Make Believe Melodies For January 10, 2022
New Year, Lots Of Looking Back
Soichi Terada — Asakusa Light
There’s an out-of-time quality to Soichi Terada’s Asakusa Light, the electronic artist’s first album of all new material in 25 years. That final bit goes a long way to explaining the daze these 11 tracks conjure. As Terada told Crack last year, Asakusa Light took shape in the initial, gloopy months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the time spent cooped up coupled with no live club shows to escape into prompted the house master to reflect on his early days of creation. He turned to synthesizers and drum-programming techniques from his youth, lending this collection a familiar feel that never comes off as dated. Rather, it reminds of how strong these tools can still be decades on.
Yet you don’t need press-release details to be swept up inside the revelry of Terada’s latest. The songs strut and glow — melodies emerging from synth fog on “Double Spire” to turn the uneasy into the joyous, while transforming the cerebral into the cathartic on the shuffling “Diving Into Minds.” As is often the case with reflecting, there’s moments of melancholy — conveyed by the chimes on “Runners” or the pitch-shifted notes stumbling around “From Dusk” — but it’s the surrendering to a good feeling, even if just for a few minutes. Get it here, or listen above.
Soshi Takeda — Same Place, Another Time
Asakusa Light has a lot in common with one of last year’s finest albums, Soshi Takeda’s Floating Mountains. Both found creators using ‘90s equipment to piece together the tracks within, and as a result feature a “DJ who leapt through time” quality to them. Takeda’s newest offering makes nostalgia an even more central theme. Same Place, Another Time unfolds slower than the often rapturous Floating Mountains. Synths cover songs instead of push them, while Takeda opts for the lightest of beats, built for the study rather than the club. It’s a tenderer Memory Of Humidity, ready to sit down in front of the photo album and let the feels flow. Get it here, or listen above.
TOMC — Music For The Ninth Silence
Producer TOMC approaches nostalgia from a more academic angle on debut ambient release Music For The Ninth Silence. I’m not referring to every song being named after Carl Jung's eight typologies — so grad school! — but rather the thoughtful approach to how the past birthed the present. “The vibrant Japan of the 1980s is considered by many young Japanese people to be a fantasy far removed from the present day. On the other hand, much of the culture and urban landscape of modern Japan undeniably originates from the 1980s,” goes the notes on Bandcamp.
No need to worry about how this will appear on an exam though. The beauty of Ninth Silence stems from TOMC drawing from the past — specifically, channeling the on-trend Japanese “ambient” of the 1980s, Erik Satie and Steve Reich among others — while connecting it to now via the use of field recordings to create an ASMR affect at times. It’s a feeling of yesteryear bleeding into now — something TOMC excels at, as demonstrated on 2021 highlight Reality released by Local Visions — and a listen that always finds a way to send ripples through potential remember-whens. Get it here, or listen above.
The Weeknd — “Out Of Time”
I’m not surprised a The Weeknd album featuring prominent input from Daniel Lopatin features a city pop sample. I’m totally shocked how “Out Of Time” is, like, largely just Tomoko Aran’s “Midnight Pretenders” from 1983, but with Abel Tesfaye emoting over the song.
There’s like, a dozen angles to this worth digging into, ranging from how this is probably the peak of city pop revivalism at least within Western pop music (the comments under the Aran video below are filling up with Weeknd fans guided to it by Dawn FM, complete with some quoting of Jim Carey-sami Kong) to how this is the latest city pop sample to show up in a prominent album in the last few years. That’s all to unpack some other time…for now, here’s city pop being absorbed into the global music spotlight, with the moodiness of the original translated to modern times. It’s good, because it’s just like the original, which is a great example of the emotional complexity the style actually had.
Wondering what Aran herself thinks about this? She posted a quick message on her blog tonight. It boils down to…her being like “take a listen if you want!” and then noting how much fanmail she’s received from around the globe in recent years, including from younger folks. So chill…almost as chill as the snowman she shared in the post before it.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of December 27, 2021 To January 2, 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 Gnu — “Ichizu / Sakayume” (47,009 Copies Sold)
The end of the year always brings out the Oricon Chart’s strangest, and what could be weirder for a ranking focused on physical sales being topped by…a band also raking in digital number ones. "Ichizu” (above) would probably have been a hit even if it didn’t serve as the theme song to a mega-popular anime movie, as King Gnu has established itself as one of the major bands of the Reiwa generation (and beyond…did you see this new JYP rock band? They ache to be King Gnu, except they come off like a rich kid whose dad bought out an entire Guitar Center and Hot Topic for them to study “cool” in) thanks to world-weary lyrics and tempos veering between “inebriated ballad” and “chug.”
These two songs illustrate the sonic tension King Gnu do well, albeit in fit-for-a-Toho-Cinemas kind of way. I’m partial to the rush of “Ichizu” over the big-screen balladry of “Sakayume,” though the latter deserves credit for adding in just enough abrasive touches to keep it from turning to end-credits-y. Both are happy to let the rough edges come through, without letting them cut into the adolescent emotions central to any great rock song. It’s an approach perfect for digital natives…and for at least one week, Oricon’s physical chart, too.
News And Views
*Perfume vocals* Omicron Wave. Yep, it has arrived in Japan, sending COVID-19 case numbers skyrocketing and making the government all jittery. It’s also pushing live music companies to the edge. The country’s biggest summer festival, ROCK IN JAPAN, announced this week it would move its venue from the picturesque and vast Hitachi Seaside Park to a soccer stadium in Chiba in order to assure compliance with COVID protocol. That’s a drastic but probably necessary move…after cancelling the event for two straight years, organizer Rockin’ On needs something resembling ROCK IN JAPAN to happen this year, or else they might be in financial peril.
The next two months are going to be a real pressure cooker not just for live event companies, but for livehouses and clubs. Based off murmurs I’ve personally heard from people connected to Tokyo’s nightlife community, club owners who scrapped by during the first two years of the pandemic believe one more major State Of Emergency…forcing them to cancel shows or curb their usual business practices…could be the death blow to their spaces. Still not sure what will happen here…but if the situation gets bad enough for the government to act, some very notable venues vital to Japanese music might be heading towards a farewell.Sony Music offering artists mental and physical health assistance. Keep an eye on this development…wouldn’t be shocked to see Japanese entertainment at large embrace it this year.
Important Perfume experiments.
Ichiko Aoba to speak at Oxford University (or some online event associated with the institution, still sounds fancy to me!).
I wouldn’t read Pitchfork for analysis of Asian trade deals, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone read Nikkei Asia for entertainment coverage unless your preferred way of experiencing music is “spreadsheet.” At this point, I initially spent five sentences yammering about a total clunker they recently published, but before hitting “send” I decided to embrace positive thinking (plus, no clicks for bad writing) and instead…look, a well done and interesting feature on animated group Strawberry Prince, which frames the group as “built for the metaverse” but avoids leaning too much into that, instead correctly pointing out…this has been happening for a while now, and goes the extra step with this bit.
“Everything Is AKB48” Gaining Steam
Speaking of…
CD sales have increased for the first time in 17 years, partly due to new albums by @Adele and @TaylorSwift13 https://t.co/iG1I8lUeW7
Pitchfork @pitchforkIt’s important to stress, as many on Twitter have after this news started making the rounds…that increase is tiny, and in no way signals some massive shift in how people consume music. Yet that’s kind of exactly why I find it so important, seeing as “look at weird Japan, buying CDs still!” stories have proliferated over the last five years (and still kinda do) despite the industry moving towards digital in that time. Turns out…it wasn’t that strange, because big artists can still sell CDs, and truly all-in fans are happy to buy boxes of discs and abandon them in nature. J-pop wasn’t an outlier…it hinted at where everywhere would go.
Good stuff! This PRKS9 best of 2021 list is fantastic, and features a few albums you’ll see in our own countdown in the near future (alas, not Tim Pepperoni though, shout out that one song however).
Best subject line to see in your inbox? “Welcome To Tetsuya Komuro Week!” This Side Of Japan coming through with the first feel-good (errrr, well, maybe not Komuro’s latter career…) newsletter feature of 2022.
I wrote about the latest season of Netflix’s Aggretsuko…last time around it zoomed in on idol life, but now returns to the soul-crushing realities of work in the 21st century (complete with too-real-I’ve-seen-this experiences galore).
Last, a different character recommendation. I recently discovered San-X’s Chickip Dancers, which is a series of animated shorts and accompanying merchandise centered around dancing food and animals. All in on this character.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies