Make Believe Melodies For February 19, 2024
Gotta say, 2052 doesn't sound that far off, you know...
CVLTE — DIGITAL PARANOIA 2052
Quartet CVLTE aren’t the byproduct of any single internet genre, but rather the results of a decade of musical developments. It’s quite easy for writers and other observers to brush aside #microgenres as meme-like ephemera, the audio equivalent of that cartoon man slapping the hood of a car. Yet their influence lingers. In its brief existence and across new album DIGITAL PARANOIA 2052, CVLTE have wrangled up early 2010s SoundCloud electronics, mumble rap, various nu-metal revivals, hyperpop, whatever you want to label everyone getting into emo, EDM, Eastern European “drift phonk,” and so much more. What makes them and this latest release special is how natural it sounds, not a stab at being with “web culture” but a logical development.
Note: Epilepsy Warning With This Below Video
DIGITAL PARANOIA 2052 revels in mixing musical mutations with a very familiar angst at being young and having to exist. The album is littered with pitch-shifted singing, chopped-up vocal samples, big-tent drops and on the out-of-body “if I stay high.,” the constant chirping of a default iPhone alarm sound. All of these touches disrupt songs built for imagined Warped Tours, adding a woozy element to “scorpion.” and “me, myself & I.,” with the latter otherwise among the band’s sturdiest stabs at rock yet. But it’s the digital distortions coming through that gives them a modern tension.
The feelings throughout are familiar, if not slightly more mature than what you would expect from youth — CVLTE sneer at empty relationships, but a song like “girls lie.” acknowledges they pull the same shit the other way around — but it’s the music that thrills. It’s a decade synthesized, not used as novelty but rather as an organic backdrop for the band to work through everything. Listen below.
RYUTist — “Kimi No Mune Ni, Gunshot”
Steely cool only goes so far without a human heart at its core. Which is a dumb way of saying…I’ve never really clicked with Tokyo instrumental outfit D.A.N. One of the most ballyhooed projects of the past decade, at least in the immediate post-Shibuya stretches of the Tokyu-Toyoko Line, the band’s music has always felt more like a blueprint than anything emotionally resonant…save for when they collaborate with actual vocalists1.
Leave it to idols — a sub-sect of pop which can’t be anything but embarrassingly human — to bring out the best from that sound. Niigata outfit RYUTist enlist D.A.N.’s Daigo Sakuragi to craft a burbling electronic number nodding to various contemporary club sounds, but all in service of theatrics (see: the title of the song) and eventually chants. Yet both sides work wonderfully together, Sakuragi’s music adding to the ache of the group’s lyrics, while RYUTist add warmth to what could have otherwise been too chilly. Listen above.
OTOTOY FRIDAY — “Lemon Candy”
I love Pasocom Music Club operating in its conceptual, sometimes goofy, solo mindset…but I also love just how good the duo are at making a pop song glisten in its own way. Idol duo OTOTOY FRIDAY’s newest album is a playful lucky bag of sounds — Ryo of This Side Of Japan nails it by comparing it to late-2010s idol offerings, complete with left-field netlabel contributions, god bless — but the highlight for me is “Lemon Candy,” which finds the group recruiting Pasocom to craft a plinky-plonky backdrop carrying a certain Showa techno-kayokyoku vibe that never feels too dusty. Most importantly…it just hops along, never slowing down and letting the catchiness come to the front. Listen above.
Fetus — Beep Day EP
There’s a certain cartoon energy running through producer Fetus’ latest EP via Trekkie Trax. It’s the way the vocal and sonic samples bounce off the beat, with a lot of them carrying a lot silliness along with them (see the moaning/screaming deep in “Hi Hey”) and lightness breaking up otherwise hard-edged sounds (the helium voices racing alongside “Worn Out”). It adds a splash of color, and one of the most fun offerings from the artist to date. Get it here, or listen below.
ai: Featuring Rikon Nozaki — “Sayonara, Maboroshi”
Make Believe Melodies is a well-documented fan of any artist pushing a song towards the brink of chaos and managing to hold it all together. Hyogo artist ai: delivers a hyperpop-era exercise in fragmentation — with a little help from vet Rikon Nozaki — which tempo-shifts and stutters, but always holds on to a sweet melodic core. Listen above.
Laura day romance — “Young life”
Indie-pop heartache delivered with confidence in the group’s music, which make those instrumental interludes all the better. Great song that reminds me a lot of peak Homecomings (highest praise), coupled with a delightful video. Listen above.
downt — “Whale”
Something somewhat similar from Tokyo trio downt — new album out in a few weeks — but more focused on the churn and slow-burn provided by soaring vocals. A lovely stroll of an ennui-dipped song. Listen above.
NiziU — “Memories”
Honestly, I sometimes don’t know what to do with NiziU. They exist as a J-pop group but imagined through the mindset of K-pop…and then they went a released an absolute delight of a pop cut with last year’s “HEARTRIS” except that it functioned as their “Korean debut” which forced me to get into a whole mental “wait, how do I approach this” brain ache.
Yet digital single “Memories” offers an elegant solution for my noggin — stop thinking, this group excels at making smooth dance-pop aimed at positive vibes. There’s nothing complicated about this breezy bit of disco-pop, just a lovely glide leading up to a gleeful hook. Really, the only revelation here is that NiziU have basically taken the place of E-girls in the J-pop sphere…and that’s high praise, requiring no mental gymnastics. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of February 05, 2024 To February 11, 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.
OWV — “BREMEN” (21,210 Copies Sold)
All of 2024 has felt like the January Oricon charts so far.
Once again, the established J-pop players that usually runt he physical-only side of the chart are nowhere to be seen…though our winter will soon end on that front…while the upstart new generation groups that challenge them on this turf are also absent. Instead, we get the audition show run-off. OWV emerged out of the first season of Produce 101 Japan, but critically were not the winning group JO1. This is just four other guys who missed out on the final spots coming together to keep their contemporary boy group dream alive. “BREMEN” certainly sounds like modern male pop, to the point where “rap swagger interlude” and “vaguely relevant club production” feel like items being checked off a list. Which makes it feel more like one of the store-brand original songs aspiring idols have to perform on Produce than anything else.
The rest of the physical top ten reminds of who the primary market for CDs are in 2024…idol fans, VTuber supporters, neo-enka lovers and the K-pop set. Meanwhile, a glance over at the combined chart…which, I always want to emphasize, includes the ways most consumers actually experience new music…looks totally different, with “BREMEN” sneaking in at #9.
None of these artists continuing to do well on the charts that actually measure something approaching the actual experience of hearing music in the 2020s should be a surprise, but there’s something really jarring about that top five in particular. All2 but one of these songs exists digitally only (as in, you can buy it as a download or stream it), while the exception only came out physically months later as something of a treat for anime fans (“Idol,” which is actually not labelled as physical in the Oricon ranking but should be but also ehhhhhhh it’s success is online). The back half of this list features a little more CD representation, but it’s via King Gnu and…OWV.
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Go paid, and get one extra post a week! The weather in Tokyo is getting warmer…and that means I’m ready to get out more again.
News And Views
Japanese rap group BAD HOP played Tokyo Dome tonight — the project’s swan song before calling it a day as one of the most influential rap acts in the country’s history. They’ve flooded the market with content leading up to this conclusion, ranging from new songs to an appearance on THE FIRST TAKE, which you can see below.
NHK declines to sign new contracts with artists from STARTO Entertainment.
A certain kind of nerd would be giddy enough that Ian Martin returned to The Japan Times for the first time in…man, I don’t even know…to write a column. That he eulogized Damo Suzuki perfectly makes it all the sweeter.
A lovely interview with members of Uchudan by Mustafa, whose Substack I really enjoy and highly recommend subscribing to!
The Lost In Translation soundtrack is getting a vinyl reissue for Record Store Day…which means you can own a record featuring Happy End AND Peaches on it.
Toshiki Kadomatsu is…uhhhh, ummmm what do these letters mean.
Contemporary…urban…music? CityPop…utilizing…pianos? Cool…unctuous…melodies?
I wrote a feature on Time Capsule’s lovely Tokyo Riddim compilation over at Bandcamp Daily. Famous last words but…not the last you’ll hear from someone featured in this piece.
I also interviewed Crystal Kay for The Japan Times! A really wonderful chat from someone with no shortage of tales to share…and came away sorta wowed by just how fittingly Y2K a lot of her work is? Like, watch this video below and stand in awe at how it seems very in line with all the Aughts-era rediscovery of now…except it actually came out back then.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
A good example of both this trend and my mind’s ability to remember useless stuff…when Daoko collaborated with D.A.N. on a song, I tweeted out how happy I was to finally someone bringing out the best side of the artist. Most assumed I meant the instrumental outfit were elevating Daoko…but I most certainly was implying the other way around.
I think their music sounds like the cheesiest camp counselor trying to give a musical pep talk, but gotta say…Mrs. Green Apple leaning into the digital realities of now is actually pretty fascinating to see.
Hi Patrick - first off, thanks for these - you offer a fantastic and much appreciated insight into the current Japanese music ecosystem, especially for those of us stuck on the other side of the world. Second off, a bunch of people have probably already told you this, but there's a reason the Ototoy album sounds like late 2010s idol - it is. もしやこいつはロマンチックのしっぽ originally released in 2017, Tokyo in 2018, and Spring Fever in 2019 - so feels like this is maybe a bit of a Golden Best number? Hopefully just a summing up of work to date, rather than the label cashing in on a break-up... 😬 Anyway, thanks again for the substack - and yes, it's probably time i upgraded to paid...