Make Believe Melodies For Aug. 23, 2020

Japanese music highlights including 4s4ki, Fuji Chao And Semi-Problematic Charity Projects

4s4ki “I LOVE ME”

Whether “HyperPop” can be best summed up by a Spotify playlist or some thread on Reddit, 4s4ki deserves to be dropped in alongside the Dorian Electras and the 100 Gecs (I mean, especially) of...whatever this is. She’s blurring all the same boundaries as those acts, while riffing on the same visual aesthetics. The difference — and what has made her debut album Your Dreamland my personal favorite of the year so far (that’s accounting for everything by the way) and new collaborative EP with Trekkie Trax cornerstone Masayoshi Iimori hit pretty hard — is how she represents a decades-long journey to this moment, bridging the worlds of Japanese netlabels with SoundCloud rap and even J-pop to result in songs reveling in the pure flexibility of sound. 

Not to mention...there’s zero worries about irony when listening to something like “I LOVE ME,” the highlight from the aforementioned Iimori set. Nothing wrong with a little “is this serious?” play, but having to push aside all those LOLvibes when listening to songs based on memes can be a little tiring. 4s4ki is direct, even if the music here moves from fuzz rock to meditation. Like “Nexus” before it, “I LOVE ME” spends time nodding to friends and getting painfully specific — not sure I can think of another song off the top of my head taking time to offer comfort to a friend bullied for liking anime — while turning over one’s own position, ultimately finding something to rally around. Iimori’s familiar punch makes it all the more immediate, ramping up the drama and making the emotions of this one clear. 4s4ki stands toe to toe with any critically acclaimed eccentric on the planet right now, but has a whole decade of sound backing her up.

Kindan No Tasuketsu “Don’t Cry Baby”

It’s tough to view a project so prone to change as Kindan No Tasuketsu having a final destination, but the group has said they are entering their “final season.” Well, here’s the episode establishing the emotional weight hanging over it all. One songwriter for this number tweeted that they wanted to capture the early, mellow side of Sheena Ringo with “Don’t Cry Baby,” but the general sweetness of Uchu Imagawa’s vocals don’t conceal any of the bite always lurking in those early songs. Rather, this is just an example of how the often knotty Kindan project can buckle down and write an earnest, melancholy pop number. 

Various Artists Atomic Bomb Compilation Vol. 8

The annual arrival of this compilation — organized by Hiroshima juke maker CRZKNY — always offers a chance to reflect on where the world is at when it comes to the threat of potential nuclear annihilation. In 2020, that concern seems way down on the list. Yet that makes the mission statement of its series, now in its eighth year, all the more important. The footwork creators contributing to this project warp the style into something sinister, avoiding anything preachy in favor of creating an unsettling and sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere meant to remind of the horrors of atomic warfare (for 2020, most of the creators embrace minimalism, letting space unnerve just as much as noise). No series of albums in Japan is nearly as urgent, and that is doubly so in a year where nuclear war is way down on the list of concerns.  

Various Artists Monsoon

Fukuoka’s Yesterday Once More label has been one of the best online-centric collectives out of Japan for a while now, flying mostly under the radar but also seeing founder Shigge become the subject of a Vice YouTube documentary. They haven’t vanished — they put the spotlight on new collaborative project Ohnesty, which does discombobulated funk just right. — but new comp Monsoon is a welcome roll call, highlighting their current roster. Shigge comes through with a bob-and-weave dance track, while Daijo Kaisei messes around with vocal samples to create a tense bouncer of a tune. For all the high energy, Monsoon closes with more mellow numbers, showing new depth to Yesterday Once More. Here’s hoping everyone involved keeps it going strong. 

Fuji Chao AV

I’ve been trying to explain why Fuji Chao is among the best artists in Japan for about four years now, and I’m still grasping for new ways to praise this bedroom pop producer’s work. Part of this is how personal it all is — there’s zero way I, a 33-year-old guy spending my Saturday nights hitting the ol’ Substack, can relate to someone in their early 20s just diving into intimate details on the first song of an album or can construct a riveting dance-pop number called “Cum On” midway through this release. Yet what does make me keep wanting to scream about Fuji Chao to anyone listening is how she transforms the personal into pop escapism, creating her own space to vanish into and construct new sonic worlds using her own experiences as bricks. Get back to me in a few months if I think this ends up being her high point, but what I know for sure is it’s a reminder of how powerful music can be as an escape. 

Tohji “Propella”

STARKIDS “Bad News”

Wherein Japan’s “SoundCloud rap” sound starts getting weird(er). I’m of the opinion that, if Japanese major labels want to make hip-hop the top style in Japan, they should just throw money at Tohji, and he appeared on a Bloc-Party-sampling number earlier this year showing all of his pop potential. Now he’s embracing the void. Words melt into puddles, the only clarity provided by the word “dick.”  In the same way Yurufuwa Gang got lost in a haze, Tohji’s letting his libido take over, and it’s resulting in something interesting, even if your average 20-something in Japan might turn away from it.

What’s happening further down the hierarchy? STARKIDS “Bad News” isn’t necessarily a good song — ”meet me in the bathroom / we can do some cocaine” is something you usually hear at the Roppongi Hub after a busy week of ALTing,  — but it’s deeply interesting, in how a relatively new group embraces something approaching Eurobeat to find their own angle on rap (though...Tohji, once again leading the way). The strongest compliment I can pay kids like this — they aren’t content in imitation, and are willing to experiment for something different.

Teen Runnings “Want You Bad”

Nearly ten years on and Shota Kaneko’s Teen Runnings project continues to comb the beach for bummer pop. After a pivot to more plastic sounds on last year’s Hot Air, Kaneko’s dashing ahead with cheery guitar melodies and ennui-drenched lyrics about love lost (or never even had). Add it to your 2020 beach-day-at-home playlist to really fit the current mood.

Mitsume “Tonic Love”

Rock quartet Mitsume are at their best when letting the familiar bend ever so slightly. The group have put out a lot of good songs, but their best work finds them deconstructing familiar indie-rock tropes or playing around with looping melodies. “Tonic Love” turns a familiar mid-tempo rock meditation into a last-call stumble thanks to the ringing bells dinging off over the main groove, turning this one far loopier. It’s their best since “Esper,” and manages that by staggering around all over the joint. 

Pictured Resort Dye It Blue

I grow older…but if you throw some coastal indie-pop my way, I’ll still be all in. Kansai’s Pictured Resort hit all the sweet spots — bonus points if you were ever charmed by Lake Heartbeat, a band bafflingly played on loop at McDonald’s Japan outlets in the early 2010s — while making me long for teenage melancholy at a time I should be building a bunker.  

Oricon Trail For The Week Of Aug. 10, 2020 To Aug. 16, 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.

Twenty Twenty “smile” (415, 008 Copies Sold)

Ahhh, the all-star charity single. Just when you think the concept has finally faded into being an ‘80s-themed trivia night relic, a pandemic wrecks the whole world and necessitates that celebrities gather to sing Foo Fighters’ songs. Johnny’s & Associates’ stable of pop groups have come together for a double whammy of good intentions with “smile,” a number finding 75 performers with the talent agency, with all sales going towards supporting medical workers and those impacted by recent natural disasters in Japan. It’s pure schmaltz, but given the altruistic mission statement, it’s OK to let that pass for now. Besides, plenty of non-charitable snoozers end up in this space all the time, so I won’t be suffering.

Yet recent scandals actually make “smile” into something more notable. Among the names appearing as part of Twenty Twenty is Tomohisa Yamashita, who recently received a temporary suspension from the entertainment world after being caught drinking with underage women (also present on the single... KAT-TUN member Kazuya Kamenashi, who was with Yamashita but only got a strong warning, and NEWS participant Keiichiro Koyama, who also took a break from show biz after...drinking with underage girls. This is a recurring issue for the company, and that’s before even looking at the person who founded it). This is the last chance to hear Yamashita for a while, and it comes, ironically, on something aiming for pure feel-goodery. 

News And Views

• Someone looked at Japanese artists who do better on Spotify internationally than domestically and…it is pretty interesting! Asian Kung-Fu Generation, come to Chile! (Aside, did you know this tofubeats-featuring number is a killer on Thailand’s Spotify charts? Whenever I’m bored I start looking at other country’s charts on said service…and you get surprise like that!)
  

• Aggretsuko Is Going To Comment On…Idol Pop?
  

• For Bandcamp Daily, I talked to Boris about their favorite releases on the platform.

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