Make Believe Mailer 69: Bandcamp Friday Special April 2023
Loaded as usual
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.
Important note though — please support Bandcamp United, as they attempt to unionize despite challenges from the company itself. Having contributed to Bandcamp Daily since they pretty much started, I can tell you the people working there are fantastic and hard working, which I imagine extends to everyone at the company at every level. As staffers have stated, you should absolutely still take part in Bandcamp Friday this month — artists need support too, and today is the perfect day to do so monetarily — but I’d also urge you to check out what you can do to help them (starting by looking at the ally toolkit they’ve shared).
Summer Eye — Daikichi
The warmer climes always feel just out of reach of Summer Eye on first album Daikichi, or at least obscured by a haze. Tomoyuki Natsume’s first solo album since the dissolution of long-running rock band Siamese Cats — which he had been part of practically his entire adult life — seeks clarity by heading to the coast. Opener “Shippai” cruises along on flute and Club-Med-appropriate percussive touches, while salt-stained horns help usher in the limber funk of “Sugoroku.” Even when the sun starts to fade, the tempo picks up for some night moves, propelled by house grooves (“Wangan”) and tropical acid squelch (“Jinsei”). Here’s your all-inclusive sonice resort, right?
Yet what makes Natsume’s first solo album one of 2023’s most striking releases is the layers under all that sun. Summer Eye’s sonic palette is perfectly aligned with contempoary trends and the calendar, but Natsume records of all this as a bedroom pop act, giving resort sounds a slight faded texture that makes them seem far away. Synthesizers and programmed beats offer tension — this is very much a more melancholy, agoraphobic Dorian — while recalling sounds of the past, both far off and pretty recent (this Rolling Stone Japan interview is fascinating and worth the Google Translate if you can’t read it…dude is drawing from bossa nova, Aztec Camera and fucking NewJeans all at once). Everything’s blurred, but in the best way possible. Get it here.
Looprider — Metamorphose
Tokyo trio Looprider have always used their albums as a way to zero in on specific nooks of rock, allowing them room to explore a wide arrange of noise in the style of namesake-providing inspiration Boris. Metamorphose is more varied, with the one connective sonic tissue running throughout being heaviness. Aided by the lack of a bass player — makes everyone else involved have to bring extra force — the songs here charge ahead behind electric guitar and drum (“Black Rain,” “Epsilon”), use fuzz as a way to build up atmospheric dread (“After The Flood”) or as payoff after emphasizing space (“Sinking” and “Nightfall”). No need to stick to one nook when you have the unifying sound at your disposal. Get it here.
Olive Girl — Teatro
Some big Especia energy running through parts of this Local Visions’ offering. Chock that up to the synergy between Olive Girl’s acid-washed jazz funk (see the title track, setting the grooveable tone off right away) and vocalist Kalyn, who glides over it all (see…the title track, when she hits that chorus, wooo). Critical to both that comparison and the overall success of this album is how much fun it sounds like these three are having — a huge problem with the “city pop” revival of the last half decade in Japan is how many of the bands sound like they are playing inside a department store display. Loosen up, like Olive Girl! The percussion pops, they aren’t afraid to let a keyboard solo drift off a little, Kalyn lets out little “woos!” when they’re feeling it…hell, they even future-funk themselves a bit on the Superball of a song “Teatron.” Get it here.
Swimming Sheep — “Blue Perfume”
Electronic bliss-out courtesy of Fukuoka producer Swimming Sheep. A lively track featuring vocal touches as textural detail, less worried about saying anything and more focused on contributing to those vibes. Get it here.
Shaketoba SKTB — Hatsunetsu
Watch out, super deep thoughts ahead — what’s cool about music is it can take the familar sensations and experiences of the everday, and transform them into the surreal. The settings of the songs across Hatsunetsu are almost bland in their familiarity — shopping malls, resort hotels, freeways, aquariums, suburbia — yet producer Shaketoba SKTB uses skittering beats and chopped-up vocals to reconfigure the regular, making going up escalators or staring at Belugas become emotionally twisty affairs. The best touches come when SKTB and friends themselves nod to the power of music to disrupt the daily — a shout-out to “breakbeats!” on “Stargazer,” seeing a train station entrance transform into “city pop” on “Port Tower” — an awareness to just what they are doing. Get it here.
Mikazuki BIGWAVE — ESCAPE
Future funk as foundation, not end goal. Producer Mikazuki BIGWAVE returns with a set of uptempo cuts built around speedy samples, but also dabbling in French touch and Jersey Club. Aesthetic, but with an ear for club-ready sounds. Get it here.
Fetus — Puddle EP
Speaking of speedy — the latest from prdocuer Fetus moves quickly, highlighted by a particularly fragmented cut-up featuring footwork wunderkind Oyubi. Get it here.
Oyubi — “Voodoofetish”
Speaking of, Oyubi also has a new disjointed dance number, out via the intriguing label Emoticons. The producer has always been interested in maximizing the spaces between sounds, but on “Voodoofetish” they mess around with tempo in general, creating one of their wooziest tracks to date. Get it here.
ACIDA MANNERS — LIKE THIS
Let’s just stay in the club for a little bit, whether moving on the floor or soaking it all in from the bar, with the latest from HIHATT, which offers two delirious dance cuts from ACIDA MANNERS. Built around the same vocal sample, the two “tools” here remind how elastic a single sentence can be. Get it here.
Dot Point — Dot Point
Techno-pop with a little extra hop to it. Get it here.
i-fls — Authentic Lies
Ahhhh that familiar sprint, the sound of computer-assisted melodies wrapping around a beat to wrench a whole lot of bedtown ennui. Artist i-fls has been providing a soundtrack to the areas of Japan where conveinece stores require a car to get to, family restaurants stand as landmarks and longing occupies a lot of brainspace. Authentic Lies continues building on the i-fls’ familiar Garageband-based sound, not so much interested in adding new elements to their sonic vocabulary, but rather showing how even using these small set of tools, there’s still plenty of feeling to be found in the familiar. Get it here.
Various Artists — השם המפורש
I recently went to The Church, a bar / club located steps away from Dogenzaka in Shibuya, themed after…a place of Christian worship. It’s not unnerving in the slightest — anyplace with tropical-hued neon lights, copious tourists and what sounded like an Afrobeats night playing out at the faux alter can’t be too unsettling — but the potential for it to be more than just a welcoming watering hole exists. Mostly, that’s because I know artists appearing on this witchhouse-indebted (but far more sonically diverse…this drifts into barely-there ambient haze too) compilation have played here, and I think hearing Ms. Machine member Mako’s 1797071 project wooze off here would be a special occurrence. Get it here.
inuchan fanclub — inuchanfanclub theme
A six-second theme song for what appears to be a stuffed animal…transformed into 16 remixes running from “garage” to “summer” to “childhood,” also lasting for a few seconds. Why not??? Get it here.
WRACK — FM Chicken EP
This recent MixMag interview with Tokyo-based producer WRACK offers a great glance into what makes them stand out in the capital’s electronic scene. On creating an original sound: “I express my own style by combining reggaeton, dancehall, gqom, and other music that has strongly influenced me, with the Japanese scale.” FM Chicken EP spotlights his interest with blurring strains of African dance music — most prominently gqom — with his own perspective, reverent but open to adding WRACK’s own flavor. Get it here.
Carpainter — Retro Music
Nothing “retro” about indulging in some dance-powered revery. Carpainter draws from time-tested club sounds across Retro Music — house delirium, rave ups, filter house ecstasy — but never in a way that really feels “gee whiz, remember then?” Except, uhhh, for the title. It also feels like he’s picked up a few pointers from Guchon, who he collaborated with late last year and is a master of swirling around familiar ideas, and finding new ways to play around with them to help folks cut loose. Get it here.
Bosco — BOSCO
Kyoto’s Bosco loves American “old time” country music, delivered via the banjo and the fiddle. The story goes he visited a handful of masters of the style in the States to hone his skills back in the ‘70s, bringing the Southern style back to Japan and passing it on to new generations in the decades after. Here’s a capsule of a fascinating artistic life, featuring traditional covers delviered by a player long fascinated by this world, even when it was oceans away. Get it here.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Nobody's brought it up, but nice.