Make Believe Melodies For November 7. 2022
With More Bandcamp Links, Which You Should Buy All The Time!
Mom — ¥ No Sekai
The skeleton key to understanding Mom isn’t a netlabel oddball affair or major label breakthrough or TikTok tune gone haywire. Nope, to truly grasp the mind of the Saitama-born bedroom creator you must spend 18 minutes listening to him strum away on an acoustic guitar. The independently released 2019 snapshot Akabane Pink Moon is just Mom, six strings, some JR station samples and a lot on his mind. Yet it reveals a deeper musical prowess to the “wonky 21st century internet boy” while also stripping down the digital wooshes and cartoon tornadoes of his pop to reveal something just as twisty.
Free to wander around the J-pop landscape with a major label backing behind his back, Mom offers reminders of his musical anchor throughout newest album ¥ No Sekai. It’s an odd space to be as a creator like him — on the edges but established, this serving as his third full-length from Victor, so that initial rush of “can you believe they are putting this guy out!?” has faded. He’s free to wander around a musical world of his own making, and whip out a harmonica to play over his 21st century mish-mash.
More than previous albums, ¥ No Sekai emphasizes his acoustic-grounded origins while fusing it with huge blasts of distortion, arcade-machine synth swirls and skittery machine percussion. It’s the slickest meeting of the two sides from Mom yet — I can not emphasize the thrill of hearing a Dylan-esque harmonica riff over fizzy electronic freakouts — and reveals how naturally the two sides work. Mom is still fascinated by picking up his patchwork creations and slamming them to the ground — see the late stretch of songs where he’s giddy to go full whiplash, swinging between styles in a single number — but the way he controls the chaos in most of these songs and turns them into some of the catchiest numbers of his career is the real marvel. He’s a singer-songwriter at heart, and in 2022 he’s showing how electronic madness is every bit of an instrument as a guitar strummed outside of a station gate. Listen above.
AOTQ And Natsume Kanfu — “Slump”
Mental stagnation rarely sounds this smooth. Producer AOTQ and vocalist Natsume Kanfu combine for a stunner all about being in a rut via “Slump,” which combines the deceptively placid synth vapor trails of the prior with the digi-glazed singing of the latter. It’s building on AOTQ’s glorious 2020 ode to existential dread expressed via Hatsune Miku, Magical Gadget, a set placing the usually hyperactive Vocaloid software against slower grooves, revealing startling new emotion within the code. “Slump” features more sonic depth, with strings helping elevate the drama delivered by Kanfu, who proves…cover your ears futurists…that a human voice might still best the machines. She’s floating and rising above the melody to work through long-lasting ennui, declaring this more than a typical slump and…not finding any closure, just marinating in the mehness. As much as I loved J-pop’s turn to the glum in recent times, this is a far more realistic take on modern life, all staring at a wall while nothing changes for months and then years. Get it here.
Pasocom Music Club Featuring Takashi Fujii — “SIGN”
Pasocom Music Club at their most J-pop friendly without melting too much into industry goop. Their “Disco No Kamisama,” all respect. Listen above.
Oyubi — meiji
The Japanese juke wunderkind Oyubi returns with a trio of tracks running from steely (“u hyper”) to swift (the title cut) to…house (“haus”)!? In a jittery Oyubi style of course, but still flexing off the sonic variety he’s pointed to over the last few years. Get it here.
PAS TASTA Featuring Peanuts-Kun — “peanut phenomenon”
One of the more perfect pairings of artists to happen in 2022, with hyperpop supergroup PAS TASTA crossing paths with virtual YouTuber turned honest-to-god-real-life-rapper Peanuts-Kun. Instead of dwelling on the head-spinning blurred borders presented by “peanut phenomenon,” I’ll instead loop around to a theory posited a while ago that…”hyperpop” or whatever you want to call this corner of Web-driven music to not cringe has a ton of similarities with Shibuya-kei, at least in the pastiche way it slams different styles out of time together (with “hyperpop” fittingly seeing nostalgia as “early 2010s Ultra”). That, and the vocalist for PAS TASTA sounds like Hideki Kaji. Listen above.
asstoro — “Social Net Impact”
Though sometimes just hearing this sort of artist go full throttle is all you need. Listen above.
SARI — “Jeopardy”
Former Necronomidol member links up with netlabel stalwart Amenkensetsu for a “wet sound” inspired by RPGs. The triumph here is how she’s able to hold on to her shadowy vibe while working with a more nervy electronic creator, but her swooping vocals (approaching Dracula’s castle when stacked on one another) manage to flutter just right between the beats. And when they just let the jungle dam burst…well, that’s how you put on a climax on the story. Get it here.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of October 24, 2022 To October 30, 2022
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.
Hinatazaka46 — “Tsukitohoshigaodoru Midnight” (428,527 Copies Sold)
This single sounded so ho-hum to me that I decided that — in order to come up with anything remotely worthwhile in this spot — I’d need to listen to the accompanying release it headlines. And…that one has some really interesting twists to it.
The above song, in particular, is such a welcome departure from the swelling-string theatrics of most Hinatazaka46 songs. It’s not cutting new ground in the Yasushi Akimoto expanded universe — the synth buzzes sound just as apt in 2022 as they did for AKB48 in like 2012 — but offering some disorienting contrasts. This initially hit me as retro-leaning thanks to how steely it all felt, but then post first chorus comes a trap pattern that jolts me out of imagined ‘80s discos. Moments like this…wherein idols can generally bend trends owing to their space in contemporary pop…is where the group sounds most intriguing.
News And Views
Three members of J-pop group King & Prince plan to leave the project next spring. This news — which shocked the Japanese entertainment industry and dominated trending talk late last week — means that the unit will go forward as a duo, at least starting at some point in 2023. Making it all the more surprising is how relatively young this Johnny & Associates’ project was compared to other chart-topping pop projects, and how they’ve performed strongly since debuting in 2018.
One of the stated reasons for this is differences in the direction of the group, along with a desire for rest. The second part is totally valid, but I’m more intrigued by the first bit. Based on my conversations with people associated with Johnny’s, one of the biggest changes to the agency in recent years is more of a willingness to attempt to go international…as long as the members want it (see: Travis Japan). The company has made more space for that to be a real option…but ultimately, the talent are the ones who have to make that call. I’d speculate it wasn’t unanimous within King & Prince to try to challenge markets outside Japan — a place where they are guaranteed success — and this tension might explain the news. This could very well be the first case of the newer Johnny’s corporate atmosphere actually hurting a group rather than motivating something different.The other potential angle to all of this…one of the big developments during the first year of the pandemic was seeing more artists reject agencies in favor of independence. That trend petered off in the next two years, but perhaps this…coupled with the newly-Twitter-using Hideaki Takizawa leaving his high-up position at Johnny’s…signals the potential for artists to once again take their careers into their own hands. Certainly a little premature…I’ve seen some speculate online that this shows a weakening Johnny’s, but as long as Snow Man doesn’t pull something similar, they’ll be fine…but it was one of the first things that came to my mind.
YOSHI, real name Yoshizumi Sasaki, died in a traffic accident this weekend after his motorcycle collided with a truck. He was 19 years old. Sasaki had made a bit of a name for himself in J-pop over the last few years with rap-inspired songs like “Cobain” and a few albums, plus some prominent TV appearances. Yet recently, he was best known as a participant on YOSHIKI’s ongoing music talent program Superstar Project X, and reportedly the incident occurred after a meeting he had with other members of the show about the future of their work. Truly tragic.
Mixmag has a profile of DJ ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U.
I appeared on Marketplace Morning Report to talk about the continued presence of Tower Records in Japan.
Kimura Takuya appeared at a festival in Gifu, prompting extra security and I assume extra horses.
Duff McKagan just wandering around Harajuku before a Guns N Roses show in Saitama Super Arena (which, should note, is a great sign of the return of large-scale shows in the country).
Harry Bossert has launched a new YouTube channel focused on underground Japanese music. Check it out here, and support the project at Patreon.
Let’s end with happy news! Reni Takagi of Momoiro Clover Z (the purple one) married Nippon Ham Fighters catcher Shingo Usami. Beyond just being neat, I’m interested to see if, when coupled with every member of Negicco getting married and going on with their careers, Takagi will continue living the idol life. In the past this would be a hard stop for a performer — but I think we might be entering a more flexible era of idoldom (at least for vets of the scene), and if she keeps on going, that’s a really positive development.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
