Make Believe Melodies For May 29, 2023
Don't Always Need Guitars
RAY — “Frontier”
One of the common shared trappings bands and idols share is the threat of being fenced in by genre. RAY is a “shoegaze” idol project, and with that brings a lot of sonic expectations — feedback, fuzz, and a lot of other sounds generated from a guitar. New song “Frontier,” though, pulls a nifty trick — can they retain their dreamy edge without any guitars present?
Of course they can, because they are tapping into history to do it. Frequent RAY songwriter Azusa Suga knows his rock history, and he’s an artist long bristling at genre confinement, particularly through recently disbanded group For Tracy Hyde. For “Frontier,” he offers up the group’s first guitar-less dance tune (they tweeted it, it’s the hook!), walking in the footsteps of Japanese shoegazers Supercar, who pivoted from familiar slow-burn rock towards electronic experimentation on later albums, with “Frontier” especially evoking the synthetic bounce found all over 2002’s HIGHVISION. Here, RAY show how synthesizer and machine beats can replicate the same swirling sensation a guitar can, building up to euphoric release. It isn’t a departure, just a fitting continuation of their sound. Listen above.
Ichiko Aoba — “Space Orphans”
Singer/songwriter Ichiko Aoba has been creating expansive sonic spaces over her most recent albums, while using larger string-ensemble in live shows to add a cinematic bend to her shows. “Space Orphans” finds her ducking into an isolated house on the maps she’s made, offering an intimate song of support. The strings appear, but here add to the sweetness, always holding back just a little bit — teasing crescendo but keeping the moment close — to raise the emotions at its core. Get it here, or listen above.
illequal — Fragment
Kind of can’t beat Maltine founder Tomad’s description of this one, which is “I want to listen to this on top of a mountain.” The latest 2023 example of Japan’s electronic community undergoing an absolute creative gold period at the moment, producer illequal bridges the vapor of ambient and skeletal electronic (think Smany, early Qrion) with moments of rave bliss, best captured on the synth uproar of “ethereal.” Get it here, or listen above.
CH!KUB! — “B8B!3S Inu”
Very-online zaniness in the title, but that’s just a smokescreen to cover up the sweetness lurking in this upbeat electronic song, which swings between energetic passages and more reserved passages. A good encapsulation of how the modern “hyperpop” (for lack of better term for young electronic creators in Japan) community functions right now. Listen above.
AMUNOA — “Scarlet Sonatine”
Producer AMUNOA returns with a rollicking number taking cues (and samples) from jazz, while also dicing it all up into a frantic track also featuring distant chanting and horn stutters. A fun one begging for a chase scene to soundtrack. Listen above.
Perfect Young Lady — “Kochira Space Saboten Center”
Give me your songs-pretending-to-be-intercom-announcement instances every time. Nobody does offbeat like Perfect Young Lady. Listen above.
Klepto — “Santa Cruz”
Just a pinch of Shibuya-kei charm can make skippy indie-pop all the sunnier. Duo Klepto hit this blog’s pleasure center with a zippy bit of warm-weather melancholy (“Santa Cruz / summertime blues”) in line with favorites Post Modern Team, Wallflower and anyone else who popped up on an Ano(t)raks compilation a decade ago. The horns dropped in throughout give it just a little pep…and make the longing at its core hit all the harder. Listen above.
Subway Daydream — “New Day Rising”
More on the straight-up optimistic bend of the indie-rock spectrum, Osaka’s Subway Daydream return with a sprint of a single celebrating new possibilities. They add some “ooo-oooos” in the back to really conjure up a sunny afternoon setting to it all. Listen above.
Mall Boyz — “Mango Run”
A large chunk of this is just The-Dream’s “Rockin’ That Shit,” but this is not a complaint. When Mall Boyz jump into the fray, they add their own touch of chaos to it, reworking it into Jersey Club while still making the most of the original sample. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of May 15, 2023 To May 21, 2023
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.
MAZZEL — “Vivid” (37,379 Copies Sold)
What the…a Johnny’s song didn’t top Oricon for the first time in what has felt like months? Oh, sweet respite! Thank you SKY-HI-backed debuting group!
One of the undercurrents surrounding the current age of J-pop male groups is…what exactly is their sound, and how does it differ from what came before? Back in 2020, it was much easier to sew a rap on to a dance-pop song and say “look, K-pop inspired!” but today the predictable verse-chorus-rap-verse-chorus-again formula1 is done by everybody. So, how to re-calibrate? That’s the question these new-age outfits are trying to figure out, whether it’s INI swinging towards rock, or MAZZEL using debut single / sonic business card “Vivid” to add a jazzy sheen to their pop. Old habits die hard, and they all still have rap interludes — here featuring the head-scratcher “they ask where the heck we came from / no need to explain, Livin’ La Vida Loca” — but actually expanding the boy-group sonic palette towards anything different is welcome, and ideally MAZZEL’s strong first week sales hammers this through.
News And Views
Time to check in on Johnny & Associates’ current reckoning with founder Johnny Kitagawa’s alleged sexual assault and general scumminess. Johnny’s announces the establishment of a “Mental Care Support Service” along with bringing three outside “experts” onto a board to help with company oversight (which includes…a baseball manager who was part of the staff that won this year’s WBC tournament). “Beat” Takeshi weighs in on it all. Another former Johnny’s Jr. talent spoke to the media about the need for anti-abuse laws. Nikkan Gendai writes that networks and advertisers aren’t sure how to approach the agency anymore in the wake of the Kitagawa scandal resurfacing (though I kind of think there’s a lot of wishful thinking within editorials like this and beyond…as big a story as this has become and as wide a spotlight it has shined on abuse issues, the current Johnny’s talent remain very popular, and if there’s one thing modern fandom is great at it’s separating the pop group from the pop mogul. I think there will definitely be fallout…less airtime in the year ahead is totally possible a la what happened after the publication of To Hikaru Genji in the late ‘80s, and the idea of Johnny’s changing it’s name is on point!…but Johnny’s talent vanishing altogether from TV or the company itself dissolving entirely feels farfetched). Actors and singers also commented on it all.
Also…hey, look over there, Johnny’s Jr. opened an official Twitter account!In much lighter (albeit not calorie-wise) news, McDonald’s Japan is following up the popular “Asian Juicy” line of burgers that featured a Heisei-baiting ad campaign nodding to PUFFY by jumping into the Aughts! They are bringing back a handful of limited-edition items popular in the early 2000s, and to kick off this campaign they’ve embraced the stilted CGI and confused fashion of the period…backed by Ayumi Hamasaki’s “Boys & Girls.”
Wildest comment on Twitter I’ve seen is randos bemoaning the J-pop industry because the ad is region-locked. Which…look, you can listen to “Boys & Girls” here, and after that, look below at a picture of a chicken sandwich from McDonald’s. Once you’ve absorbed that, go get a hobby, any fucking hobby!
One of the best albums of the 2010s getting the vinyl treatment.
“SM 3.0: NEW IP 2023” oh baby, ya gotta love art with a title like that!
The latest pencil-being-sharpened-for-five-minutes YouTube briefing from K-pop’s SM Entertainment. It includes a bit about a Japan-centric group (NCT Tokyo, I assume?) which “is the last chapter of the NCT’s limitless expansion” (looks like they found that limit real fast) and will come together through a TV show.
Man…overseas idol group Sorb3t being dragged on TikTok and then Twitter because they pronounced “strawberry” correctly in Japanese is one of those “yeah, I’m thinking this platform is over” moments personally, underlining the nastiness that has always been built in to Twitter but feels ratcheted up fifty-fold over the last six months. The silver lining is a lot of people at least came to their defense, whether via fandom or linguistic accuracy, but it’s pretty bleak how that’s all fallout from the dumbest people in the world needing to make jokes about everything (though really it’s about the danger of context collapse outside of one’s niche, which is how all of online media / culture functions now, which makes this a lesson too). Pretty depressing stuff!
Elsewhere in language…YOASOBI shared the English version of “Idol.”
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Which has also lead to an absolute drought in quality music from male groups in Korea.
About that footnote—I can’t be the only one who always thought the female K-pop groups are more interesting than the male ones, right? Right?