Make Believe Melodies For July 1, 2024
A Bandcamp-centric edition to start July!
effe — eternal
Siren For Charlotte, try releasing an album that is not an instant AOTY contender, just to mix it up.
The unifying sonic and thematic element across its discography to date is a particular manifestation of melancholy. The artists releasing through Siren For Charlotte use memory as a building block, but they don’t grasp for far-off times they never knew. Rather, the albums use 2000s textures and memories as building blocks, recontextualized for two decades later, no longer cutting edge but something carrying a touch of ennui with them. I think it’s telling so many of the label’s releases center Vocaloid — enough time has passed where the digi-sing of Hatsune Miku is not new, but rather something familiar…and potentially complex emotionally.
Electronic artist effe has released plenty of Vocaloid-centered songs in their day, stretching back to the dawn of that singing-synthesizer-based community. Their newest album, and first for Siren For Charlotte, lacks synthesized vocals, but plays with the same sonic details of the 21st century to deal with the human condition. On eternal, effe draws from Y2K drum ‘n’ bass, new age, IDM, Japanese video game soundtracks, anime and much more to construct a set at times sad, at times fragile and at times transcendent.
The sounds effe arranges across eternal tightrope these emotions. It’s a blur of synthesizer mist, piano notes and electronic chirps adding a texture to it all. The surrounding melodies can sound vulnerable, but a skittering melody (“iris”) or break (“opaque”) comes through to propel forward. Voices largely lurk around the edges, existing as whispers — there’s probably a good essay to be written about a certain strain of Japanese music reflected by eternal and Siren For Charlotte among others that feel, for lack of a better phrase, very anime-like in how they play out — save for “inori,” where an actual human voice breaks through the digital haze, complicating the feelings all the more. Get it here, or listen above.
Stones Taro — Dwellers Of The Seabed
The past six months have really seen Kyoto’s Stones Taro push themselves to new sonic grounds. They offered up beats to rappers such as MFS, while also collaborating with the artist Kaoruko for one of the year’s wooziest pop experiments. Now comes his own debut full-length album, and it is not just a set of body-moving tunes (though it also…is kind of that). Rather, it’s a concept album about the ocean. Specifically, “the imagined culture and life of deep-sea denizens.” Oh let’s go!
Besides being a nifty conceptual framework to work with, placing his debut under the sea prompts clever new angles to Stones Taro’s club sound. The tracks here often move a little slower — sometimes approaching chill-out sounds, as on “Whale Shade” — and make more from less, to the point Dwellers features some of his chilliest rumblers to date (“Deepest Downtown”). Throughout, Taro still finds a way to let the energy come through, but from a new, submerged perspective. Get it here, or listen above.
Seimei — Tokyo Funky Breaks
A lock to appear on any list I make due to a song being titled “The Robot Restaurant,” all the better because it offers up compressing fun over it constricting bass. Yet the whole set is a delight, pumping with urgent energy while nodding to the rich history of Japanese club and electronic sounds (catch that YMO sample in the title track). It gets rounded out by remixes courtesy of Carpainter and America’s JIALING. Get it here, or listen above.
TEDDMAN — Work Dat Pussy Trax EP
The song “PUSSY ANTHEM” features one of the funniest sample sounds I think I’ve ever heard in my life…it sounds like a turkey??? Also, all proceeds from this EP go to Doctors Without Borders. Get it here.
7th Jet Balloon — S/T
The rare rock album that connects the feeling of perpetually feeling left behind in love and subsequent emo vibes with Dragon Ball’s premier sadsack (“I know how Yamcha feels”). Forget the anime jokes…7th Jet Balloon offer one of zippiest and most fun iterations of whatever wave emo we are on in Japan, one nodding to key influences (a cover of Origami Angel’s “24 Hr Drive-Thru”) while also having fun with the energetic style (multiple baseball referencing songs, a particularly riveting song called “FUCK SUMMER”). Get it here, or listen above.
kinoue64 — neu neu neu
The artist behind kinoue64 continues to explore their own voice rather than the synthesized vocals of Hatsune Miku…and that includes stretching out their shoegaze-glazed rock to over ten minutes on closer and highlight “Aoi.” Get it here, or listen above.
Atarashii Heya — Nora No Kadan
Perhaps the sparsest release from Local Visions to date. The Atarashii Heya emphasizes minimalism across these eight tracks, to the point where some inclusions include the sound of the outside world bleeding in to otherwise intimate spaces. Even when the windows get closed, every song here feels recorded adjacent to a bed, with vocals delivered low and sounds soft. Get it here, or listen above.
TOMOYU — Event Horizon
I mostly associate the electronic artist TOMOYU with funkot sounds, yet for their debut full-length, they’ve gone for something much more crushing. The songs on Event Horizon favor steely melodies and pulverizing percussion, with a space theme linking it all together (theme of the week…themes?). Get it here, or listen above.
Various Artists — From Tokyo to Palestine: A Compilation of Music and Poetry
As the title makes clear, this is a collection of Tokyo-based (and beyond, really, with many from across Japan chipping in) sharing songs for a compilation where all proceeds go to The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, aimed at helping kids in Gaza. The bonus is — you get a 60-plus set of songs offering a wide look at indie creators in the country today, including some familiar names around these parts (House Of Tapes, healing cream lucky wax) and many new ones. Get it here.
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This week…a sorta self-indulgent essay? And soon! Trip reports from Okinawa and…uhhhh the government district of Shinjuku.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of June 17 2024 To June 23, 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.
IS:SUE — 1st IS:SUE (“CONNECT / STATIC”) (116,408 Copies Sold)
I think I’m getting old…because I swear whenever I play the above video there’s like a commentary track playing over it. Can I like, turn this off? Or is this one of those new-fangled sensory overload things the kids like?
Anyway, I’m also feeling pretty “get off my lawn” here because…are people not sick of this kind of song yet? Yes yes, it’s idol music so there’s more to it than that…but can we try to do something more than “BLACKPINK but with a fast part?” I want to chalk this up to a surplus of groups coming from competition shows…but I like what ME:I have done. Go down a few spots on Oricon and the delightful NewJeans’ Japanese release is right there, showing that you can actually try out new sounds rather than keep rehashing the same ones.
News And Views
Nishino Kana back. One of the biggest solo artists of the first half of the 2010s went on hiatus a few years ago, but now she’s ready to return…to a very, very different J-pop landscape. “Torisetsu” would probably wow on TikTok, though.
NewJeans held its “Bunnies Camp” event at Tokyo Dome last week, attracting sold out crowds eager to see an outfit bound to be super popular in this nation for years to come (uhhhh barring zaniness between HYBE and Ador). While that’s important on its own, the shows themselves are fascinating. In a move obviously meant to develop an even tighter bond with a market vital to all current K-pop acts, NewJeans’ members covered a variety of J-pop songs, from Seiko Matsuda to Mariya Takeuchi to Vaundy. They also brought out YOASOBI on the first night and Rina Sawayama the next.
The mystery of who GEMN is…revealed! This project, handling the opening theme for the forthcoming season of Oshi No Ko, is Tatsuya Kitani and Kento Nakajima. Hitsuji Bungaku, meanwhile, tackles the ending song.
On the one hand, I don’t think we should be hooting and hollering over advertising campaigns. On the other…I work lots of freelance PR now, who am I to judge??? LDH project f5ve’s social-media imprint is interesting to say the least, and recently it looked like they made people who really care about the definition of things angry by tweeting “nugu in japanese would be ‘dare.’” There’s like some extended lore here where some fan account said or did something with this and got in trouble but…honestly who cares. This appeared to be some real 5-d chess, as they “apologized” and corrected themselves…before revealing its promo for a forthcoming single.
Haru Nemuri heading back to the States this Fall for a tour.
I’m just going to put the audio of “Otaku Hot Girl” below and note we are now fully in the summer of “cool, Japan!”
Ako out here with an album-promo video better than anything Takashii From Japan has done. But seriously…great idea to hype this up!
Fantastic interview with Dos Monos about their new album over at Rate Your Music which…I will write about soon! An undeniable 2024 highlight.
Mei Ehara to tour with Faye Webster later this year in the U.S.
Yes, I’m late to this but…there’s some new anime about a deer lady, and the theme song is insanely catchy? Here’s an hour-long loop of it, and the even better funkot remix of it that, in a just world, will somehow result in DJ JET BARON getting to do an anime opening.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies