Make Believe Melodies For January 16, 2024
Freedom means ample use of Vocaloid...or horse ladies
inuha — Hi no Kakera
The thrill of creation comes from the freedom nothingness affords: blank paper; the clean canvas; the empty Bandcamp page waiting to be decorated with releases. Siren for Charlotte embraced this void when the label launched last year, choosing to fill the space with its own sonic mission statement. Presented as “angelic post-shoegaze” and later also referred to as “enei ongaku” (something approaching “long-distance music”), the label has thus far used shoegaze — or at least elements of the style — as a base. But it’s only one part of a greater effort to create art connecting dots between new age, ambient, Vocaloid, netlabel-era electronics, anime and more. It’s at times trying to capture the experience of 21st century music into an actual form, but really, it’s about creation.
Siren for Charlotte sees that blankness, and turns it into a guiding document.
Creator inuha’s Hi no Kakera stands as the imprint’s best summation of this viewpoint from a single artist to date. They use layers of guitar to create a wall of sound aiming for euphoria instead of eardrum crush, with the synthesized voice of Hatsune Miku emerging from it to serve as extra texture and a narrator guiding us through scenes of bittersweet memories, once painful but presented as pleasant in retrospect. There’s a dappling of synth and machine beats to give it an extra glow — Siren for Charlotte’s own write up points to the late Aughts electronica coming out of Bunkai-Kei Records as inspiration — while also playing around with tempo to keep it from being a pure swirl. Instead, it’s a collection of disparate sounds and ideas stitched together into something all its own. Get it here, or listen above.
dj twinturbo — Turbocore: 01
The continued beauty flowing out of peak netlabel times in Japan is the urge to just run with whatever idea comes to your mind, knowing full well the internet can host it and connect you to a community ready to go wild for it. If Siren for Charlotte approaches it from a place of aching emotion, producer hirihiri’s dj twinturbo persona — named after a horse from the girls-as-race-horses series Uma Musume that I gather is very fast and maybe lacking in terms of strategy based off this clip — operates in search of flights of fancy…and stupid-fun club stuff. Yeah, Mall Boyz and Michelle Branch should go together! Throw AG Cook into the funk blender, for sure, and later on break out a netlabel classic for good measure! Imagine Zedd…but way way faster, like breaking the nightcore sound barrier. Imagine all of this with some goofy horse girl’s voice gallopping overhead. Now that’s online freedom, baby. Get it here, or listen above.
Kazumichi Komatsu — “Big History”
The artist formerly known as Madegg turns to electric guitar to power the chug of “Big History.” Komatsu plays with the instrument as texture, pairing it with (what sounds like) lightning cracks before letting those riffs melt into liquid metal , burbling around synth hiccups. Listen above, or get it here.
Yan Seku — “Ujimushi”
Yan Seku lays claim to one of the gruffest and roughest odes to the creative process I’ve ever heard with “Ujimushi.” He knows it to, devoting one line within this throat-wrecker to how much his vocal chords ache after a day of chasing these specific musical vibes. Might be worth it though, because the intensity shooting out of this song is undeniable. He carries that same fuck-it-go-for-it energy on recently released album (and immediate 2024 highlight) NATURAL PUNKS, which staggers its way to an intersection between KOHH-devoted 2010s flexing (Yan Seku’s bio starts that he heard a KOHH song in 2013 and thought “yep, I’m doing this”), hyperpop flotsam and basement noise shenanigans. Listen below.
JYOCHO — Guide And Devote EP
Few bands create songs managing to unfold gracefully while constantly feel jerked around like JYOCHO. They are math rock by way of an after-school band club, weaving in flute and vocal sweetness around start-stop guitar playing and drum patterns. It’s somewhat misleading to label a band dabbling in surprising melodic and rhythmic combinations as consistent, yet Guide And Devote offers four more songs underlining this balance. Listen above.
Uilou — “Homebody”
One of the late 2023 releases leaving an impression (including on Make Believe Melodies’ Favorite Japanese Albums list) was producer AFAMoo and vocalist june-chan’s electronic unit Uilou. The pair’s In My Mind imagines the current Y2K garage revival as agoraphobic via sparser production and june-chan’s whispy, sometimes near-whispered vocals. “Homebody” only makes the hikikomori-house vibes feel all the stronger. It’s a sparse, keyboard-driven slice of ennui dashing ahead but in no hurry to get out of the front door (“I’m a homebody / and I’m fine with it”). A more inward-looking revelry, which is what Uilou appears to do particularly well. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of January 01, 2024 To January 07, 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.
Kis-My-Ft2 — “HEARTBREAKER / C’monova” (201,212 Copies Sold)
This week, I wrote about the ongoing, mutating importance of NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen over at The Japan Times. The central tension — despite registering record lows in TV viewership, sure seems like a record number of people commented about the year-end bonanza this year, best represented by YOASOBI’s “Idol” stage. Talking about Kohaku 2023 necessitates bringing up some counter-programming to it. STARTO Entertainment held several artist-helmed livestreams on December 31, and they pulled in millions of viewers, breaking records in the case of top act Snow Man. Whereas Kohaku imagines itself as mainstream entertainment for a general audience in a fragmented age, STARTO provided rabbit holes for existing fans to jump down in a time where influencer-like devotion to “idols1” wins out. The trade off, though, is nobody outside of these circles talk about what happened on the show beyond how big the number under the YouTube player got. Kohaku might not have diehards…but people are thirsting to talk about it.
It’s a familiar sensation to anyone following the Oricon Charts, as we do once again around these parts in a new year. Here we have two songs by undeniably popular group Kis-My-Ft2 that are undeniably sales hits thanks to that big number on the weekly chart that will have little to no impact on the actual fabric of Japanese pop culture in 2024. It’s a reminder of the pull of fandom (and, I mean, the fact STARTO is doing just fine on the sales and media front), but also a note to look beyond these burrows.
Anyway, two pretty OK songs! Swift enough and the second one has solid pop-rapping.
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News And Views
Singer Shoji Koganezawa died at age 65. An established singer over the years with plenty of hits to his name, he’s also extremely well known to people for appearing in a series of oral medicine commercials (which, throwback, mostly talk about limiting the damage of smoking on one’s throat). See one example below.
Kento Nakajima set to leave Sexy Zone in a couple of months…right before they change their group name. The era of a male group inspired by the sexiness of Michael Jackson is nearing its end.
Tsuyoshi Domoto of KinKi Kids married Kanako Momota of Momoiro Clover Z in an absolute shock announcement that was probably the biggest entertainment story of the week. J-pop powerhouse formed!
The Straits Times has two articles looking at the current global growth of J-pop: one is actually just a profile of YOASOBI albeit with plenty of great details regarding their popularity sprinkled within, while the second is a larger feature on greater overall growth in Southeast Asia, with the most telling line being right up front:
Is Lamp going to open for Mitski on a few dates? Is there another Lamp floating around in the world?
The president for an underground male idol agency has been arrested after grabbing the breasts of a teenage fan at one of the shows.
Ado’s radio show coming to an end this spring so she can focus on her touring.
lilbesh ramko getting love via…Kanjani Eight!?!?! I take everything I’ve said about them back.
I popped up in a video by the South China Morning Post, focused on future funk. Watch below!
Luminate once again spotlights J-pop as part of their 2023 year-end report.
Loved this post about Cyber City OEDO’s soundtrack written by David Drake.
Bruno Mars was in town for a sold-out run of shows at Tokyo Dome. In the process…he weebed out. The real highlight came when he did a brief cover of AKB48’s “Heavy Rotation.” Watch that below. He dropped in a few other J-pop numbers (Kenshi Yonezu’s “Lemon”) but this was the headline stealer, to the point where AKB covered one of his songs afterwards.
Truly…everything is AKB.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Follow the (new!!!) Best Of 2024 Spotify Playlist here!
I can’t tell if the alternate reality where, like, 32 STARTO men are dancing next to YOASOBI during “Idol” is what I wish I could see or one I’m glad I missed out on.