Make Believe Melodies For Aug. 14, 2020
Japanese music highlights including pandemic albums, chances to chill without going totally placid, and visiting the ol' Oricon Trail
ZOMBIE-CHANG’s Take Me Away From Tokyo album art
ZOMBIE-CHANG Take Me Away From Tokyo
While I’m sure getting introspective has been a boom for people’s well being during COVID-19, I have yet to hear anything on any “pandemic album” capturing just how weird and unsettling all this has been like ZOMBIE-CHANG hissing “where’s my toilet paper?” That’s how Take Me Away From Tokyo starts, and that’s pretty much how the novel coronavirus kicked off here in Japan (I was elbowed in the chest by an older woman while waiting in line at a drug store…what times!). Her newest full-length isn’t quite a deep dive into the times we live in — rather, it’s an artist avoiding the urge to pivot to self-reflection (she already made her freak-Folklore anyway) in favor of embracing her wonky sound, with a little more contemporary claustrophobia pulsing throughout.
The biggest shift here — possibly COVID related, most likely because few artists refuse to sit still quite like Meirin Yung — is that ZOMBIE-CHANG has moved away from the full-band new wave of 2018’s Petit Petit Petit to once again go it alone, as she did from the start of her career. That means a lot of frantic energy unleashed, highlighted by last year’s dizzying “Gold Trance” and the abrasive bleeping of “Respawn.” She’s also still having fun with all of this, creating Auto-tuned-glazed dedications to giant pandas and club cuts about rock, paper scissors alongside the more unnerving details. Like Boris’ NO, Take Me Away From Tokyo doesn’t think too much but digs into desires currently impossible to make come true, delivering sentiments many share (see, the title and title track, also please please give me a weekend in Saitama) through their strongest sounds.
chelmico “Disco (Bad dance doesn’t matter)”
The little details of a night out stick out on Tokyo rap-pop duo chelmico’s latest. They devote lines to sticky floors, surly bartenders and randos you meet at the club who just vanish at some point after midnight. Yet those annoyances of missing last train and opting not to overspend on a taxi home become charming memories in a year where Japan’s nightlife community shut down and saw its future become much murkier. Right now, though, chelmico just want to let those synth ripples usher them back to a time when finding a good DJ was a top priority.
Negicco “Gozen 0ji No Sympathy”
This is the sort of collaboration I’d demand if someone said “make any J-pop song you want, go wild.” Idols Negicco get songwriting and product assists from Hitomitoi (on the city-pop revival beat way before aesthetic-types found it) and Parkgolf (netlabel oddball). The resulting number doesn’t sound like any one artist more than the other, instead finding the right balance between idol sweetness, glitzy nocturnal pop and start-stop electonic.
AVV Laural
A pair of hazy and melancholy electronic tracks courtesy of Osaka’s AVV, responsible for a party in that city that has proven extremely influential, but which itself didn’t last that long. Listening to his work now — or local scene fixture Metome’s latest releases — feels like trying to part smoke to get back to those better times.
Toccoyaki & Powaramiu “Mimosa”
A jaunty synth-pop number released in the dead of summer — I mean, that’s practically cheating if you want to get my attention. This collaboration, though, does it well, sneaking in just a splash of longing to up the tension.
Mizutama Featuring Hatsune Miku “Candy Pool”
Speaking of…this side project courtesy of long-running electronic artist and J-pop songwriter pandaboy offers up a tropical house number featuring Vocaloid (their rationale — “because it’s summer”). This is the first time I’ve heard Hatsune Miku over a trophouse beat and the results are…pretty joyful, even if “Candy Pool” is the type of song title someone would think of on the fly to make fun of Japanese music.
Maco Marets “Forest Song” and Lil’ Yukichi “Wild Blue Yokohama" [OG Version]”
Two sides of the same trend in action. Maco Marets is a young rapper on the rise, while Lil’ Yukichi is another alias for longer-running artist Cherry Brown (way ahead of the 2-D wave all over hip-hop now). Both, however, know how to let their emotions stream out of their music, with the prior opting for a clearer guitar-centric sound to emphasize his words and the latter…dissolving into vaporwave.
Pasocom Music Club Ambience
Given how it arrived at a time when Japanese music sites are featuring articles about the “Japanese ambient” boom happening abroad and the fact you can buy an extremely detailed record guide to New Age music right now, I was ready for this to be Pasocom Music Club’s chill out after dropping kinetic dance-pop albums in consecutive years. Thankfully, it’s not quite the sonic retreat into the forest I anticipated. The duo’s beats have always been the key element of their music, moving everything along at a swift pace whether they throw in vocals or not. Ambience isn’t ambient, opting instead to present their music as a little more hushed and in slightly less of a rush…though, “Curved River” and especially “Murmur” feel just as club-centered as anything on last year’s Night Flow (maybe it’s the bird noises chirping off int he back?). Rather than a beatless novelty, this ends up revealing another layer of their approach.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of Aug. 3, 2020 To Aug. 9, 2020
Back in the day, the Oricon Music Charts were the go-to path to music stardom in Japan. Acts of all sorts traversed these lands, trying to sell as many CDs as possible in order to land a good ranking on a chart choosing to only count physical sales, even as the Internet came to be and the number of versions offered for sale got ridiculous. Today, with the country finally in on the digital, these roads are more barren and only looked at by the most fanatic of supporters needing something to celebrate. Yet every week, a new song sells enough plastic to take the top spot. So let’s take a drip down…the Oricon Trail.
SexyZone “Run” (245,514 Copies Sold)
Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d right — the album I want to listen to the most that I just haven’t gotten around to hearing is SexyZone’s full-length from February. The infuriatingly named POP X STEP!? (pop!? and!? step!?) features one of the most batty set of songwriters and producers to appear on a Johnny’s idol release, with Kai Takahashi of Lucky Tapes, tofubeats and chelmico (plus frequent producers and Maltine Records stalwarts Mikeneko Homeless) contributing. It also has a song called “Tokyo Hipster” on it, and I would love to know what image the folks at Johnny’s have of that concept.
I’m hoping that album offers a little more excitement than “Run.” It’s perfectly fine, clearly aiming for the same hands-in-the-air rock feel of bands such as labelmates [Alexandros], but they hold it in come the chorus. That’s the part where you invite the crowd to holler along, but SexyZone just keep it in the middle, and all that rush is wasted.
News And Views
Ryo Miyauchi has a great interview with J-pop translator Kimonobeat over at This Side Of Japan, which you should absolutely be subscribed to if you are reading this.
Seeing as Kenshi Yonezu dropped the biggest album of the year in Japan, it’s a good opportunity to read @amenochigalileo’s intro to him, one of the most thorough in English around.
Supersonic, the music festival that was aiming to kickstart the live music industry after a year of mass cancellations and postponements, will not be happening in 2020.
I wrote about Local Visions in The Japan Times, which has been my favorite label going in Japan since 2018. Listen to all of it!
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)