Make Believe Melodies Favorite Japanese Albums Of 2020: #10 - #01 (One Year Later)
Make Believe Melodies Favorite Japanese Albums Of 2020: #10 - #01 (One Year Later)
An Exercise In Reflection (Or...An Excuse For Laziness)
The end of 2021 is on the horizon! Regardless of how you experienced the last 12 months or how much unease new coronavirus variants inspire in you, we can all come together in December for one common exercise…to create lists of our favorite music to share online.
And so begins Make Believe Melodies 2021 bonanza…by finally wrapping up the 2020 top ten. As much as I want to pretend I had it tough, I really can’t complain. Among the reasons to be thankful is I had plenty of work to keep me busy, so much so that getting around to the part of a year-end list people care about the most fell to the side. I am a dweeb at heart, though, and I couldn’t let a year vanish completely from sight without making sure the world knew what Japanese albums I considered worthy of single-digit placement.
To mix things up a bit though, this list will attempt something new for this blog/newsletter (ie here’s how I flip my procrastination into a good thing). The top ten is pretty much what I outlined back in January (save for one big mover), so I’ll share an original note of what I would have written back then, followed by how it sounds now, months later. A lot has changed in a year…and besides, we should all admit is lookbacks from 2020 were obsessed with COVID-19 (which…made sense), with nearly everything put through a prism of the pandemic. Here’s a chance to have some distance and evaluate with clearer eyes, albeit mask still on.
For a refresher, here’s the first half, followed by #50 - #31, #30 - #21 and #20 - 11 (that last one from…April).
#10 Minori Yoshikawa & TOMC Reality
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Local Visions remains the most exciting label in all Japan, warping the world’s nostalgia obsession into something fresh and often unsettling. It was another strong as hell year from them, with this being the centerpiece — a melancholy stroll through empty city streets, heart heavy and brain full. It’s among the prettiest albums Local Visions has put out, with just enough off around the edges (pitched-down vocals, those machine rumbles on ‘Dried Flowers’).”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Indulging in this exercise revealed how much my favorites from 2020 still loomed large over 2021 too. That’s because the past year felt stuck, thanks to the ongoing pandemic, with the musical supply chain — especially on the more mainstream side in Japan and, really, everywhere — feeling especially disrupted. The silver lining is that revisiting these 10 albums showed that the directions Japanese music across the spectrum went this year weren’t a surprise, but part of a bigger, still-unfolding narrative.
Reality comes closest to not fitting with any of that. It’s the only original finalist here I considered swapping with something else (candidates include: ZOMBIE-CHANG’s last album, those tricot albums and YTAMO’s Vacant, which still sticks in my head). Then I listened to Minori Yoshikawa and TOMC’s melancholy ode to walks in the rain and nights spent online, and like…nah, it’s a lock. It helps that this year revealed a new angle on it…I always associate Local Visions with upending common ideas of retro, but Reality really shines when revisited against the backdrop of modern J-pop, glummer and more solitary than ever before, sounding every bit as isolated as artists want you to think they are. I appreciate that bend towards a realistic global mood…but Reality reminds you can make sadness sound elegant and alive, too. It’s the prettiest (like a wedding cake) Local Vision’s album, and also maybe the emotionally heaviest (someone enjoyed the open bar too much and threw a chair into the dessert). Listen below.
#9 AOTQ Magical Gadget
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Vocaloid revealed itself to be far and away the most important 21st century artistic development in Japanese pop culture over the course of 2020. It was the year of YOASOBI and Kenshi Yonezu translating the creator-first ethics of the community into a pop movement connecting with the national psyche and hitting on a sonic palette the kids love (and love to get pessimistic with). There’s still plenty of creative juice left in the original Vocaloid software, though, and producer AOTQ reminds of the utility of the instrument on Magical Gadget. Hatsune Miku’s familiar digi delivery, so often played uptempo, becomes meditative. It’s like you are sitting down for a cup of coffee with the aqua-haired character in an off hour, listening to her reflect on the drudgery of daily life while occasionally revealing deeper fears about everything just vanishing. It’s a fresh take on what it can do in the right hands, and reminds of its power at a time when its influence is everywhere.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: The Vocaloid community remains the most important artistic force in Japanese pop culture, as this year saw all the trends of 2020 carry over thanks to new players like Ado and MAISONdes (with projects like YAMEII showing a broader embrace of it, too). AOTQ’s masterpiece, then, continues reminding of everything possible with Vocaloid if one approaches it with some creative ideas. Magical Gadget is just such a neat idea — AOTQ creates spacious synth backdrops for Hatsune Miku to basically relay her internal monologue, the songs here lasting upwards of eight minutes and happy to simply float in the air. It works because AOTQ understands how synthesized singing needs to match the music around it, and Magical Gadget gels together right to make for a four-song set that already feels timeless. Listen below.
#8 Ichiko Aoba Windswept Adan
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “And so we reach installment three of three in ‘the futility of list season’ series, with the strongest argument against this whole practice and the very notion of time itself. Released at the start of December, Ichiko Aoba’s latest feels immense on even just a few initial listens. It’s an act of world building, Aoba constructing something sprawling out of a handful of musical tools. Way too early, sure, but let’s put it here with the expectation that Windswept Adan will stick around, and possibly deserve to be even higher up.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Yep…definitely deserved the top-ten lock even on just a few listens.
No album on this list…and I’m talking the entire 100-entry-deep monstrosity that took nearly a year to come together…has connected with listeners around the world like Windswept Adan has. No Japanese release period managed the critical praise and fan devotion like Aoba’s masterpiece did outside of the country. The denizens of Rate Your Music hold it up as the number two album of the year anywhere, Anthony Fantano was smitten, and she’s just wrapped up a successful European tour behind it. Last week, as I write this, Shy Thompson reviewed it wonderfully over at Pitchfork, showing that time itself really is useless in trying to grapple with this one.
While not my personal fave — 2020, just too good all around! — Windswept Adan already feels part of a new Japanese canon, at least one forged by a global audience. Huge benefit of that…enough smart words have been written about it I can keep it brief. After years of stripped-down short stories, Aoba went full IMAX on Adan, matching her guitar strums and singing with strings and flutes and chimes that turned her sonic world into a universe. That all of it could still come off so intimate even with a more fleshed out sound was all the more impressive…and it made the moments when Aoba retreated into sparseness equally as affecting. She’s always created her own little escapes, but here, she crafted her most absorbing yet. Listen below.
#7 RYUTist Falsetto
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Peak-idol ended a few years ago, with AKB48’s hundreds of hands losing a grip on the zeitgeist and the music industry splintering even further as the internet started overtaking the tired-and-true physical market. Groups such as Nogizaka46 and BiSH still exist on the top-level of the biz — not to mention sell PUBG-clones — but that period between 2010 and 2014 where female idol groups were J-pop market is over.
Maybe the spotlight turning away from it and expectations back to ‘sell 3000 copies of a single, debut at like #4 on Oricon’ have been a boost because…idol music enjoyed a renaissance in 2020. This has been slowly building up over the last three years, but the previous 12 months felt especially rich, and saw idols return to the position of being at the edge of new musical ideas, from HyperPop to shoegaze (quick aside on RAY, whose Pink probably should have been in the top 100…I asked Azusa Suga about the project, which he works on heavily, and he said they just…let him do what he wants, no pressure or demands. That’s how you end up with one of the best years for idols in recent memory).
Falsetto might not be the best idol album to pick in order to capture why this shift is playing out, but it’s the best sounding idol album, showing just what’s possible within this corner of the Japanese music landscape. RYUtist themselves deserve…” [I literally stopped writing here, but the gist of it would be…excellent, varied album doubling as a snapshot of the modern sound of J-pop thanks to the collection of producers hiding in the credits, also probably some Niigata jokes].
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Idol music…still going strong! No longer being omnipresent has been a huge boost, and groups both new and mature continue to explore styles and sounds the trade winds of “global pop” miss. I’m not sure this year has produced anything like Falsetto, though. It captures both the idol and general J-pop spheres so well in one album, while almost feeling artisanal in how the songs are constructed. I’m all for zany niche projects where you get four women and make them be “dancehall idols” or whatever, but Falsetto allows RYUTist to put on a show with costume and set changes. This freedom to experiment is, at its best, one of the idol world’s biggest benefits.
Bless RYUTist themselves for their versatility…alongside rice and snow, Niigata can also be proud of producing the best idols in the country…but the big hook for me remains the artists creating these songs. Besides offering a snapshot of who shapes J-pop in the Reiwa era (a shared quality with our next entry), Falsetto finds everyone involved just delivering ace material, no leftovers offered to satiate a hungry company. Shuta Hasunuma uses woodwinds and tempo changes to transform “Alive” into a short play, while Satoko Shibata offers up jolly arrangements on the spring “Nice Pose.” Indonesian city pop revivalists Ikkubaru turn “Mujuryoku Fantasia” into a late night delight, and perennial personal faves Pasocom Music Club leave their imprint across “Haru Ni Yubikiri.” Though the show stealer comes courtesy of maybe the year’s most influential behind-the-scenes force…Kan Sano brings his jazzy experimentalism to the brisk “Jikan Daiyo,” one of the finest pop songs of the year. At the time, this all felt like a 2020 time capsule. Now, it’s clearly an idol highlight free of time constraints. Listen below.
#6 iri Sparkle
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Whose going to be the voice of Reiwa? J-pop has been trying to figure out which female act could possibly assume this role in recent years, with the industry spotlighting Riri, milet, eill and more alongside singer/songwriter Aimyon. I humbly suggest iri for this distinction, though. Already responsible for a TikTok hit and another number connecting with younger audiences, this year’s Sparkle solidifies her resume. It’s also the best pure collection of J-pop from this year, functioning both as sonic highlight reel (with of-the-moment producers like Kan Sano, Yaffle, Hidefumi Kenmochi and others helping shape it) and a thermometer of the mood of the nation’s youth set, touching on the trials and tribulations of coming of age in the 21st century while letting some sunshine through.
Though let’s not downplay how great iri herself sounds here — part of the reason she stands out from all the other 20-somethings pushed forward as the ‘next big thing’ is her huskier voice, lending character and weariness to these songs. On Sparkle, she shows she can sing and rap over whatever comes her way, whether it’s Sano’s synth shards turned funky on the title track, the locked-in grooves of ‘Coaster’ or the ecstatic choir-assisted flight of ‘24-25.’ She’s touching on dominant trends — neo city pop, synth-pop, youthful angst — but always finding her own interpretation of it, and transforming it into bright-eyed pop.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: I mean…not much has changed here. Sparkle still sounds incredible, the sonic contributors have only gotten more prominent and iri herself remains one of the best young artists in J-pop. If anything, it’s a shame that all discussion about Japanese pop sits on either extreme of the "glum post-Vocaloid songs” or “Johnny’s groups, oh and new projects with CJ ENM investment.” There’s a middle, where she exists, that’s more exciting and interesting to a global audience (or at least that’s how I imagine it).
The one note I’d add is, I think iri found a space in the J-pop world this year better suited for her than “queen of Japan” or whatever. She exists on a weird border between mainstream and “cool,” putting up strong streaming numbers while getting to work with Mamiko from chelmico (a group also thriving in this zone) and experiment. She seems fitted to be a Reiwa manifestation of, like, Minako Yoshida, never at the center of the musical scene but always just outside, doing something far more interesting. Listen below.
#5 Le Makeup Binetsu
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Since 2017’s Hyper Earthy, Osaka’s Le Makeup has turned the humdrum of daily life and the small thoughts filling the hours into songs. Using guitar, synths, beats and his voice, he’s constructed sonic diaries, an intentional move to slow down as the world around him speeds up. Binetsu carries all those traits, both building on them and letting the messier edges show through en route to his finest collection yet. Le Makeup’s continued merger of guitar with dance music continues to produce hazy results on songs like “Ray” and “Ashita,” in which he can let his voice drift or mutate via vocal affects. There are moments of Auto-tuned peace (“Sit Down In Reflection”), messy domestic coziness (“Story Of Us” with Dove) and even club-ready release (“Body”). Quick recordings of real life act as interludes to these sketches of the everyday, adding an extra layer of warmth to an album inviting you to soak in the intimacy…all in a year where this close-quarter feel was especially appropriate. Le Makeup has been one of the best voices in the nation’s indie community for a while now, and here’s the moment it all comes together.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: EVERYTHING sounds like Le Makeup now.
Save for maybe the artist at #1, nobody has proven to be more influential. It’s a bit shocking to listen to underground music out of Japan in 2021 and realize that it all owes a debt to Le Makeup. This year saw artistic breakthroughs from Lil Soft Tennis, NTsKi, RYON4 and a bunch of artists routinely popping up on AVYSS playlists. He’s been cross pollinating with other styles for a while, working with rappers and the artist formerly known as Madegg in the electronic community, but a new set of creators are clearly revealing reverence for what he helped trailblaze. Binetsu remains his best a year on, and functions like a skeleton key to the thrilling state of left-center electronic coming of age in the country. Get it here.
#4 Daoko anima
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Nothing can ever stay stable. Not your favorite neighborhood, your interpersonal relationships, or even your surprise success as an out-of-the-blue J-pop superstar responsible for a year-defining hit. Daoko knows this all too well, and anima attempts to reckon with the seismic activity around her while finding out where she, exactly, stands.
It’s hard to imagine this existing just a few years ago — “Uchiage Hanabi” pushed an artist initially intriguing Niconico obsessives with muted rap from the perspective of a high schooler right into the mainstream fast lane. That space never quite fit who she was an artist, with her output post smash being mixed at best. She could have kept trying to claw her way back into the spotlight…or she could reject it.
anima is part re-invention, part return to roots. She transforms herself from aspiring ballad singer with vague ‘Shibuya coolness’ into 21st century oddball examining empty mini bottles of Kleiner Feigling and the human experience in Reiwa. The title track, ‘Kaeritai!’ and ‘Otogi No Machi’ are all examinations of modern life from unique vantage points and featuring radically different sounds — a Sheena-Ringo-like blur, a disorienting pump-up anthem courtesy of Nariaki Obukuro, and an 8-bit headache put together by the guy who made the music in Tetris, respectively. This is Daoko not holding herself back, and letting an experimental itch major label recordings wouldn’t let her truly venture into.
Yet it’s also a return to where she started — rather than try to make songs for everyone, she’s capturing what she sees, and how it hits her. Back then, it was adolescent ennui…now it’s…uhhhh mid-20s ennui. Few albums capture young adult dread better than this one, looking at frayed and failed relationships, the crush of the daily commute or the existential dilemma of watching a place you love mutate into something unrecognizable and downright hideous (i.e. ask anyone above the age of 20 about Shibuya). It’s all over the place, it’s bold…and it’s all Daoko, as she learns to move with the displacement and find her voice.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Ahead of the release of a (very solid) EP from earlier this year, Daoko sat down with Kyoko Sano of Tokion, and that conversation revealed/reminded about one of the forces making anima such a triumph for her. Like a lot of artists during the first year of the pandemic, Daoko ditched the world of established entertainment in favor of independence. There’s a bigger shift to discuss their…this felt like a new world opening up in 2020, but I think the general yuck-ness of 2021 slowed down this burgeoning rejection of talent agencies and old heads, and I think it will pick up when *sigh* things try to go back to normal…but when just looking at Daoko, it’s telling. She took control of her art…and came up with her masterpiece.
The other 2021 revelation…a few days ago, PRKS9 tweeted about the huge influence “whisper rapper” Izumi Makura has had on the current generation of underground / even above ground artists, specifically in how she zooms in on the daily ups and downs of young people. The other creator from a decade ago doing a similar ahead-of-the-times thing? Daoko. So there’s something very nice seeing her find a new place in the art world as a bunch of young creators not that different from her come up. Listen below.
#3 Mei Ehara Ampersands
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: #19 Mei Ehara Ampersands
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Ampersands breezed through my head upon its release in May 2020. Since dropping her may.e moniker and letting band sounds join her hypnotic voice and acoustic guitar strumming, Mei Ehara has been touching on an easy-breezy sound approaching the “new music” of the 1970s (Sugar Babe, Taeko Onuki, etc.), albeit still built around her mesmerizing vocals. Yet at first brush, it sounded a little…safe. Save for instant highlights like the disorienting and meta “Uta No Naka De” and the sunny hop of “Mure Ni Natte,” Ampersands just felt pleasant.
Yet it lingered, pulling me in over the next six months, even if all I wanted was some light background music for work. By December, it just tip-toed into my personal top 20 in initial outlines of this. Then 2021 arrived and…in Japan at least, was far shittier and annoying than the year prior, with COVID-19 cases way higher than anything recorded in 2020 and constant chirping about the Olympics turning life into one big venting session, online and IRL.
That “chillness” I once dismissed became a balm, and the hypnotic qualities of Ampersands revealed themselves over the course of 2021. Which…god damn, what a fantastic album, one where the details all click together perfectly to create something warm and at times bordering on goofy (Ehara dips into faux reggae and elevator- rock), but looped enough to become riveting (that faux reggae and elevator-rock? Actually transcendent when you allow yourself to be swept up in the motions). As may.e, Ehara used minimal tools to project emotional richness. Now as Mei Ehara, she achieves the same…just using a different approach. I used to think it was a clean break, but in reality, Ampersands is just part of a bigger artistic story stretching back to her earliest days (and referenced here, like an Easter egg, as “Gamble” first existed as a may.e demo, but has now transformed into a sweet bit of late afternoon folk).
It’s been nice to see Ehara enjoy a little extra attention in 2021, mostly thanks to the praises of (and direct collaboration with) Faye Webster. Ampersands feels like an album bound to be constantly discovered by those outside of Japan, owing partially to that “new music” shine around it but also just because…it kind of just came and went upon release, especially abroad. Time benefits it so much, revealing not some intentional throwback to lost eras but a continuation, of a young artist learning from the past and finding her own voice from it. Get it here, or listen below.
#2 Cuushe WAKEN
What I Would Have Written At The End Of 2020: “Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi, who records as Cuushe, experienced stalking and abuse several years ago that, she told me in an interview, caused her to lose confidence in her ability to create…along with confidence in herself. ‘But after being empowered by the #MeToo movement, studying feminism and participating in the protest called flower demo, I gradually realized that my introspection was a strange thing. I didn't have to lose my self-confidence.’
WAKEN is the result of this look inwards, and rather than offer easy morals or even a happy ending, it finds Cuushe facing the world, unflinching and still turning thoughts over, but moving forward. The lush dream pop of her past drifts in, but often dissipates as Cuushe’s own voices parts it away (“Hold Half”) or recast as something downcast, and now viewed with hesitation (“Magic,” featuring the devastating opening line “I just want to die”). Yet not content to stay stuck in dreams, Cuushe also experimented with speedier beats, dabbling in U.K. garage sounds to add a sense of escapism and liveliness to songs carrying heavy themes, like the defiant “Not To Blame” and the starting-at-an-IV inspired “Drip.”
Cuushe is more direct and pointed on WAKEN, holding on to the concrete instead of fading into the lush sounds that have defined her art until this point. It’s very much the sound of a human working through it all, both trauma and what comes after, but ultimately all hers in its complications and newfound path forward.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Pretty much that! This one remains as powerful a listen as it was the day it came out. Credit for Cuushe being just ahead of the current trendiness of older UK dance styles. Get it here, or listen below.
#1 4s4ki Hyper Angry Cat (or, Omae No Dreamland + Rei Ni Ieei + Extras)
What I Would Have Wrote At The End Of 2020: “How can you properly convey the sense of excitement of new possibilities just in view? How do you try to sum up why an artist and their output feels so important to you when the very reason for that probably won’t be clear for years down the road?
The music 4s4ki put out this year — a debut album, a follow-up EP building on her sound, and Hyper Angry Cat, a nifty gathering of both plus a few loosies — could easily be appreciated and enjoyed as a product of the moment. It’s fantastic, for starters, but let’s get around to those platitudes later. The Tokyo-based creator is a clear digital native, bringing in elements from disparate genres and scenes absorbed through YouTube recs and SoundCloud players. The 20-something sings about the challenges of modern life, though she finds optimism major acts like YOASOBI have largely walled off. She’s playing in the same HyperPop sandbox many emerging creators did over the last 12 months, to the point of nodding to 100 Gecs via her video for ‘Nexus.’ On that song, she even accidentally delivers one of the 2020’s most devastating lines, with ‘you wanna see your friends / I wanna see my friends.’
It’s what and how she synthesizes the past ten-plus years of Japanese music into something perfect for the dawn of a new decade. I have no idea what 4s4ki listened to growing up, or if she spent a lot of time on Maltine Records or bulletin boards or at Dear Stage, but I can hear so much pulsing through her music. She’s netlabel in spirit for sure, though the sound throughout Omae No Dreamland is even more directly so thanks to a cast of producers helping bring out the digi-age sharpness.
Multiple Trekkie Trax affiliates show up to offer barbed oomph to 4s4ki’s alphabet exercises (gu^2 on ‘Platonic’) or kawaii backdrops perfect for a vocal fever dream (Snail’s House on ‘lover’), though none shines brighter than 2020 behind-the-boards MVP KOTONOHOUSE, whose bracing percussion and lithe electronic touches deliver the biggest highlights (the drums on ‘Nexus’ alone! The way it bursts into 2-step without losing the emotional glow!). I’m not sure how many people remember Gigandect, a chiptune rascal releasing a bunch on SoundCloud and Maltine who managed to collab with Tokyo Girls’ Style at one point…but after being largely off the radar for the last few years, he’s pulled into 4s4ki’s world on closer “Suck My Life.” And it’s the best work he’s ever done.
Yet it’s more than just a decade of netlabel influence spilling out, but a compact history of 2010s sub-scenes blurring together. She recruits ‘SoundCloud rap’ stalwart Gokou Kuyt to join her on the melancholy longing of ‘Fuzokujyo No iPhone Hirotta,’ while CY8ER member Rinahamu reps for the idol community on “Nexus,” a song that has the Monster-stained visuals of 100 Gecs but sounds closer to…J-pop in its sweetness (a though aided by the casual use of ‘poker face,’ in a year where that Ayumi Hamasaki series aired).
Follow-up EP Rei Ni Ieei oopts for a consistent collaboration — Trekkie Trax pillar Masayoshi Iimori produces every song here, delivering his best set of tracks yet and offering up the perfect industry audition tape in the process — and manages to be even more thrilling. The songs hit harder, but 4s4ki navigates them just as well, whether shimmying along with the club-ready propulsion of ‘35.5’ or dodging the guitar shrapnel on ‘I Love Me,’ a self-assured song doubling as a…reflection on old acquaintances and reminding them they have strength, too.
Just to round it out, she reflected on where she came from with her softer, more reflective and at times bordering-on-singles from the past year. It’s 4s4ki from all angles as she steps into the center.
Part of what makes 4s4ki the defining artist of 2020 for me is having lived through the ten years before it. Netlabel boom days, Trekkie Trax taking over Dogenzaka clubs, Tokio Shaman, nostalgia for J-pop of yesteryear, constellation upon constellation of fledgling idol groups…all these separate bursts of musical creativity playing out but oftentimes feeling unseen. There’s always this lurking fear — perhaps a natural development of aging, or a more worn-down knowledge of how the past gradually gets sanded away — that these sounds that meant so much to me will just be lost. Whether because she herself loved them or because they’ve all stayed in the creative air long enough, 4s4ki synthesizes all the best parts of these crannies of Japanese music, and turns them supernova.
Last year, I ended the top ten offering one last hurrah towards the past while looking at emerging trends. For 2020, we close with what feels like a genuine beginning of a new era in Japanese music — one where new names and business models suddenly displace what came before in the mainstream, and where a new generation of artists emerge in the underground with a fresh perspective. And for me, 4s4ki captures what is…hopefully…a new, thrilling chapter for the country’s musical landscape.”
What I Am Writing At The End Of 2021: Three months ago, members of rising high-school-aged collective Trash Angels shared a familiar sounding song on SoundCloud. It was their cover version of 4s4ki’s “Fuzokujyo No iPhone Hirotta,” a move that felt like a nod to an artist who, in very short time, has become a seismic influence.
Not to lean too much into 2021 end-of-year territory (coming….Summer 2022? I’ll try for earlier), but the most thrilling development has been watching kids…like, in some situations, literally…embrace the genre mix-up and very-online sound of what you could call “HyperPop,” even if so many bristle at the term (such as 4s4ki herself, who brushed the tag off herself after somebody called her the face of it in Japan). Whatever you want to name it, the best music of the year existed in this space…and a lot of it sounds like 4s4ki, both sonically and emotionally.
Everything contained on Hyper Angry Cat now sounds epochal — very little resembled it in 2020, but today every corner of social media devoted to audio in Japan features younger creators playing with similar ideas (and even major labels and long-gestating talents getting in on it). 4s4ki herself seems on the cusp of something bigger — she’s leaned more into the hectic, guitar-damaged sound most commonly thought of in relation to “HyperPop” in her 2021 output, but without losing her own charm and perspective in the process. She resembles KOM_I of Suiyoubi No Campanella a lot, buzzy enough to land car commercial tie ups but still able to operate as she wants.
What happens to her next remains to be seen, but I do think it has become clear in just 12 months…2020 was a massive shift for all Japanese music, and 4s4ki’s work from that year stands as important. But looking on a year later, it’s also, for me, still just the best sounding set of songs from any artist during that period of time. It’s the rare sound of a creator hitting their stride and figuring out who they are…nodding to the past, but building their own present we are all invited to.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies