Make Believe Melodies For May 27, 2024
Pretend I'm Whispering All Of This Into Your Ear
lilbesh ramko — “nichijou:loopmania”
It takes a certain artistic fire to create a song about the repetition of daily life and animate it with so much emotional punch. Yet here’s lilbesh ramko staring down life’s repetition — rendered achingly as “same, same, sad, same” — but rejecting complacency in favor of simmering anger, rendered both through their voice and the music around him. He’s practically gnashing his teeth at times here, and as the song enters its final stretch ramko really starts letting loose on this familiar condition, offering up a very-online interpretation of either Shinsei Kamattechan or Sakanaction (or really a little of both…with gunshot sample topping it off).
Their bubbling frustration matches up just right with the music, a wonderfully disorienting mix of ideas. To this point, lilbesh ramko has been a sonic provocateur drawing from a wide range — here they are exploding over music from the Zelda series, here they are going full hyperpop, here they are in duet with a virtual singer — and always finding a way to match the noise with the mood they create. Yet I don’t think they’ve ever done it better than they do on “nichijou,” matching speedy piano melodies begging for anime placement (YouTube comments back me up on this) giving way to blown-out electronics and eventually drum ‘n’ bass passages. The looping nature of everyday life might seem boring, but that repetition leaves a lot of room for one’s imagination to fill the dead time. Here’s an artist wrestling with that creating a breakthrough moment. Listen above.
Homecomings — “Moon Shaped”
Following up on its melancholy masterpiece, Homecomings return with a song made for a movie that still fits in perfectly within their own world. “Moon Shaped” starts slowly but that build is vital, leading to a rush of guitars that carry the song forward and offer heft to the vocals, here wrestling with a sort of suburban-ache the trio have been exploring for quite some time now. Over a decade in, they know how to express it just right. Listen above.
xeno(n) — “NEW-AGE”
What starts as fragile FLAU-isms wrapped in twinkles and alien-baby laughing mutates into an electronic hymn doubling as a flex. Osaka’s xeno(n) teases ambient-adjacent daydreams but wakes up pretty quickly into “NEW-AGE,” using the backdrop to vocally bounce over the swirl and offer one of the most thrilling singing performances from this corner of Japanese music so far this year (somehow sounding like Avril Lavigne and Hatsune Miku in equal measures). Listen above.
KAF — “Gestalt”
A good ol’ fashioned disclosure here…I work on English PR for KAF, so I’m obviously coming in with biases going beyond “I like this song a lot!” But…I like this song a lot! The entire EP “Gestalt” comes from finds virtual singer pushing into new sonic territory — it is her effort to welcome new producers into the fold, and reveal new sonic dimensions to her world — but this song in particular wows in its ambition. Alongside the familiar dance-pop rush KAF has excelled at for years, we get rapped interludes and…most delightfully, for someone always chasing the stupid highs of yesteryear…a big EDM passage. It’s just an accent to the drama running through its core, but the twists and turns make “Gestalt” a more unexpected offering from this act. Listen above.
Oyubi — Reading Steiner
I never would have described producer Oyubi as “maximalist” at any point, but on Reading Steiner they manage to get even more steely and minimalist than I can ever remember them. This is a set of rumbling tracks with the texture of sewer pipes. Thanks to the extra space lurking in all three songs, Oyubi is able to create something much more unsettling than what has been found in their previous work, but with the thrust still front and center. Get it here, or listen above.
TAIL — “Toxic”
Taichi Mukai is now TAIL! The reason for this moniker shift on the artist’s website is pretty vague — “Mystique and lyricism, cool and emotional, move freely between the digital and the analog” what, are you aespa? — though I feel kind of safe in saying it’s a chance for Mukai to be more direct about his romantic preferences. “Toxic” lays this out pretty clearly (“if you want it / talk talk talk talk boy”) and is a lot of fun. Sporting the most club-ready beat Kenmochi Hidefumi has laid down in quite some time, it’s a statement of intention by TAIL, and a nice bit of late-night escape. Listen above.
ASMRZ — “Goodnight Ojosama”
NOTE: Since publishing this, I have learned that both members are Korean…the one guy is just pretending to be Japanese. It’s a good bit. So…keep in mind while reading the following. Still, great song!
This past week, author, thinker and Make Believe Melodies friend W. David Marx went on the Throwing Fits podcast. In one isolated clip, he talks about the way South Korean and Japanese fashion intersects, particularly how they “work together” and play off of one another. While focused on clothing, it’s a sentiment applying to all elements of modern pop culture moving between the two nations, and a very welcome one after a decade where the two countries were often placed against one another. Unless you are a huge fucking think tank dork obsessed with the minutiae of politics, recent times have underlined a newfound fascination between the two sides.
Don’t believe me? Well, watch a Japanese and Korean man come together to whisper into a proverbial nation of women’s ears via a sneaky viral hit showing just how much the two nation’s pop culture output has intertwined.
The duo of ASMRZ tell you everything you need to know about them in the artist name alone…this is audio cosplay, two dudes talking closely into the microphone to help you relax and / or feel other sensations, no judgement zone here. Frankly, it’s insane nobody thought to do this until now — what if K-pop idols, but ASMR? Yet there’s more to it than that.
This project finds a Tokyo-born performer named Tanaka linking up with a Korean act named (brilliantly) Needmorecash. I don’t know the specifics of their relationship, though some casual scrolling through the prior’s Instagram page reveals he’s been in Korea for some time, so it’s safe to say they crossed paths at some point. The pair leaned into the vibrant and rich world of ASMR with “Good Night Ojosama,” a song that came out a couple of months ago but which has apparently gone viral in recent weeks. I first saw it a week and a half ago while doing my usual “browse through every country’s Spotify Viral Chart” exercise, including the shocking sight of seeing it topping the Taiwan chart. I guess it really is making inroads, because Taipei-based-legend Hojo tweeted that I needed to write 300 words on it.
Buddy…I’ve got you.
This song is so fun. It sounds like a novelty pop banger gifted with a beat not too far removed from the NC4K school of production. As a (very) brief piece of pop, it’s a blast. Yet the real thrill comes from the way like 20 years of cultural export strategy blurs together into this unstoppable, vaguely horny dance-pop number. On one side, we have the aesthetic of butler cafes and host clubs storming to the forefront, a sneaky super-popular genre of fiction all over the world powered by Japan. Yet it’s given the sort of theatrical kick in the backside only a K-pop production could provide, reinforced by very K-drama-ish tropes lurking in the back. I’m not equipped to get into the part where all three of our protagonists dance together…but I do feel confident in saying, there’s a lot of fantasy being stroked in that final stretch.
Yet I’m not interested in what gets your jollies off, because I’m focused on the beautiful merger of Japanese and Korean pop culture. We are currently experiencing a high-point in the two nations colliding with one another — see Solo Leveling or the oddly AKB-ish turn K-pop idols have made in recent times (ILLIT and NewJeans both displaying a love of sailor uniforms) — and ASMRZ provide the best example of how they can work in harmony. Here’s a very Japanese concept — the butler / host club, see the costumes they wear — interpreted through K-pop theatrics, with both languages getting time to shine. The two sides work together, aware of common goals — female longing and desire, things central to idol outfits in both countries, but which can’t be commented on out loud. Yet in this context, they pinpoint an area where they intersect, and work together to create an absolutely irresistible pop gem. Watch that live clip above again…linguistic barriers collapse, the crowd scream in Japanese and Korean because they are united in lust, something that J-pop and K-pop acts in similar spaces can’t specifically note exists. Yet here, two nations come together to fulfill the fantasies of so many, by leaning into what both do so well.
Forget The Show…they should perform this at The United Nations, to remind everyone how connected we all are. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of May 13, 2024 To May 19, 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.
Ae! Group — <A> Beginning (625,044 Copies Sold)
Yeah…STARTO is totally fine. For all of the continued scrutiny and golden-era departures popping up lately, the agency can debut a group like this to very impressive first week sales and remind everyone that they still dominate this space. This is, I apologize, only the “beginning,” because Ae! Group will only rise domestically. The question from a critical position becomes…will they figure out just what their sound is, and run with that? Right now, it’s very much a “let’s try everything out” approach. Listen above.
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News And Views
New Sheena Ringo album out this week (!?), featuring a wild set of guests including Hikaru Utada, Atarashii Gakko! and Nocchi from Perfume (WHAT) among others. You bet we will be writing about this in some capacity.
Hoshino Gen allegedly getting up to some no-good stuff? Maybe, depends what you think of internet gossip!
Looks like Tiny Desk Concerts Japan is happening, and Kirinji is up next.
So here’s a slight mystery for you to figure out…anime is obviously a powerful force in promoting Japanese music. Naturally, the forthcoming second season of Oshi No Ko— the first of which helped to turn “Idol” into a massive hit — has a lot of attention on it. The series released a teaser this week ahead of the second season, and it features a preview of the opening song…which comes from the group / artist GEMN, and is titled “Fatale.” This is interesting because…GEMN does not exist at this moment. It is either a new group, or one specifically tied to the anime series. Yet whatever this project is might receive a huge bump in the month ahead.
GLAY working with a member of ENHYPHEN for a forthcoming single.
RM of BTS (currently on military hiatus, but which solo members of which have been quite active in recent years, even if certain publications blanked on entire years presumably so they could get more clicks, have a few free ones) has a new album out, and two songs feature songwriting from never young beach. Neat, but I’ll personally champion the involvement of a member of DYGL and Takuro Okada is even more exciting, at least for a newsletter ostensibly interested in Japanese indie music.
Maximum Fun’s Primer podcast series is zooming in on city pop for this season…and sometime this week, you might hear someone familiar gracing your listening app of choice.
Suisei Hoshimachi stopped by the GQ Japan studios to share her essentials.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
I studied Japanese from 2008-2014, and especially towards the tail end, got really into finding Japanese music that matched the indie or semi-experimental music I liked. I started studying again in 2020 and had found a few artists I really liked - especially Mom - and had really never abandoned Sakanaction. For some reason, though, it didn't occur to me until this week to think "hey, I learned about pretty much all of that music from that Patrick St. Michel guy, and in fact I stole my 'Sakanaction was the best rock band in the world' take from him wholesale after he tweeted it from Fuji Rock - I wonder if he's still writing?"
Needless to say, absolutely thrilled to find this substack, and already did a search to find everything you've written on Mom, and will be reading those tabs next!
"NOCCHI!?" is everyone's reaction to the Sheena Ringo album!