Make Believe Mailer Vol. 1: Meetings About Meetings
Last week, I spent an afternoon at the Tokyo International Music Market, a "place for music business networking between Japan and countries/territories around the world." In theory, it was a chance for Japanese music labels to branch out beyond the country's borders and strike up exciting deals with important-looking industry types from all over the globe. But in reality, I mostly just overheard a lot of meetings focused on setting up future meetings, wherein maybe some sot of real progress could be made (most likely leading to more meetings). It seemed ultimately like one big way to put off the very thing this convention was supposed to do. Well, that and hug Kumamon.
This newsletter went through a similar yeah-totally-lets-do-this-soon-great phase. The initial idea for this came in the summer, after talking with various friends who had basically given up on keeping pace with the Internet which is probably the right idea. It's tiring to keep up with news and gossip and Twitter drama on a daily basis...so keeping up with a blog focused on Japanese music seems like a low priority. So a weekly email seemed like it might be a good option for folks too busy to keep tabs on J-Pop...but might like to see what's going on on a lazy Saturday morning.
I thought out the general idea for this, and even commissioned my friend Alan Castree out in Osaka to design the lovely banner at the top of this mail back in, like August. But...kept pushing it back, despite mapping it out in my head every Thursday. "Oh, one more week, this will be ready to go. Good start, brain!" Well, that didn't last so...I'm just firing this one out as a way to start. No more meetings about meetings, if you will.
So what's Make Believe Mailer all about? Well, it isn't just a supplement to Make Believe Melodies...though it will highlight posts made over there that you might have missed. Hopefully it be a weekly delivery focusing on news out of the Japanese music scene and good songs...and offer a chance to watch me lose my mind listening to Johnny's boy bands. I hate qualifiers in writing, but...expect this to change and, hopefully, get better as it goes along. But thanks for jumping in from the start.
Japanese Music Highlights From The Last Week
The new trend to keep an eye on going into 2016 is probably going to be women rap groups, which have been getting more exposure in recent months. Currently, there is a rush to introduce new duos and trios in hopes of being the one to jump out. It feels a lot like 2011/12, when idol groups were being invented for every conceivable sub-genre one could dig out from the Internet. The best of these hip-hop units so far has been Chelmico, who shared the catchy "Oh, Baby!" recently. Check that out, and then take a listen to what might have been my favorite song of the summer.
I had to cover an event (full of Vocaloid!) last weekend, which caused me to miss the JACK Vs. Maltine event in Akihabara, which my Twitter feed informs me was bonkers. Thankfully, artists playing that event released a special EP, so I can pretend I was there instead of watching online celebrities play Minecraft.
The Waseda Composition Society based out of the Tokyo university of the same name seems pretty cool, and they have been producing some great electronic music over the last couple of years.
Jakob Dorof has visited Tokyo twice in the past six months, and told me both times to listen to a specific artists whose name I kept forgetting. Thankfully, he wrote about her and her latest single over at Tiny Mix Tapes. I will now do my best to remember the name Megumi Wata.
News & Views
I'm still not sure what YouTube RED, YouTube's new subscription service, offers beyond no ads being played before videos. Exclusive content of Pewdiepie screaming at pixels, I guess. What I do know is RED's introduction threw Japanese music videos into chaos within the United States, as many bands and label's channels became private Stateside, much to the horror of J-Pop fans who don't have many other ways to hear these songs. Most blame has been aimed at YouTube, which is surely somewhat deserving, but just based on things I've personally heard, it would not shock me if Japanese labels dropped the ball on this one too. No words freak out a record company here like "international" and "the Internet."
Tokyo live venue update! In bad news, Air is the latest nightclub to announce it's closing down, after one final party on New Year's Eve. In good news, the resurgence in band and live performances has prompted Shibuya venue WWW to build a second space on its second floor. Takeaway: welp, hope you can learn to love guitars, dance fans.
Nostalgia sells well in Japan -- one of the year's highest-selling releases was a Dreams Come True best-of collection, and anything from an '80s or '90s band is bound to move units. Now comes METAFIVE, an attempt to inspire feelings of yesteryear in the cool kids. The group features Cornelius mastermind Keigo Oyamada, Yukihiro Takahashi of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Towa Tei, one half of Denki Groove, and two guys sacrificed from the headlines. Their debut album comes out in January, and will go up against a new album from 2015's surprise success Gesu No Kiwami Otome.
Someone probably pining for the old days is Ayumi Hamasaki, once arguably Asia's biggest popstar and now someone who gets in the news when she "graduates" from Twitter. Her team quickly realized they shouldn't piss off the only people still really into her, and she's back behind the social media reigns. Her rival Namie Amuro, meanwhile, continues a late-career resurgence, earning the right to be friends with a cartoon character.
Since you've subscribed to this thing from the get-go, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you have an idea what Cool Japan is. You might also know it has mostly been an unmitigated failure thus far, but why, you ask? Well, this English-language transcript of a forum held at the Tokyo International Film Festival highlights all the reasons. It might be about the film industry, but 1. a lot of the complaints the two individuals in the movie industry make carry over to music and 2. the Cool Japan representative is such a staggering putz, I'm not sure you could have written a better character representing government ignorance. (h/t James Hadfield)
"I want to remind you that it was the Japanese that cultivated the Korean wave" - pretty sure it was the Koreans, but OK
Oricon Trail For The Week Of Oct. 19 - Oct. 25
Every week, I'll share the top-charting single from the Oricon Charts, a deeply flawed ranking system that favors groups who get fans to buy multiple copies of the same song, offering a warped view of what anyone actually listens to. Based off a weekly feature I did every week over on the now-basically-defunct Tumblr.
#1 Hey! Say! JUMP "Kimi Attraction" (202,688 copies sold)
Also not changed, the thrilling artwork Johnny's allows online stores to use
Oricon Trail has been on hiatus for nearly two years now, yet as it returns triumphantly to this new-media platform...not much has changed. A Johnny's boy band holds the top spot, and is pretty well ahead of the silver medalist (the latest from Korean outfit 2PM). The song itself is also exactly what you'd expect, an uptempo bouncer where the members of the group take turns singing, building up to a pretty uneventful hook. Credit for the fuzzed-out touches in the verses, which add an aggression that isn't common from the Johnny's camp.
So...anything interesting to report? Well, on the album side of the charts, number-one went to...Johnny's group Arashi. But the original soundtrack to the video game Splatoon (called Splatune) moved over 40,000 physical copies.
Look at me!
I talked to Tricot for The Fader.
I also had a chat with Tempura Kidz, formerly Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's back-up dancers.
Shared the original English draft of the essay I wrote for the Maltine Book.
Thanks for subscribing, tune in next time when I add a table of contents to the top of this.
Written by Patrick St. Michel / Make Believe Melodies / Twitter / Facebook / patrickstmichel@gmail.com
Header by Alan Castree / AC Galaga