Make Believe Mailer Vol. 9: The Long-Awaited Vaporwave Follow Up
I'm back home in California for the next 10 days, taking it (relatively) easy after a frantic end to the year in Tokyo. I'm slowly catching up with loose ends, one of which was actually writing a follow-up to one of these newsletters from...the start of December.
So this essay about the use of Japan as a tag/trendy ended up being far and away the most talked about thing I've written all year, which I didn't expect at all, as this whole newsletter deal, in my mind at least, was going to be a small-time affair. Yet it was shared quite a bit (thanks!) and got a response from many people I didn't expect to see it.
Including reddit/vaporwave! I did not check what they said
Had I known it would end up being read by far more people than I expected, I would have probably changed a few small things. I would have been less snarky, because I think the small little pokes just sort of distract from the main point. I also would have emphasized a little more how fucked music media seems to be in terms of highlighting lesser known acts, and how that virtual real estate has become rare. Though maybe everyone knows that now...
Anyway, the essay reached a lot of people, including Hong Kong Express (of the label Dream Catalogue and half of 2814), who sent me an email about it a day after I published it. His response was very considerate and level-headed, and with his permission I've decided to publish his initial response below:
Hey Patrick, this is HKE from Dream Catalogue -- just read your article and found your points interesting about the Japan tag on Bandcamp. Can certainly see why it would be annoying for people looking for Japan-based artists, so I have removed them.
I have never really put much stock into Bandcamp tags anyhow and they're usually just something I do mindlessly at the end of uploading an album, based on how I feel the album's story goes. In fact, I didn't even realise the 2814 one was tagged as 'japan' until you pointed it out in the article, but obviously I can see why I tagged it as such.
But I want to explain the reason why - at least myself personally - have used such tags in the past though, so maybe you get a better understanding of it. It was never so much to spam the albums onto those countries tags pages, or try to imply any of us were from Japan or any other countries we may have used -- rather, it was to establish a sense of story & place, which I think addresses the larger issue of why myself and a lot of vaporwave artists have used symbols and ideas from Asian cultures (and even non-Asian cultures) in our work.
I might approach the way I handle my own music and run Dream Catalogue differently than most artists, as I am always looking to evoke a narrative of some kind within the music -- I see these albums (such as the 2814 album) as being more than just collections of music but rather whole fictitious works designed to create a sense of environment for the audience. Some are vaguer than others, such as 2814 which definitely has a narrative but is more symbolic & hidden to the casual eye, while others are more direct such as my first album as 'Hong Kong Express' which as you mentioned in your article was inspired by WKW's films
Using location as a narrative device is something that I am personally not interested in doing myself anymore, however, and nor is using Chinese or Japanese text. Some vaporwave artists still do so - such as wosX who built an entire narrative for his new album around a cyberpunk-style Ukranian low-life future and requested his album be tagged with 'Ukraine' to achieve that.
The other point I wanted to bring up is that you made a critique about us using Chinese on the first track of the 2814 album and Japanese for the rest -- this was an intentional choice due to it being a collaboration between myself and Telepath (who has always used Japanese in his work and will continue to do so, as it has a deep meaning for him), whereas my old work as "Hong Kong Express" was presented with the HK vibe and thus used hanzi. This is also the case on our first album together on Ailanthus Records. Overall it's a small point, but just one I wanted to clarify as I can see why to an outsider people would think it was just an arbitrary choice.
Regarding 2814, myself and Telepath have discussed over the past year how to take the project forwards and we think we're just going to be presenting our titles in English in future, as our artistic desires for the project and the next album have changed to one about more universal themes which people will see when it is released.
You may make further criticisms about all this being "appropriation" of Asian cultures if you think so, but I think I made my views clear in the TMT interview on how I feel about this and I personally don't believe that vaporwave artists are doing anything that amounts to that. For those who use Japanese culture and language in their presentation more mindlessly and without the purpose of creating some kind of environment of narrative, I think it still comes from a place of love for them, with most of them being younger than myself and having grown up with an appreciation for Japanese culture through video games, anime and Japanese music etc.. It's quite similar to how Japanese cultural works will incorporate Americanisms at times that may appear offbeat to us from a western perspective, but enjoyable all the same. I just view it all as a pleasant form of cultural exchange and a good thing, if anything (which is why I get irritated at accusations of appropriation as the term in its popular use today has such negative connotations of racism)
As a result of how my label has grown in popularity in the past year or so, it now has a healthily sized Japanese audience, and have also had many messages of appreciation from people in Chinga & Hong Kong too. I've never heard any negative comments from someone from Asia before. In fact, based on stats I can see, I think Japan is probably our fourth or fifth largest audience from all nations. I have two more Japanese artists lined up for 2015, one of whom has made something very similar in theme to a lot of Dream Catalogue releases in the sense of a futuristic Tokyo dystopia vibe, so I still think it translates well to a Japanese audience.
Anyway, I appreciated the article and wanted to say thanks for not being vitriolic with your comments as many who wrote such a piece could have been. I could only find 4 instances where I used the Japan tag and have removed them, but if you see anymore just let me know and I will remove them.
As he notes, the label has gone and removed all Japan tags, and I believe all of this has also inspired a few other artists/labels to do similar edits to how they tag things. I think there is plenty more worth debating within his response, but I'm not the one to really lead that charge. But I'm glad that what I wrote...via TinyLetter, of all places...spurred a change, one that looks small but one which is important.
Also, here is the almost hour-long McDonald's commercial block where I got screencaps from.
News And Views
The song list for the upcoming NHK Kohaku have been released. Nothing too shocking, though the most interesting development is the inclusion of "Anime Kohaku," wherein a pair of teams -- lead by cartoon characters, natch -- will compete in a small anime-song battle thing.
Perfume announced a new album and arena tour for 2016. Want specifics? Tough luck buddy, they don't even know.
Oh man, festivals are already announcing their lineups for next year, stop stop stop let me enjoy Christmas.
J-Pop Christmas Song For Your Holidays
You don't want to listen to a new, bad Sexy Zone song, right? Let's instead celebrate the holiday season with a classic Japanese Christmas song!
Mariya Takeuchi -- "Suteki Na Holiday"
The sign of a truly beloved Christmas song is yearly ad-campaign usage, and Mariya Takeuchi's "Suteki Na Holiday" fits the bill perfectly. It has become the go-to song for Kentucky Fried Chicken's Christmas campaign, which you might know is a pretty big deal in Japan. It's an appropriately festive number, one that doesn't aim for anything beyond holiday cheer, but that's what the season (and the chicken restaurants) demand sometimes.
Look At Me!
I wrote a year-end piece in The Japan Times last week, read it here.
Speaking of that Kyoto producer, he appears on the first installment of my Best Japanese albums list. I've posted the first two -- part one, part two -- and am aiming to get the final part up early next week. Also made a list of great songs, if you need more.
Next Time: I have no idea, I'm going to go sleep for 22 hours now. Happy holidays and happy new year!
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
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Header by Alan Castree (AC Galaga)