Make Believe Melodies For June 17, 2024
On Emotional Rockers And Big Goofy VTubers
Yukiguni — pothos
One of the tougher developments to accept as I get older is realizing it’s impossible to keep up with the pace of musical change in quite the same way I could, especially when it comes to mutations playing out in the live community. Look, I still probably go to more live shows than most people…yet the number is far, far less than a decade ago. So it goes, and the internet helps plenty in keeping one informed on happenings around them in Tokyo’s music world. Yet something is lost when staring primarily at a screen rather than lining up in a livehouse. Those are the places to see new developments unfolding in front of you, and especially how younger artists start building the space they want.
This is partially to say, I did not know Yukiguni existed until the release of pothos, the debut album from a trio featuring members all born in 2003. Had I been more active around live venues, I certainly would have encountered them, as they appear to be a group that cut its teeth live, both in the rock-leaning spots of Shimokitazawa and eventually creeping over to more electronic communities too. Based on this interview with AVYSS, the band approaches playing with a hesitance towards familiar models, instead embracing smaller spaces emphasizing a love of music over commercial growth. Words of youth, but in the case of pothos appropriate. This is an album of twisting and turning, both emotions that seem giant when you’ve just passed two decades alive and of a lifetime’s worth of musical inspiration.
Like a lot of Tokyo indie kids, US and UK rock bands serve as primary guiding points for Yukiguni, coming out through flashes of midwestern emo, Aughts guitar flavors and a little bit of shoegaze. Yet the trio exists in a proud lineage of indie acts in Japan using this as a springboard for meditations on city-adjacent life and navigating young adulthood (choose your representative band here, but for me pothos brings to mind the bedtown ennui of Homecomings). Emotions boil over, but only when needed, with Yukiguni spending the album navigating these feelings via the sounds that shaped them, putting its own spin and helping point towards a new path. It presumably took time…and lots of gigs…to shape, but here it’s on full display, for even the stragglers to soak in. Listen above.
Peanuts-kun — BloodBagBrainBomb
While plenty of good Virtual YouTuber music exists, this corner of pop tends to be far less imaginable than you’d think it would be given the whole reality-blurring nature of the medium these creators primarily explore. Leave it to a YouTube personality having lots of fun with the VTuber concept itself to also get wild and wacky with sound. Peanuts-kun has been rapping as long as he’s been uploading videos and has appeared at multiple iterations of rap-centric festival POP YOURS, but they have always approached it with a sense of giddiness at getting oddball, without ever reducing it to a joke. BloodBagBrainBomb offers peanut-brained takes on modern drill, drift phonk, and hyperpop (shout out guest spots from lilbesh ramko and hirihiri, adding appropriate digital squelches to “Wha u talkin about”), both pushing what they can do within these confines while earnestly seeing how they fit their world. Along the way, they somehow stumble across one of the best pop speed exercises of the year with “Birthday Party,” a collaboration with fellow music-first VTuber Tsukino Mito. Listen above, or watch the video for “Squeeze” which features members of PAS TASTA as dancers.
xiexie — “UMA”
Tokyo’s xiexie just released its debut album and…to circle back up to the first entry above, I haven’t had a chance to listen to the whole work quite yet (this one is much more “too many deadlines, help me”). Yet “UMA” offers a hazy highlight from the city’s emerging rock generation, and really underlines the group’s underlining idea of “sound is the closest thing to space,” as mentioned in this interview with Start Track. Listen above.
Various Artists — Shin Chiiki
Local Visions has some fun and looks inward. This set of songs finds artists associated with the imprint covering one another’s works, allowing each to show how they would flip sibling sounds around. Also…a new Tsudio Studio song closing it out! Get it here.
Hajime Ida — ILUVU
The first HIHATT release of the year is an elastic cut courtesy of Hajime Ida, who turns vocal samples into rubber bands in constructing a hell of a groove. Delirious without ever losing focus. Get it here. or listen above.
Frankie Paris And LEF!!! CREW!!! — “Dance Wiz Wolves”
Why simply recall “indie sleaze” when you can borrow directly from it? Okinawa-based party starters Frankie Paris and LEF!!! CREW!!! instantly transport listeners back to early Aughts New York (or perhaps the blogs most of us experienced it through) by sampling the guitar from “House Of Jealous Lovers,” before using it as a building block towards something even more disorienting (while not limiting itself to the 2000s, with elements of house and 2010s internet chaos creeping in). Listen above.
4s4ki — “Survival Dance”
What makes 4s4ki such a great artist is that for all the internet inspiration and “hyperpop” and general chaos she brings to familiar forms, she’s also a pop fan at heart. Go all the way back to her earlier songs and you get traces of ‘90s and 2000’s J-pop powering her works, just coming from a very Gen Z perspective. Here’s one of the sweetest nods to modern J-pop history possible — a cover that feels more like a re-imagining of trf’s “Survival Dance.” Part of the fun is connecting historical dots, as Tetsuya Komuro’s Eurobeat mutations most certainly serve as at least partial DNA for the Japanese crop of young, web-obsessed creators who love that boom-boom sound. Here, 4s4ki (with an assist from Yaffle) warps summer-song sounds into something far more out-of-body, making it messier around the edges without losing the ecstasy at its center. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of June 3 2024 To June 9, 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.
Strawberry Prince — “Hajimari No Monogatari” (223,731 Copies Sold)
The 2-D shall truly inherit the Earth.
The headline with Strawberry Prince topping the Oricon Physical Singles Chart is that they did it all. This mixed-media male idol group — represented by cartoon avatars in music videos and media (including a forthcoming movie) but performing as real people (maybe they wear masks, I forget) at their biggie-sized shows — has been one of the most popular groups in Japan since debuting in 2016. Alongside Hypnosis Mic and the boom in Virtual YouTubers, Strawberry Prince underlined the potential of animated pop groups. They’ve released physical albums before, but all the project’s singles to this point have been digital-only offerings, meaning they couldn’t ascend to the top of this chart (and would always be held back just a bit on the combined Oricon ranking).
Yet here they are in 2024, breezing past NCT DREAM and CRAVITY to take both top spots. The music, for me, is deeply forgettable idol daydream pop with a bunch of twinkles and teeth-wrecking sweetness…but hey, nothing highlights their boy-group bonafides like the songs being secondary to the ~ experience. ~ This is a significant milestone for mixed-media acts, and what they are capable of in the market.
Elsewhere on Oricon…nothing too silly, except Bon Jovi have a new album and it’s a top-ten seller in Japan? Glad someone is keeping the flame of hair rock alive.
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Last week…rambling hot takes! This week…we shall see!
News And Views
Mrs. GREEN APPLE have not looked into history too deeply. I have written a lot about “Columbus” and it’s ill-conceived video so I won’t reheat it here, but this remains the biggest music story of the week.
Make Believe Mailer #117: Mrs. GREEN APPLE Discovers Colonialism
·An absolutely demented collaboration resulting in a wacky press conference — Koji Mukai of Snow Man and K-pop outfit tripleS are celebrity representatives for some Odaiba summer fun event, alongside popular animated critters Chiikawa.
Smash fixed its Fuji Rock headliner problem in the wake of SZA cancelling by calling on…The Killers. Honestly, a great grab given the situation, and a win for the millenial rock fans of Japan. Perhaps not so much a win for the young demographic SZA was meant to get but hey can’t win ‘em all.
4s4ki performed in the middle of Kabukicho and it looks pretty tight.
James Hadfield talked to Harmony Korine for The Japan Times, which includes a bit of a report from a very wild event the director held at Shibuya WWW (a friend went and echoed that it was “wild”).
NewJeans Japanese debut is here, with a heavy Takashi Murakami presence. I do applaud the weird mix of art here (K-pop meets Japanese Superflat meets uhhhh Cartoon Network core).
The lead singer of betcover!! apologized after getting violent with the band’s drummer this week after they…made a mistake live? Chill my man!
MILLENNIUM PARADE (now all caps) embarking on a world tour.
Very much a view but…even though it’s not remotely accessible outside of Japan, I highly recommend readers of this newsletter to hunt down the anime Girls Band Cry, which is fantastic (and probably a future essay topic around these parts). Not spoilers exactly, but this making-of video is quite cool to watch, but might give away a few details.
Tokidoki Traveller links up with Harry at Angura to explore the city’s underground live community.
Far be it from me to claim I’m “ahead of the curve” on anything…but hey, sometimes I luck into something before it blows up. Back in March, I devoted one blurb to young Sapporo band TV Tairiku Ondo (found, of course, via AVYSS). Great song! Last week, my wife shared a TikTok with me all about the group, featuring live footage of the band…all high schoolers, whoa…blowing the roof off a livehosue in their hometown. Then…look what is the Top Viral hit in Japan right now…
Besides being a cool-as-hell development, it’s also a nice reminder that…as more and more male idols embrace streaming, charts like this won’t be dominated by the King & Prince’s or JO1’s of the country. The people can still rise up and say…we want to listen to a teenager scream at us.
Save space in your fridge to hold all 12 collector bottles of the IVE and Pepsi collaboration.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
