Make Believe Mailer 75: Lost Decade

Ten Thoughts For The Tenth Anniversary Of tofubeat's "Debut" Album

1. One of the more disorienting creations of 2022 came in the form of a commercial for a low-alcohol-content chu-hai. Suntory’s Horuyoi brand of booze — 3% ABV — nodded to the lo-fi hip-hop phenomenon on YouTube with an ad featuring people in poses looking a lot like a certain girl eternally doing her homework. Personally though, it was the music soundtracking it that caught me looking at the calendar. The campaign created a mutation of two Japanese rap songs that have become era defining — the ‘90s hip-hop-colliding-with-Shibuya-kei cut “Konya Wa Boogie Back,” and early 2010s cut '“Suisei” by tofubeats, featuring Onomatope Daijin.

This was just the commercial zenith of early 2010s nostalgia though — I already knew “Suisei” had become a defining hit of that decade. DAOKO covered it. VTubers gave it a go. Projects that you think might be VTubers but aren’t also tried it out. There’s covers of the covers! It’s tofubeats’ defining hit, and ironically one that was already nodding to a time lost — the sample comes from the Towa-Tei-produced ‘90s number “Blow Your Mind” by KOJI1200, which itself was sampling the recent past. Suntory had the right idea, but that was because tofubeats was ahead of the curve.

2. It’s quaint to think about now, but lost decade marked the moment the internet blurred into J-pop proper in a way never seen before. This isn’t Kobe-born producer tofubeats’ first album¹ for a major label — that would come a year later with First Album, via Warner Music Japan’s unBorde imprint. Instead, this was a statement of intent — Yusuke Kawai gathered a handful of songs he made when his target audience was message board users, while also crafting new numbers showcasing his pop ambitions that still refused to fully give over to the standard idea of what J-pop sounded like. With lost decade, tofubeats aimed to show that a mish-mash of sounds — house, acid, idols, balladry, Book Off synthesizers, ascendent rappers, Auto-tune, grime, the dregs of the Tower Records bargain bin — could still come together to form something everyone could rally around.

Kawai was showing how creatively freeing the internet could be in a country where the major players in the music industry still bristled at posting clips of music videos on YouTube exceeding 30 seconds. lost decade channels lonely nights spent online digging into Nico Nico Douga and talking with bulletin board buddies, transforming early digital life into something playful and open.

3. Here’s a confession — I didn’t really care for “Suisei” when I first heard it. While I liked the celebratory vibe of the video, my early encounters with the sounds of netlabels like Maltine Records made me appreciate the decaying R&B of “BABY GIRL” and the sample flurry of 2012’s summer dreams, which leaned closer to the skittering cut-ups of Kawai’s DJ NEWTOWN project, released primarily through…Maltine. Hell, I liked his production for masturbation-tool-backed idol group tengal6² a year prior more.

What I loved about tofubeats / DJ NEWTWON / blu-ra¥ / whatever names he was using when I first stumbled across him was a reflection of everything I loved about Japanese netlabels that seemed (and was) revolutionary at the time. He was making music that was a true alternative from the mainstream and distributing it for free, but wasn’t blowing sonic raspberries at the mainstream — he clearly loved J-pop and chillwave and house and every other style that could be turned into a tag on Tumblr, and was using the freedom of online to see what was possible. “Suisei” to me felt a bit too predictable, too much of a people please when he could be dipping more into the digi-glazed slow burn of “Synthesizer” or the delirious vocal warping of “touch A.” Yeah, you like pop…but isn’t it about also mucking it up???

4. “Around 2010, I think the internet music scene really existed separate from the indie and major scenes,” Tomohiro Konuta, aka Tomad, founder of Maltine Records, told me in 2016 for a Japan Times story. “But now, lots of artists become big from Soundcloud or Bandcamp. In a way, everything is internet music. It isn’t really special anymore.” Not long after, this idea of “internet music” wouldn’t even feel novel — you were either online, or nowhere to be seen.

tofubeats is, like Death Grips or 100gecs, an example of a true alternative being scooped up by the mainstream. Months after lost decade, you could see Kawai featured in the silly interview segments they played between song selections at like, Karaoke Kan outlets, talking about his singles. The marketing of First Album with its vaporwave-indebted Roman statues on the cover make it clearer, but tofubeats was the first “internet music” artist to suddenly become a mainstream presence. Vocaloid avatar Hatsune Miku represented something totally different, while Perfume still played to traditional pop structures even though their early fandom formed online. tofubeats was “internet music” stepping into the spotlight, years before that became redundant to state.

5. Man, lost decade is a fun album, and a collection showing how oddball underground ideas can totally co-exist with mainstream flourishes. I might not have been the biggest fan of the all-together-now rapping of “Suisei,” but I was impressed how it could hang on the same album as “Synthesizer” and “point A” without feeling disjointed. For every skippy pop joint, tofubeats finds room for a scrambled transmission like “time thieves” or minimalist sketch such as “OMOI-DORI.” Kawai isn’t quite at the point where he has the Warner arsenal at his disposal — nor does he have to worry about boosting other fledgling acts up —  so he has to sing despite clearly being uncomfortable with his own voice (as he told Uncanny directly in an interview around lost decade’s release). But he also has the resources to bring in guests to flesh out his vision and really show what he’s got.

6. I never would have guessed that lost decade housed two of the most important figures in modern Japanese music when it came out. SKY-HI, already a member of AAA but established as a rapper outside of those pop confines, appears on the grime-y chug of “Fresh Salad,” and ten years on he’s now trying to totally flip the country’s pop skeleton around with his own company. Then you have punpee trying to survive the sonic batsu game that is “Les Aventuriers,” a track Kawai says in that Uncanny interview he designed specifically because punpee doesn’t like rapping over speedy sounds. A few years later, he’s the rapper showing the true commercial potential of the genre in the 2010s when his MODERN TIMES album becomes a surprise sales hit (most notably beating out fellow tofubeats’ collaborator Dream Ami’s solo album, signaling a major change in mainstream taste).

Still, it’s the women who guest here who charm me the most, whether it’s the soulful singing of G.Rina on the sweet melancholy of “No. 1” or idol Shiho Namba³ adding pep to the marching pop of the title track. And it all played into the collaborative nature of lost decade and netlabels at large at this point — anyone or any sound can join in.

7. Let’s take a second to appreciate the series of parties tofubeats, DJ WILDPARTY, Okada and Tomad hosted named after this album — the Lost Decade events were just a blast, a chance for creators inching closer to the pop center to both indulge their deeper dance desires and get goofy if they wanted to, whether that was by playing Macintosh Plus or Bruno Mars. For all the talk above about “internet music,” tofubeats and others in the netlabel universe understand the importance of getting together.

8. I saw some tweet earlier this week…sorry whoever wrote it, but also, uhhh maybe it’s for the best…that was making a big deal about how the sound of the 2020s wasn’t a sound at all, but rather the collapse of genre walls, as displayed by hyperpop and K-pop. I rolled my eyes — netlabels were doing this nearly two decades ago, as were all kinds of early strains of electronic music. You just had to venture beyond traditional platforms back then, and trust a ZIP download.

lost decade is the sound of this era crystalized.

9. There’s a quote in that Uncanny interview where tofubeats says something along the lines of “I don’t think I’ll ever get political in my music, it’s not my style.” That’s sweet, sweet youth talking, and of course he would eventually leave that mindset behind in his 20s.

My favorite tofubeats’ album remains 2017’s Fantasy Club⁴, a somewhat exhausted sounding album dealing in part with the brutal realization that the internet — once a bringer of joy and connection and your whole career — has gone rancid. That’s one of the reasons I can never fully get on board with people talking about the “joys” of genreless music online today — because I can remember when that merger was fun rather than constricting.

lost decade is one of the few albums that makes the internet sound fun, which also makes parts of it come off as a little more melancholy as the years go on.

10. Everything might be internet music now, but the ethos of netlabels carries on. Jude Noel had a lovely piece in Bandcamp Daily this week looking at Japanese Netlabel Deep Cuts, and beyond being a great resource for finding great music (eternal shout out to Omoide Label), it reminded of how persistent the spirit of labels like Maltine remains, even if they become less active as the people behind them age. You could argue that netlabel energy is more prevalent than ever in the 2020s — whether manifesting in the club-born sulk of 4s4ki, the earnest experimentation of peterparker69, the reframing of the old of STARKIDS, or PAS TASTA, full stop.

I think tofubeats has proven to be one of the most influential artists in modern Japanese music, whether through his vocal delivery, his senpai-status in the Kansai electronic scene that has carried over to the likes of Pasocom Music Club, or just his ability to balance pop with club-oriented production. Yet I also think a lot of that stems from him being the first crossover artist from a netlabel to the J-pop realm, not as someone working behind the decks but someone who would appear on morning shows to promote singles with famous comedians. He was the face of netlabels to many, and the sound to those who didn’t find them before.

That all starts with lost decade, which links those early online days with what was to come. Ten years on, I can still hear the excitement of the moment running throughout it…even in “Suisei,” which I’ve come to appreciate not as a marker for my own early 20s in the 2010s, but rather as a sonic celebration of the internet winning, an idea that would soon become passé but back then felt like the beginning of a new era. Which…it kind of was.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies

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1. though Google “tofubeats First Album” and watch what comes up!

2. In case anyone doesn’t know the history…this is literally Lyrical School, but rapping for Tenga.

3. She had so many JAMS at this time.

4. Maybe I’m misremembering, but I think tofubeats himself said this is his least favorite album sometime last year. That’s why having critics is fun, different perspectives!