Make Believe Melodies For January 9, 2023
Getting Back In The Groove
Masayoshi Iimori And 4s4ki — “pure boi”
The partnership between Masayoshi Iimori and 4s4ki thrives on a tightrope walk between blown-out sound and heart-on-sleeve lyrics. That’s what made “I Love Me” such a revelation back in 2020 — a huge, lurching track from Trekkie Trax’s most big-stage ready core artist colliding with an artist who savors exploring the personal and takes time out of the song to console a friend bullied for liking anime. If that digi-explosion worked at blurring the two styles, “pure boi” plays with the power they have bouncing off one another. 4s4ki’s voice comes through like static in a radio, sometimes clear and oftentimes a touch scrambled (fully electrified in the second half) but still aiming straight for the heart. That builds to what Iimori does best — a drop, here given all the space it needs to mutate and warble, 4s4ki caught up in it all. Get it here, or listen above.
Age Factory Featuring Arisa Ushimaru — “Alice”
Sometimes locking in and plunging ahead works better than anything too complicated. “Alice” simply finds a groove, pushes it forward and lets everyone add some emotional twistiness via their singing, including one half of the band yonige. Listen above.
BHS Svve — “RoofTop”
One of the artistic waves on my mind — both thanks to constructing year-end lists and talking with friends who have been dipping into youth-centric scenes over the New Year’s holiday — has been Japan’s “hyperpop” creators. On a global level, there’s a pretty clear apprehension heading into 2023 as artists and sounds associated with this space get nudged into the spotlight (that forthcoming 100 gecs album…strap in for discourse!), warping what made it all interesting in the first place while also resulting in artistic shifts. In Japan…I’m struck by how overall good most of the output from this niche continues to be, helped by a general slowness in major labels co-opting it outside of a few compilations and 4s4ki (deserved though). “RoofTop” offers a solid example of the general charm still coming through in all its tempo flips, siren sound effects and manipulated vocals — that sense of playfullness remains, even in loosies like this. Listen above.
canooooopy — Myakumyaku To, Shuen To Shuzen
Producer canooooopy gives themself a challenge on their first album in three years — create songs using only samples, oh actually only the second half of said samples. For an artist who was already turning familiar sounds into otherworldly head trips, this limitation pushes canooooopy’s work into an even more feverish direction, with individual sounds lasting for less time but repeating more. Beats to stare at a melting candle to. Get it here, or listen above.
Eri — animacy
Hatsune Miku remains most intriguing in 2023 as an instrument rather than a character. There’s no shortage of personality-first digital entities hovering around the internet now…Miku, though, remains malleable for any creative. DJ and electronic producer Eri’s animacy shows this dimension well, with the artist frequently using Miku’s digi-sing as texture, to the point of burying it deeper in the mix on hard-hitter “inclusion” and woozier “jailed” (while also letting her have some quick sing-speak up front). It helps make the moments when Miku gets pushed to the front — see the euphoric closing title track, which also makes the abrasive sounds before it all the more rewarding when this one takes off. Get it here.
meow — “二〇二二”
Alright, the one 2022 leftover I’ll squeeze in here. Yet as vacations fade and “real life” returns, having the light breeze of meow’s latest feels balming. Or maybe I’m just trying to ignore my inbox… Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of December 26, 2022 To January 1, 2023
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.
NGT48 — “Wataridoritachi Ni Sora Wa Mienai” (43,826 Copies Sold)
Ahhhhhh, the transition from a fading year to a fresh one, when nobody gives a shit about anything. Late December (and, really, most of January) on Oricon means anything can ascend to the top spot, because blockbuster singles tend to be far and few between. If an enka song is going to crash the charts, it will be in the next two weeks. In this space, the -48 group everyone wishes didn’t exist can go on top with sales that are wildly low given their pedigree…savor it, blacksheeps of Niigata! The song itself actually stands out a little beyond the familiar dramatic sprint favored by this world thanks to lyrics comparing the plight of young people navigating the world to migratory birds (not like, Pulitzer material, but I respect the swing) and by the decision to indulge in drama via all the spoken word deployed in the latter segment. That’s the secret weapon of idoldom — drop a speak-bubble into the middle of your pop and suddenly the theatrics become much more electric.
Two other notes from the charts. First, shout out Morning Musume 22’s “Happy Birthday to Me!,” which was half of last week’s singles-topping release, and a fun song!
Second, let’s take a look at the album chart to see a release pulling pretty impressive sales figures for a physical offering in the 2020s. Whatever could it be?
Unrelated, LDH might be cooked
News And Views
I was out of the country for New Year’s Eve, which meant I just straight-up[ avoided NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen for the first time in a bit, while also staying logged out of Twitter for a whole two days to avoid having to think about it at all. Consider it might version of Dry January, except I’ll just never know if they broke the kendama record again. Turns out plenty of people picked up the slack in my absence because the show recorded a slight boost in ratings this year. Since coming back to Japan, I’ve also heard from a few non-music-centric folks who found themselves tuning in while stuck with their in-laws (the stereotype is true!) who reported to me that…they really liked the show?! Signs 2023 is going to be a really wacky one, perhaps.
This is definitely a “let’s hold our horses until something real comes out of it” entry but…according to Josei Jishin, Namie Amuro is contemplating coming out of retirement. The real juice, though, is she would consider doing it in South Korea, with some subsequent rumors on Twitter connecting her to HYBE, though that feels like pure speculation / fan fiction, to be honest. Again, nothing really concrete points to any of this, but perhaps something to keep one ear on as the year progresses.
Expect a Bocchi The Rock! standalone post sometime in the near future…but if the Oricon sales above weren’t enough to show you how it has become a cultural hit, then perhaps seeing the Shimokitazawa livehouse that inspired the show’s primary setting beg people to stop hanging around outside and snapping photos of the venue. Now that’s pop power, baby!
Fresh off a great new album and love from the likes of Pitchfork, For Tracy Hyde…announce plans to break up after a show this spring! A bummer for sure BUT important to keep in mind what an incredible discography they’ve put together over the last decade, if anything the project is going out on a particular high note.
I genuinely can not believe Minami Minegishi head-shaving scandal turns ten at the end of this month…can still remember seeing the video for the first time while running on a treadmill and being like “wooooo boy.” Anyway, this happenning sure feels different a decade on, in part becuase Minegishi thrived in the years after and can now talk pretty bluntly about it all on TV, such as how it was all her idea and how she didn’t expect it to turn in to what it was.
Tower Records reissuing a handful of Tatsuro Yamashita albums on vinyl this year.
City pop helped CNN ring in the New Year.
A quick round-up of things I’ve written lately: looked at The First Take for Billboard, though it is behind a paywall, but learned a lot about how it came together talking to the team behind that channel; year-end music feature for The Japan Times; talked to Chara about her incredible career, also for The Japan Times.
Netflix’s First Love appears to be a pretty big hit — albeit in the way most Netflix “hits” are, which is formed from a combination of official PR announcements and vague “vibe” readings. Yet one clear way the drama has connected is by looking at music charts — Hikaru Utada’s “First Love” has appeared on a bunch of Asian country’s Viral Streaming charts in recent weeks, and just as tellingly, you are seeing a spike in people covering the Heisei standard. One of the dudes from Novelbright went all the way to New York to croon it on the streets, while Kim Chaewon of LE SSERAFIM also gave it a go.
When I was putting together my songs list for This Side Of Japan’s Friends List, I was surprised to see that the video for Peterparker69’s “Flight To Mumbai” (my pick for #2 of 2022) had vanished off of YouTube. A few days later, I found out why — said song is now being used in an ad for Apple’s App Store, and a new version of the MV appeared alongside it. Missing from it? A brief scene of a rather…NC-17-rated toy, replaced with a shot of an iPhone lolz. Real heads know what the original was like!
Dropping this anime-style music video for “She Works Hard For The Money” (promoting a video game) as a potential sign of…trends to come? I mean, at the very least it exists, which is wild.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies