Make Believe Melodies For December 12, 2022
Tell me more of this "ninja school"
Sayohimebou — Ninja School
Making a concept album? Go big, or just don’t do it. Extra points if reading the outline of the concept turns your brain to mush.
I’m not sure if anything in the description for Ninja School actually comes across in the music, but it really doesn’t matter one bit. Sayohimebou deals in ideas, and the possibilities within them, whether that’s in imagining a not-so-distant future of merged continents or what it would sound like to jam every musical idea in their head into one song. That’s been their bend since 2016, and Ninja School finds the producer continuing to twist any sound — digitally generated, sampled, whatever! — into alien shapes. Buzzsaw synths colliding with 8-bit booms and echoey cat meows…why not, on “Meow Saw?” Drum-pad workouts intertwining with synth comet-trails and bullet-fast vocal samples, you’ve got “Bonsai Jujitsu.” I don’t even know where to start with “Shibaru Gold,” a pitch-shifted trip through a hall of mirrors featuring an array of samples just shooting straight at you.
It’s a dizzying listen, and that’s the point. Like the creative prompt attached, Sayohimebou just wants to take ideas…and jackhammer into them until they crack into something totally different, familiar sounds taking new forms without ever feeling like assigned reading. Get it here, or listen above.
NTsKi — “If”
A seasick love song courtesy of NTsKi, returning with new songs for the first time since 2021’s triumphant Orca. Drums and synth wobbles offer stutters to an otherwise tender song of longing. Listen above.
BD1982 — “Armour”
Worth buying because all proceeds go towards a good cause…The Children's Organ Transplant Association. Worth listening to because it finds BD1982 playing around with a more fragmented, floor-focused sound than what was found on the (stellar, list-lock) Initiation Insight, showing another side to where the Tokyo producer is at. Get it here.
LANA — “Pull Up”
One of the first manifestations of 2022 Jersey Club energy out of Japan (though…shout out netlabels, KBow and, like, Suiyoubi No Campanella among others for being way ahead of the curve), “Pull Up” flexes through the little vocal details, like the throat-clearing cough skipping across the song or the way LANA says “garage” or the extra growl in the line “bullshit [i’m] talking.” Great energy, but vitally aware that the flow of the words is just as important. Listen above.
Dr.Anon — 1314μ
Now just a duo after the departure of e5 earlier this year, Dr.Anon soldiers on and shows the energy doesn’t stop as a pair. Beats bounce ahead and words peel like paint off the blasted sounds. For all the roughness, the group still works best when the emotion can shine through the cracks, highlighted best on closer “Bless on me.” Listen above.
BHS Svve — MMO
It’s always a bit intimidating to try to lump all of the internet-centric artists thriving in Japan today together, whether because digital gaps feel (from the comfort of my office chair) so vast or because fencing them in as “Japanese hyperpop acts” can feel a little restrictive. BHS Svve’s second release of 2022 celebrates the community and reminds any worries of web-based islands being a pure invention of (my) mind. Alone, BHS raps with an intensity that can feel a little try hard, an effort to take the spotlight by force that doesn’t feel fitting for an artist so slippery. When surrounded by peers, they bounce around and adjust to the mood of the music and guest, whether strolling along lonely streets with Gokou Kuyt on “Guild” or fiddling with distorted digital rock alongside Lilniina on “Diva.” And when he links up with partystarters Lil Roar, levi and SERI on closer “Spirit,” they deliver a true like-minded bursts of ecstatic creativity. Listen above.
Hajime Iida — HARDCORE
“Can’t stop the clock!” God damn, do I feel you Hajime Iida. Thank goodness you’ve brought four varieties of floor-dreamin’ escape to the office, from loose-limbed dance pop to a slightly more chill “bounce mix.” Might not be able to freeze time, but can at least dream of a club in a state of utopia. Get it here.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of November 28, 2022 To December 04, 2022
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.
King & Prince — “Tsukiyomi / Irodori” (101,603 Copies Sold)
I guess the King & Prince team want to do everything before the group as it exists now ends next spring. “Tsukiyomi” starts off as a pleasant bit of guitar-driven pop nodding to strains of contemporary Spanish-language pop, before adding more electronic elements…and not stopping. We get a whole bass drop after the first hook, mutating into a skittery passage leaving just enough space for the group to re-enter. There might be an accordion buried within? Claustrophobic, which is quite the interesting look for any Johnny’s group (especially when the other song leaves too much space to stretch out). Listen above.
News And Views
Prolific singer, artist, composer and all-around music dynamo Ichirou Mizuki has died. He performed and wrote many famous anime and TV songs among other works — including a Dimitri From Paris collab — and also founded the influential anime group JAM Project.
It’s end-of-year chart season, gather round! Let’s see what Japanese artists get love from abroad on Spotify! Let’s see who dominated Billboard! Recochoku…sure, why not?
This Side Of Japan with the vital idol year-end lists we need.
WACK unveiled their first male pop group ever, and went full WACK with it.
✦┈┈┈┈ We are 『BOYSGROUP』 ┈┈┈┈✦ アーティスト写真初公開✨ 本ツイートが"1000RT達成"で個別アー写を公開します！！！ 各SNSもチェックよろ。 TikTok▶︎tiktok.com/@boysgroup_off… Instagram▶︎instagram.com/boysgroup_offi… #大阪から全国へ #BOYSGROUP #WACKBOYZ
The arrival of BOYSGROUP — Watanabe gonna Watanabe — came at a time when a whole generation of people interested in Asian pop clearly never encountered a single WACK group before, because what I assume are young K-pop fans oooohed and ahhhhhed at that mighty shaft and balls serving as the outfit’s logo. Joining them were casual observers being like “ummmm, was the graphic designer off?” WACK still has it, apparently!
Ryuichi Sakamoto performed a special…possibly last…concert over the weekend.
Following in the footsteps of Avex’s similar deal, Pony Canyon struck an agreement with China’s NetEase to distribute their music — which includes a lot of anime-related bangers I imagine the market is hankering for — in the country.
Pop singer can now go by her artist name thanks to a court ruling. Honestly, the folks at SoraNews24 deserve some kind of journalism award for the accompany art, this is how you do it.
Netflix’s Utada-inspired First Love appears to be doing well…and is pushing Utada’s “First Love” on top of streaming charts across Asia.
I finally watched some of Chainsaw Man, which is more important for our purposes for spotlighting a variety of Japanese artists via its ending themes, and playing the role of “over-achieving original movie soundtrack” for global anime fans. Yet it’s also an actual show! My views: after episode one, I thought “Is this show going to be about capitalism?,” because I am very very smart and also very very hooked into Twitter. By episode five, I realized “this is actually about the dangers of being too horny.”
Lil Nas X…in Japan! Making TikToks in the subway, taking photos on the train and examining the toilets. This all sparked a very minor effort from the hall monitors of English-language “Japan Twitter” to shame Lil Nas X for snapping photos on the train which seems like a real lost cause in 2022 (this is the tourism you guys wanted!). He probably should wear a mask…but, uhhhh, not seeing a lot of other tourists so far either.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies