Make Believe Melodies For May 10, 2021
Breathe In, Breathe Out
UNKNOWN ME — BISHINTAI
In what could accurately be called a desperate stab at balancing my mood, I tried VR meditation a couple weeks back. Nothing too outrageous — just strapped an Oculus headset to your noggin and suddenly I found myself in a “hub” modeled after a traditional Japanese ryokan with fantasy view of Mt. Fuji. A few clicks lead to what could best be described as Guitar Hero rebooted for New Age music. Breathe in when the icon aligns with your crosshair, breathe out when the triangle zooms in instead. Throughout, a voice made of pure air offers platitudes about “slowing down” and “clearing your mind,” brainfood for the chakra crowd. The whole experience was ridiculous, but I did feel far more relaxed than before.
A similar sensation runs throughout BISHINTAI, a set of ambient zone-outs from art outfit UNKNOWN ME seemingly poking at “meditative music” while also being pretty stellar meditative music. That a large chunk of this comes off as someone stuck in Quarter Lotus trying to hold in a laugh helps a lot. The Mac-talk guru sections found in the “Beauty, Mind and Body” segments are send ups, and featured guests are all electronic goofballs who are at their best when they are seeing how much fun they can have with sound (Foodman, Jim O’Rourke). “Gaze On Your Palm” transforms mantras into something that kind of stars sounding like intergalactic Pac-Man music after a while (like, it might be sampled). It’s a welcome raspberry at a time when celebration of “Japanese ambient music” risks turning into a series of midterm papers on “Hosono’s MUJI soundtrack and late-capitalistic desires.”
It’s kind of like this, unexpected but effective.
It also works as relaxant, pairing an ironic edge with synthesizer whirls perfect for blissing out to when the need calls for it. That’s a tough balance to achieve, but UNKNOWN ME can match any goof with something like the slow-unfold of “Isometrics” or transform Lisa Nakagawa’s syllables into sonic stardust on “Treadmill.” To parody often requires a great understanding of what makes the original work so impactful, and BISHINTAI pairs its send ups with music that does the job. Like stepping into the virtual reality meditation studio, it seems off but also delivers the desired effect. Get it here, or listen above.
Fuji Kaze — “Kirari”
I haven’t quite found the Fuji Kaze song that makes me really get why he’s become a rising darling in the J-pop sphere, but “Kirari” comes closer than anything else he’s put out to making me get it. Here’s familiar metro-born funk slink pumped up to TV-drama-levels of energy, giving it way more urgency than what this sort of chill-out rock goes for. Listen above.
tricot — “Bakuro”
On the other side of the Japanese musical spectrum…I’m pretty much on board with whatever tricot get up to. They just do this sort of plotted-out rock so well, and don’t require any radical reinvention to hit the right points. Listen above.
Hajime Iida — All Night / Air Drop
HIHATT reliably delivers this type of simple, energetic dance music, and Hajime Iida’s two newest tracks offers up that sun-starting-to-come-up energy just right (especially on the springy “Air Drop”). Get it here, or listen above.
i-fls — I Aim To Receive Their Love
Let’s close out this accidental “artists you can count on” run with a creator exploring the ennui of bedtown existence for a solid decade now. While the emotional richness i-fls gets out of these songs (and, just as importantly, the imagery they conjure up through song titles and art) is the hook, their ability to use the same set of sonic ingredients — largely just Garageband — to find seemingly infinite angles on suburban existence proves to be the project’s biggest achievement. This set also includes some of the livelier numbers i-fls has ever shared, from the sturdy melodies of “justin sheerhan” to what might be the first full-blown i-fls club track in “new fidelity.” Get it here, or listen above.
Quw — Late Spring
Imagine the Monster-charged, freewheeling spirit of hyperpop applied to indie-pop, and you get the strongest moments on Quw’s Late Spring. Doubling as an album that makes me think Mom is reaching a set of creators beyond TikTokers, inclusions like “Counter” and (especially!) “Sevens Walker” reveals a fresh approach to both styles that’s a joy to watch play out and is pure netlabel. Get it here, or listen above.
Ken Hirai — “1995”
Is Suiyoubi No Campanella’s influence finally bleeding through? Between Ken Hirai’s latest single (above) and Femme Fatale, the spirit of peak KOM_I both musically and visually is going strong. The key is that Kenmochi Hidefumi has found a niche in modern J-pop that didn’t seem possible four years ago, and that he’s bringing his best ideas from Suiyoubi to new and veteran acts alike. Missing from both? The whirling energy of that project’s animating member, making for great boundary-nudging J-pop but lacking that one thing that made the group one of the 2010s best.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of April 26, 2021 To May 2, 2021
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 the 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 drip down…the Oricon Trail.
JO1 — “Born To Be Wild” (254,111 Copies Sold)
Like a lot of male K-pop, JO1’s latest single feels like a bunch of ideas stitched together into one song. Yet where a lot of this quilt-pop can feel like a lot of great song concepts wasted for something “energetic,” everything clicks just right on “Born To Be Wild!” Even the raps — the biggest potential pitfall for any genre-breaking pop in the shadow of Hallyu — slot in nicely, though nothing touches that bit in the chorus when they go all Cornelius and let samples of their voices shimmer off. Listen above.
News And Views
Sekai No Owari have elevated the alternative physical-release game. Their forthcoming album scent of memory will be involved in a basic CD version, CD + DVD and…a box of scented candles, each one boasting a unique smell inspired by the songs found on the release. Take in the sweet odor of “Dropout” sometime in the near future.
The post-Vocaloid boom carries on in J-pop, as does various idols trying to tie themselves to this interest in fidgety pop with roots in Nico Nico Douga. Kis-My-Ft2’s Takashi Nikaido teamed up with some creators from this world for “BRAVE TUNING,” one of the more radical takes on this trend as it doesn’t sound like the achingly human YOASOBI or Ado but rather…he gets tuned to sound like an actual piece of Vocaloid software. Coupled with a video riffing on the type of anime clips that often accompany these songs (the most clever touch here), it’s the weirdest…but maybe most welcome, because it at least gets creative and smears digital dirt all over a Johnny’s boy’s voice.
Several music organizer groups petitioned the government to end the ban on no-audience shows in the country. Seeing as…in-person shows had been a thing for a while now (though I’m sure the current wave of COVID-19 cases has changed that), I think this might just be a rollercoaster-type situation where the situation will probably improve in June. I’m also a little unsold on their claim that livehouses are not a high-risk environment for virus transmission based on…a decade spent in livehouses, plus all the cases from last year originating from concerts early on.
Speaking of live music, here’s me thinking about Fuji Rock’s all-domestic line-up. Have a Summer Sonic / Supersonic partner piece coming out this week.
Well here’s one that could sustain a whole article — a Japanese YouTuber uploads a song called “Curry Police,” complete with video that is as lunkheaded as you think it would be. Want to guess how this goes over with Indian viewers? Not well! Go into Twitter and type “Curry Police” and oooooooh boy, is there a lot of vitriol aimed at this dumb bit of EDM-pop. The Japanese Embassy had to apologize for it, that’s how bad it got.
There’s layers to this one — that it involves both Japan-based Indian YouTubers speaking out against it along with a Japanese influencer who became famous for covering Bollywood songs on violin, but has seen his entire online reputation torpedoed because he made a three-second cameo in the clip (who apologized but then deleted that), reveals a huge digital side to all this, not to mention a pretty fascinating geopolitical one too.
However, let’s get to the music hook…this was done by Candy Foxx, the project that sprung out of loved/loathed YouTube gaggle Repozen Chikyu, who notably tried to engineer viral attention via a fake harassment scandal. They represent the darkest path possible for J-pop…ceding control over to YouTubers, who approach music as one big prank, “Perfect Human” with all the brain cells sucked out. It hasn’t happened yet, but hopefully the big-time fallout over this — an embassy apologized! — closes that door for good, at least for them.Let us wash away the bad with pure good, which is Sally Amaki fishing.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies