Make Believe Melodies For August 12, 2024
"Love Flutter"
Pasocom Music Club — Love Flutter
It’s a bit jarring to realize that Pasocom Music Club is a veteran project in the Japanese electronic community. What started about a decade ago as Aoi Shibata and Masato Nishiyama fiddling around on their computers has become an important fixture, that is now actually inspiring the sort of young bedroom experimentalists the pair began as. Part of the charm has been the variety they embrace. From the plastic internet mutations of its netlabel debut to new-age-leaning sprints to the pop detours of last year’s FINE LINE, Pasocom Music Club has always explored every angle of their sound, to the point of dissecting their own inspirations in the process.
Fifth full-length album Love Flutter again finds the pair once again in new territory. Almost ten years since coming together, Pasocom Music Club have made an album aimed at the heart.
Love has always lurked around the edges of Pasocom Music Club’s work. As is to be expected…all art derives from the human experience, and it’s impossible to live without wrangling with this central emotion. For the duo, it has largely been an emotional touch provided by guest vocalists meant to match the moods they’ve always been more focused on, say capturing the feeling of the city late at night. It’s an accent, but rarely the focus.
Yet the pair hinted at where they would go with Love Flutter at the very end of a concept album about aliens. “Day After Day” capped FINE LINE off with a highlight, blending Pasocom’s club-dwelling sound with a particularly catchy vocal courtesy of LAUSBUB member Mei Takahashi focused on finding beauty in the mundanity of everyday, animated by a very simple love.
What changed, though, is the Pasocom’s focus. “Day After Day” comes off as polished, every element working together to create what is ultimately one of their better straight-ahead pop songs. On Love Flutter’s “Drama,” Takahashi returns but the sonic setting is so different. Sounds blur and pan into view, the intensity of Pasocom’s beats feeling like a night out in media res. Takahashi enters and it slows down. Have you ever had a moment in a club, or a livehouse, or anywhere, when everything blurs for just a little bit, because you are caught off guard by something? That’s “Drama,” to the detail of snapping out of the trance to be swept back into the music.
Love Flutter obsesses on small moments and movements. Multiple songs fixate on the word “sway,” including as the title for the meeting-of-Kansai-minds “Yuragi” featuring tofubeats. Elsewhere, things “float” and “tremble,” or in the case of the delicate “Hello” topped by the muted Cwondo, “resonate.” And of course they “flutter,” particularly on the drum ‘n’ bass heart-race of “Child Replay” with Satoko Shibata. That song in particular underlines the unifying theme here, with Shibata celebrating the ho-hum wonders of routine connection over music aiming for goosebumps. It’s not all joyful — “Drama” feels practically feverish in its sudden obsession, while closer “Empty” brings in Le Makeup to ruminate on absence, focused on no major emotional revelations but rather the feeling of something lost during the days and nights.
This attention to emotional detail brings out the best production work Pasocom have ever laid down for a full-length album, every bit as dynamic and surprising as the feeling at Love Flutter’s core. The duo have always been subtle and at times cheeky about samples — see SHE IS A, a memory-clouded tribute to the glistening resorts and coastlines of Toshiki Kadomatsu’s music, but featuring sea recordings from some of Japan’s shittiest beaches to warp the nostalgia — yet here they add depth and texture. The pair’s use of skipping, chopped vocal samples is especially inspired, adding a nervous energy to tracks like “Fabric” and a rush of euphoria to “Colors.” They are also still pushing themselves, linking with rapper MFS for the lovelorn “Please me” and following it up with the rumbling (and self referential, as it seemingly uses echoes of the previous track to build its wobble) “Boredom,” both songs revealing newfound range and sounding like they’d be at home on NC4K.
It’s a culmination of ten years, of Pasocom Music Club nodding to everything that shaped them — Kansai electronic scenes, club sounds, netlabels, IRL-and-digital blur — and finding them open to digging deeper to locate new ideas. They find just the right balance between sound design, floor-eyeing energy and emotional heft. Here’s an essential Japanese project of the 21st century delivering their best statement to date, by zooming in on the most common feeling of all and capturing it from all angles. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of July 29 2024 To August 4, 2024
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 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 trip down…the Oricon Trail.
Snow Man — “BREAKOUT / Kimi Wa Bokuno Mono” (1,067,101 Copies Sold)
For all the change in the landscape of male J-pop…some things stay exactly the same.
STARTO reminds that it still sits on top of the pop pyramid via a rare million-in-a-week single courtesy of the most popular group of its kind in the country going. A lot has shifted in this space, but look past the buzz new acts bring and you’ll see Snow Man — moving lots of physical units, popping up in ads and being omnipresent in TV shows — standing as the most popular act of its kind in Japan.
It helps that “BREAKOUT” is a highlight for the group. I’m easily impressed on this front, admittedly — there’s a very standard STARTO sound, which isn’t present here (though kind of creeps up on the b-side, though that’s just meh so don’t worry about it), swapped out for a rock palette that gives Snow Man a little more edge and helps the number puff its chest out a bit (while also linking it to the more guitar-powered sound of modern J-pop).
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Last week, a review of Utada’s Tokyo show as part of their nationwide tour! Get an extra post every week!
News And Views
The latest version of BiS breaking up, not long after one of the old versions of BiS got back together for a show.
Perfume have a bunch in motion to celebrate its 25th anniversary of forming and 20th anniversary of being on a major label…yet the headline is the trio have part one (!?) of a concept album (!?!?!) out this October. Nebula Romance, coming this fall.
Meanwhile, Sakanaction announced they would write and perform the opening theme to the forthcoming Orb: On The Movements Of The Earth anime. Take a moment to pray for 2012 Patrick, who can’t comprehend which act is doing what over these last two news posts.
This is Sakanaction’s first anime tie-up, and I think that speaks to just how powerful these collaborations have become in the modern Japanese entertainment space. Forget about the potential international juice this could give them…even at home, the news of this got social media giddy about Sakanaction the band I haven’t seen in a bit.Jude Noel has a great look at Siren For Charlotte over at Bandcamp Daily.
Megan Thee Stallion shared the Yuki-Chiba-featuring video for “Mamushi.”
Music Magazine literally does not stop, as they are prepping a “2010’s J-pop Best Songs 100” list for later this month. So…stick around here for that in early September.
Newsweek Japan did a big cover story on Number_i this month, featuring a cameo by me, as I was asked to offer some insights into their Coachella performance and what sets them apart form other male groups today (the gist of which is…music that is not as formulaic as what you see coming out of the modern-day desert of male K-pop and Japanese K-pop lite. Specifically, “Bon.”).
Koda Kumi and Tetsuya Komuro, back together.
Now you can ride a rollercoaster while Kenshi Yonezu’s “Kick Back” plays, at least in Universal Studios Japan.
There was a slew of news from virtual-artist-leaning company Kamitsubaki Studio…full disclosure, a PR client as I work on the English-language KAF team (maybe you reading this will be getting emails soon, stay tuned)…yet I find the most interesting that they will release an anime later this year. Look back up at that Sakanaciton bulletin point.
Remember Yo Gabba Gabba! The kids show that also sort of rolled in indie rock and more left field sounds? The one Cornelius was on? It’s very charming, even years later! Apple TV+ has resurrected the series in a new version titled Yo Gabba GabbaLand! I have not watched it yet…the Peppa Pig wave goes strong in this house…but based on the trailer below, it looks mostly similar to the original, down to guest appearances from musicians. Which this time includes…Miyavi. Can you spot Miyavi in the trailer below???
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies