Make Believe Melodies For November 9, 2021
Continental Drift
I love you Orchestra Swing Style Featuring Plastic Plastic — “hello there”
There’s always been exchange between Japanese musicians and artists across the rest of Asia, but the past year has started seeing a fresh generation of artists turn their attention to the rest of the continent. I love you Orchestra emerged in the mid 2010s as a smart-ass instrumental band incorporating various shades of jazz and rock together to form songs you could compare to Sakerock, Gesu No Kiwami and Zazen Boys without sounding off. They’ve mellowed a bit since — who among us hasn’t had a phase worthy of being summed up as “Swing Style?” — and appear on new song “hello there” alongside Thai duo Plastic Plastic. It’s a pleasant bit of synth-pop with an ‘80s shell, highlighted by that hook. It’s not I love you Orchestra Swing Style’s first collaborative dip into this style from 2021 either, having created a more restrained backdrop alongside South Korea’s dossi on “Swan,” below.
Thailand as filming location, by the way
Factor in Plastic Plastic pairing up with She Is Summer a while back and pop duo chelmico’s work with Thailand’s Stamp, facilitated by Avex, and you have a little trend afoot! This specific lane isn’t too tough to decipher — all fall under the neon-lit umbrella that is “city pop,” or at least the 2010s version of it. That’s a style long in circulation around Asia, and now enjoying a prominent revival too. Here’s just four recent-ish examples, mostly from one country, but the borders of this trend are open. CINRA already detailed this development earlier this year, and I talked to Rainych this Spring about it too. Yet now direct collaboration is becoming more common.
And not reserved to the easy-breezy sounds of city pop either. Fans of foreign exchange chelmico remixed a song by Thai pair LUSS,1 who in turn reworked a song by the Japanese group. I thought the most interesting recent collab would be TXT teaming up with Ikura of YOASOBI for a Japanese single bringing together K-pop and J-pop’s currently divided sonic textures…but then Chinese singer A Si revealed CHAI would be guests on her new album, out now. Now that’s a head turner.
Again, want to emphasize this isn’t a totally new development — let this be the free space to scream whatever obvious collaborations I’m missing — but 2021 feels like the Japanese music industry realizing how they can…and should…navigate international pop waters. Japanese entertainment doesn’t do blockbusters well, but excels at unlikely surprises and niche successes that go on to have greater influence than expected (huge tangent about Squid Game / anime goes here). J-pop can’t compete with marquee K-pop in the region…but it can excel (and has) on that next rung down, which still has plenty of sway (and potential earning capability) to make it worth exploring more heading into 2022.
Hikaru Yamada And Metal Casting Jazz Ensemble — moon
I told you Local Visions has a way of finding a fresh angle on the familiar. Hikaru Yamada gathered 12 jazz musicians and had them each improvise over a beat (here as track five, at the very end). Yamada then took their takes and melded them with each others’ riffs, without them being together. It’s a neat premise taken to head-spinning lengths, and adds an element of “expect the unexpected” throughout. Get it here, or listen above.
Sound Of Shizuka — Hikari No Mae Ni
A set of songs so intimate as to feel like I’ve accidentally walked into the wrong house. DJ and illustrator Shota Kawai and former The Slits member Anna Ozawa recorded themselves goofing around at home during the pandemic, sharing the rough drafts together while eating snacks. They wrote these songs — acoustic guitar numbers, lazy-day playroom pop, downright silly near-jingles about mikan — as a private way to past time, but they also coincided with the conception and birth of their first child, adding extra emotional weight to these sketches. It’s a little bit like coming across an old photo album for some family you don’t know — a little odd at first, but a charming look behind closed doors. Get it here.
Lil n seek, slainn and Lil Chill — “Hyper Rockstar!!✰ᯤ”
A song that can’t decide what it wants to be and just keeps mutating. Now that’s what I call HyperPop. Listen above.
House Of Tapes — “Over Chaos”
A longtime Make Believe Melodies returns with a discombobulating bit of cut-and-paste rush. For Nagoya’s House Of Tapes, this is on the minimalist side of things, but has more than enough going on — and a rapid-fire set of musical ideas — to keep interest locked in. Listen above, or get it here.
Photon Maiden — “4 Challenges”
Animated groups rarely get the critical attention of their flesh-and-blood counterparts, even when they get away with sonic ideas most mainstream humans could only dream of. Photon Maiden is one of the many groups found within the world of DJD4, a multi-media series where high school girls become DJs. You don’t need expertise in this franchise to hear those new jack swing elements cutting through this otherwise icy song (very K-pop, which is something animated groups also do really well, or at least interestingly).
The other not-so-big-surprise…this song comes courtesy of Ryohei Sataka, better known as netlabel staple y0c1e and remixer Bugloud. Of course someone from that world thought up this. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of October 25, 2021 To October 31, 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 trip down…the Oricon Trail.
Hinatazaka46 — “Tteka” (415,537 Copies Sold)
Great video, but the number two slot this week is way, way, way more interesting, even if it only exists as eventual internet novelty.
FreeKie — “We Are ‘Freek’” (34,339 Copies Sold)
Meet the 150-member mixed gender idol outfit that released 21 versions of this single. Somehow, none of that might be the most attention-grabbing part of this, as this song was written and produced by Chibanyan, the go-to music maker for problematic YouTubers Represent Chikyu (of fake power harassment campaign fame AND the predecessor to the group behind “Curry Police”). This is pure gimmick, bringing together a bunch of fledgling idols under Freek “Total Entertainment Company” (that’s why there’s so many versions…fans can get the one featuring their favorite on the cover) and adding in someone associated with cringey content creators for extra juice.
And it kind of goes! It’s swift and ever-changing…it’s beat somehow puts it closer to current Gen Z and TikTok trends than most in Japan which is a real swerve…and never overwhelms with the vocals. It’s doomed to be pure late 2021 ephemera, a fun fact to be dusted off when killing time outside of Shinjuku Loft. Yet it’s also pretty fun.
News And Views
Ayumi Hamasaki experienced anaphylactic shock following a show in Nagoya this past weekend, resulting in her having to be rushed to the hospital. Recently, she had fractured her ankle. Her team announced her condition had stabilized the following day. Her show originally scheduled for Sunday was cancelled.
Nikkei Trendy released its annual “Biggest Hits Of The Year / Expected Hits Of Next Year” issue, and music factored a lot into both sides. I made a Twitter thread, check it out to see where the experts place NFTs.
NFTs! Heard of those? Universally loathed on Twitter except for celebrities, basketball players, assorted “tech” people and many more. I won’t even begin to try to unwrap this digital art form or wade into the moral complications…but I do think a reality everyone has to accept for at least the near future is their favorite artists (if not people) are going to get into this. HYBE partnering with some crypto site to sell virtual trading cards is the real event horizon for this, but everyone will get to face their own version of this sometime soon, if not already.
I was caught off guard by Miyu Takeuchi announcing on YouTube she was stopping her music activities for now to mint NFTs. Having talked to her this summer, I wouldn’t have predicted that, though I can also rationalize it a bit…she talked a lot about the challenges of trying to make it independently, so the lure of a financial windfall via online art could very well have been hard to overlook. Whatever the reason, that’s her choice…and I don’t think she’ll be the last person to go down this road.Pitchfork with a very good review of the new Kyary Pamyu Pamyu album. I have a …feature? essay? kind of in between…about it and Candy Racer’s star coming out later this week.
I once wrote in this very newsletter that nobody had built a themed cafe around Haruomi Hosono as a way to argue for Kyary’s importance. Welp…that’s no longer true, as Osaka will get a Hosono-themed cafe (in the same vein as, say, the Ted Cafe) starting this week. Also moment of honesty…it has taken every bit of restraint since hearing this news to introduce a paid tier to this newsletter, in an effort to raise the Shinkansen fare needed to experience the “Tropical Dandy” drink. Rich readers…send me some dough, I’ll write about it maybe! After I catch up on the frappuccino series.
Hoshino Gen and Uniqlo, together at last.
Probably should have put Sanrio character Kuromi’s debut single up in the Photon Maiden section. Oh well, here it is, a song about being a mischievous cat (?)
I found a Pink Lady memorabilia corner in deep Saitama.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies