that lend to this feeling of in-person creation.
PAS TASTA have nailed the vibe of Japan’s rebounding music community after three years of pandemic-spurred disruption. Clubs are open, Zoom calls are out, a new generation of young creators like the six behind this group can now play more freely in it and they seem hungry to experiment. Good Pop is a physical album — HyperPop often gets pegged as an online style owing to when it really captured attention and for Spotify playlists, but the sounds it and the songs on this album dabble in all feel built for actual rooms and festival grounds. PAS TASTA aren’t just blurring genre borders because they’ve stared at YouTube for half a decade — they’re imagining what Knot Fest, Music Station and all those Maltine parties of yesteryear would sound like squished together.
They aren’t alone, and that’s the ultimate triumph of Good Pop. They want everyone to join them, and in the process show where the country’s creators are at.
Netlabel releases ten years ago would get attention for their imaginative mash-ups of ideas, with J-pop and idol music and breakcore and YouTuve videos of J-Vloggers among so much more becoming guiding inspiration and source material. PAS TASTA carry that attitude into the 2020s, but they are also bringing disparate creators into their world, less about kids behind computer screens fiddling around in Ableton and more about forging actual collaboration.
Vocalist of rock outfit No Buses Kondo Taisei (aka Cwondo) adds a touch of longing to “sunameri smoke’s” hiccuping pace, while chelmico’s Mamiko Suzuki shows sweetness and swagger on “finger frame.” PAS TASTA nod to both youthful HyperPop by teaming up with Peterparker69 and for new digital realities by bringing Peanuts-kun into the fold. The most attention singer/songwriter Soushi Sakiyama has probably gotten up to now in his career is for his stripped down appearance on pandemic-staple THE FIRST TAKE. Yet here he is on “river relief,” letting PAS TASTA manipulate his voice but fitting in just as much as anyone else appearing here.
This is Japan in 2023 — everything intermingling after a long period where even seeing friends was tough. It feels great even when the lyrics let out a sigh, and is producing some wild ideas on all levels of the country’s music industry. Good Pop captures this feeling of newfound expression and collaboration, because that’s what PAS TASTA is at its core. Here they capture a moment — but one just starting.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies