Make Believe Melodies For May 6, 2024
It's A Good Tower!
Kyototower — Kyototower
I met a friend for lunch recently who works for a company heavily involved in the Japanese music industry, and also connecting it to the world at large. A recurring issue they face when communicating with the North American side of the company is a total confusion from their coworkers across the Pacific over what the heck Hatsune Miku is — which, to be fair, isn’t a new challenge. Given the double whammy of contemporary Japanese pop stars emerging from Vocaloid communities to step on the world stage and the reverence in which the aqua-haired avatar holds with listeners around the world, you’d imagine it is a pressing concern for the suits with no knowledge of Nico Nico Douga to figure this out. Yet there’s a central misunderstanding with Miku making all of this more difficult than it should be. Many view her as an artist. She’s ultimately an instrument.
That’s a thought forced to the forefront while listening to producer Kyototower’s eponymous debut album, one where the familiar digi delivery of Miku (joined by UTAU Nurse Robot Type T). It’s another side of Vocaloid-loving creator Saku, who largely creates more straightforward Miku-centric songs and remixes. With Kyototower, they dissect their sound, turning what could have been uptempo dashes into electronic meditations marked by fidgeting samples and glitching electronic notes. At times contemplative and others short circuiting, one of the key sonic details Kyototower explores throughout is Vocaloid as texture, turning Miku into a layer rather than an aspiring diva. Not far removed from how Miku-loving shoegazers approach the synthesized voice, Kyototower uses it as a dash of emotional heft (and sometimes as whole chorus, as is the case on the closing track), adding more connection to these delicate electronic compositions. Critically, they understand that Miku wasn’t necessarily made to be the star, but a tool all her own revealing new possibilities nearly two decades after her release. Listen above.
CHO CO PA CO CHO CO QUIN QUIN — Correspondences
Trio CHO CO PA CO CHO CO QUIN QUIN continues to offer a Reiwa spin on exoticism via this new three song offering. The group — which came together during the height of COVID-19 as a means for long-time friends to drive around and create quarantine-sick music — once again draws from far-flung locales to create a social-media-age interpretation of Tropical Dandy, turning to the sounds of Okinawa, India, Latin America and beyond to craft imagined travelogues. Listen above.
KAMIYA — “Shampoo”
Lovesick garage-pop from an artist representing a new era of young creators in Japan. Here, her heart gets to stick out more on her streetwear sleeves, without losing the pace. Listen above.
v3geboy — “Dear v3geboy”
A good reminder that, for all the excess around the edges, the younger generation of post-hyperpop creators in Japan have a lot of heavy thoughts on their minds and plenty of complicated feelings pressing down on their hearts. While a hook built around “I wanna be a plug star” might not be immediately emotionally resonant, v3geboy captures the mood of the moment with observations about how this is their only life, and they want to make the most of it, set over a fragile beat. They let the ennui bubble up to the top. Listen above.
Nagakumo — “Arutokoro”
Kansai quartet Nagakumo continue to wrap pop pleasures up in neo-acoustic packages on latest single “Arutokoro.” While inspired by the J-pop heyday of the 1990s, the band puts a modern swing on the sound, especially when they let it all rip in the final stretch. Listen above.
CYBER RUI — “tattoo”
Sometimes the best flexes sound a little exhausted. The bulk of CYBER RUI’s music up to this point has felt a little too focused on pumping themselves up without allowing any vulnerability into the mix. On “tattoo,” she’s not opening up entirely, but the music and her bleary-eyed delivery reveal something approaching exhaustion in her music, adding urgency to an artist who previously felt like they had all the time to peacock about. Now, they offer a glance into something a bit more draining. Listen above.
ZOMBIE-CHANG — “Bouquet de cigarettes”
Felt like a minute since we’ve heard from ZOMBIE-CHANG, and I guess the period away was spent truly getting in touch with her Parisian fascinations. As suggested by the title, “Bouquet de cigarettes” is delivered partially in French alongside her native Japanese, with the music offering a dramatic swell to her usual electro chug. Listen above.
f5ve — “Lettuce”
We are getting awfully close to the girl-group J-pop boom of 2023 being a total wash. MOONCHILD just broke up, and the next few weeks will see if XG — once primed as record breakers who now feel like afterthoughts — can still find themselves as part of the great Japanese push onto the international stage. Then you have SG5. An absolutely brilliant concept on paper — a pop group taking cues from K-pop precision, but with a Sailor Moon theme that would help to separate it from the sea of late 2010s K-pop imitation drowning the continental market — that delivered a so-so debut song lacking much anime flair en route to radio silence.
Over a year later…something kind of ridiculous, in the best possible way. SG5 is now f5ve (I guess the Sailor Moon license got nixed), with a lawsuit-dodging “inter-dimensional dream agents” concept complete with PS1-quality avatars. Echoes of their past remain on “Lettuce” — it opens with a radio tag directly stating “SG5” — but rather than try to flex, they are…interacting with lettuce, joking around and generally coming closer to YOUNG POSSE at their silliest than whatever was on the original SG5 vision board.
It’s a much better fit, especially when paired with the Y2K R&B complete with Yogi-Bear-running-ass samples. Which actually gets to the accidental opportunity presented to a project otherwise in constant flux…a year ago, it looked like XG had struck gold by turning towards the 2000s. Then they pivoted away from that for their next EP, which nobody talks about and left no impact unless you document NewJeans imitators. A baffling choice that they appear to be once again moving away from but that is Avex’s problem! Perhaps by being a year late, f5ve have stumbled into a good sound totally, inexplicably abandoned by other groups in their sphere, which they embrace here. Maybe this is the way to move forward…by not overthinking it. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of April 22, 2024 To April 28, 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.
WEST. — “Heart / FATE” (265, 995 Copies Sold)
If you want a snapshot of male J-pop in 2024, this is the week for you.
The all-counted chart looks nearly the same, except Creepy Nuts outpace KID PHENOMENON. Really, there’s no huge revelations to be found here, at least to those who have followed this corner of the industry over the last four years. For all the reckoning around it, STARTO groups like WEST. — here offering up a pair of overly dramatic shout-boom-shout songs, not really their best look as they excel at being goofballs — remain the top of the pile. I mean, WEST. isn’t even close to being the agency’s top dog either, yet they still dash ahead what was supposed to be a project flipping the boy band paradigm upside down.
Or…have they? Kinda sorta at least shook the table around.
BE:FIRST — and the various Korea-created J-pop acts like JO1 — will never win the traditional showdowns against STARTO groups1, but lucky for them the pop-scape of the 2020s is more like a bunch of guerilla strikes rather than some Napoleon-helmed charge. The Kyoto-court-accented2 “Masterplan” has performed much better on YouTube and is actually available on all streaming services. In a very specific place — the internet — BE:FIRST feels much bigger, and can still thrive without having to worry too much about what else is happening in media.
Then there’s LDH. KID PHENOMENON got a lot of love out the gate and have their fans…but like the agency as a whole, they seem unsure what they should be doing. Look, I like “Lettuce” but its existence really underlines the dilemma. Focus domestically? Keep digging into the Thai market? Actually try to do something abroad? Pivot to daycares? I don’t know, but the result right now is confusion, regardless of how much sunshine they try to dapple over it.
Consider Going Premium
This week…a trip to Dodger Stadium and a performance by YOSHIKI.
News And Views
The actual biggest music industry news of the week is that Universal Music Group and short-form video site TikTok reached a deal allowing artists on the prior to appear on the latter. Seeing as how vital the platform has been to push artists from Universal Music like Ado and Fujii Kaze among others, this agreement is big for the continued growth of Japanese music. At least until everyone starts banning TikTok then the situation gets complicated. One step at a time!
Honda Hitomi leaving her agency…new Korea-centric era coming?
King & Prince coming to subscription streaming.
Big week for Japanese artists on YouTube-centric live performance channels. Awich appeared on South Korea’s Killing Verse, complete with some verses spit in Korean.
Meanwhile, Otoboke Beaver appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, which you can watch over here. It’s a little too early to draw anything from this, but hey I’m going to try. I wonder with the arrival of Tiny Desk Concert Japan if we will see a sharp divide between marquee-name J-pop acts — who, as Fujii Kaze did, appeared on the NHK tie-up — and the more indie-leaning groups — which Otoboke Beaver captures perfectly, boasting a large following abroad but still relatively niche here, which could go towards the U.S. version. A potentially interesting divide emerging.
A viral video spotlights boxes filled with physical copies of K-pop group SEVENTEEN’s latest album, reminding of the current state of fandom-oriented economics in the Asian pop industry…and how everything is AKB.
YOASOBI have reached the level of international recognition where the BBC has them giving a guide to how to enjoy live music in Tokyo. Prepare yourself for a Koenji shout-out!
Rappers out here in Shibuya making anti-bullying tracks. Why bother when the best was already written?
Electronic duo Dongurizu appear to be leaving label Victor to go independent. While not the dam-burst I expected back when COVID-19, it’s another example of a steady trickle of artists opting for independence over the traditional systems.
Tone Glow lands the first English interview with electronic artist Shinichi Atobe.
*working hard to suppress all stupid sports fandom in what I write next* The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani attended a charity event, where he got to take a photo with and watch a performance by Ed Sheeran. Wow, fun! The real tidbit…for someone who has long been fascinated by what exactly Ohtani’s music preferences are…is that this is apparently the first concert he’s ever attended?
Look, do I wish I could have the athletic ability, hundreds of millions of dollars, love of an entire country and general legendary status Ohtani has achieved thanks to all his hard work and focus? Sure. But man…I definitely hesitate knowing the first concert I ever would see in my life would be by Ed Sheeran3.Cool, Japan! Funk
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
if they do, feel free to rub this in my face
This will sound deeply weird, but this is the closest a J-pop song has come to capturing the magic of “circle,” except I think “Masterplan” kind of stinks. BE:FIRST stack way too many ideas into this one, and as much as “traditional Japanese drill” sounds intriguing it ends up packaged as an overly busy boy group song, wherein none of the individual elements can really leave an impression. It’s the problem with modern K-pop, and it’s the problem with the K-pop lite of this new generation of J-pop disruptors.
I’m holding in my rooting interests…but I’m not holding in my musical taste, c’mon.
I wish a boy group could put out a song as good as “circle” :'(