Make Believe Melodies For Oct. 14 2020
First of two this week because I got lazy and procrastinated on this!
Via Maltine Records
Various Artists — ???
Writing about Japanese music for a decade-plus now often makes me worried that I’m becoming like the guy in the Spirograph factory from The Simpsons. “Everything is AKB48 now” or “I think SMAP did that in the ‘90s” or “BABYMETAL might be one of the most influential artists of the 2010s, ya know”...am I informed, or am I experiencing music writing Galapagos Syndrome while plunging into hot-take madness?
I don’t know! But I’m glad I’m not alone in believing “hyperpop” is basically just a bunch of trends from Japanese pop and netlabel artists from, like, 2011 (also not hidden away either — at least one half of this niche online-centric style, the PC Music side, has nodded directly to it via this AG Cook mix built primarily around J-pop and K-pop). As this term slowly becomes “a thing,” my appreciation for Maltine Records ??? compilation will only grow. “ “!!! FAKE HYPER POP SHIT !!!” goes the tagline for this one, when in reality the six songs here sound like...tracks that could have appeared on Maltine at any point over the last 10-plus years. Maybe that’s just a happy accident, but even so it only illustrates how the online label was folding genres into one another back when there were, at tops, maybe three gecs. Though better still — drop all that context, and this still delivers something anyone interested in this nascent online buzz source should seek out, offering a catchy and cacophonous set of songs often finding new ways to interpret just what “hyperpop” can be (see you Miii).
Fujin Club — “Soieba Taiwan”
Man, what is up with Niigata this year. Favored idols and local-produce promoters Negicco have been shining on their releases and on solo efforts, while I’d urge anyone with a passing interest in J-pop to give the latest from RYUTist a go, as it’s one of the year’s best (with one of the best single songs on top of that). To only make it sweeter, Fujin Club came back. It would be a little rich to describe what this Sado-Island-based, vaguely travel themed group put out in the mid part of the 2010s as influential, but it is noteworthy how numbers about eating delicious food and riding boats boast a sound palette that has crept into idol and J-pop at times. Anyway, they’re back, with a song inspired by a trip they took to Taiwan in 2014, which adds a little incidental weight at a time when such a jaunt is literally impossible. It’s a fittingly upbeat number incorporating more synths alongside their familiar music-club-room set of sounds, with a nice tropical spike in the chorus.
Cuushe — “Magic”
The new Cuushe album out next month is special, devastating and hopeful in equal strides. “Hold Half” set expectations high, but it was “Magic” — the second song on WAKEN and the next cut to surface ahead of its release — that really hit hard, capped off by the opening line of the chorus “magic / why are you so silent,” a jab against escaping into imagined places. Anyway, sure I’ll have more to say about it as a whole.
AMUNOA — CRYPTID
With the disclosure I’ve written for / hopefully will write again for their editorial side, Bandcamp is great! One of the features I’ve come to appreciate the most lately has been the ability to view other people’s collections of music (follow me), both for discovery purposes and for seeing what albums you just totally blanked on despite coming from artists you would have purchased right away if you’d actually known. This is all a long way of saying producer AMUNOA released a great high-energy album back in August that I would have missed if I didn’t creep through Hojo’s page on the last Bandcamp Friday.
Kamaida/MagoichiSuzuki — Suzuki EP
Come because the silly album art catches your attention, stick around because you stumble across a charming set of dance-pop with new wave flourishes.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of Sept. 29, 2020 To Oct. 4, 2020
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 drip down…the Oricon Trail.
Hey! Say! JUMP “Your Song” (209,809 Copies Sold)
Far more interested in spots two and three from last week than this standard drama song.
Those songs are from — groups that are largely seen as animated rather than human. Of course, 22/7 are actual humans, featuring living legend Sally Amaki, but they also represent a group that is a cartoon as well. Anyway, I don’t have any deeper points to add to this other than that the Hypnosis Mic anime that just started up will probably be huge.
News And Views
Nothing has left me as confused as Arashi’s apparent push into Western markets months before they go on hiatus…and this Jun Matsumoto interview with Grammy.com doesn’t help clear anything up. They learned CDs aren’t important because…they went to the Grammy Awards and saw acts who haven’t put out CDs win awards? He also doesn’t really answer why try to make any strides in the US now, with the whole interview mostly thinking my gut instinct is right…they said “fuck it, let’s try.” Props, though, to Matsumoto for correctly noting that K-pop and lots of other parts of pop around the world today are riffing off what Johnny & Associates had been doing.
Keyakizaka46 is no more! Let’s take a second to celebrate the impact on political figures the group, who usually get brushed aside by generalist observers, had.
We stan Beatcats.
This Arama post about three “mysterious” new pop groups — albeit with the artists making the songs known, and that’s interesting on its own — underlines a trend that makes me a little unnerved about Japanese music, which is a heavy emphasis on creators shrouded in clouds, identity concealed. This isn’t a new worry — quite possibly the biggest issue any Japanese entertainment writer working for an English-language publication faces is that of hidden names, of established artists on major labels not wanting to share their real names (despite this being common…and expected…in most journalism). I’m willing to admit this problem can have more nuance to it than I used to think — given how nasty certain netizens can be, I understand why privacy would be preferred (especially for women…who I feel do this more in recent years than men…you know who Kenshi Yonezu and Hoshio Gen are, but not Aimyon or DAOKO). Yet I’m also worried how goofy novelty like this is just a way for music labels to flex more power, and how for most of these performers on major labels it probably wouldn’t be a problem (though I’m willing to listen why it would be preferred!).
Good feature on the state of record stores in Tokyo amidst COVID-19.
After taking a bit of a break to refresh my brain, I returned to The Japan Times with this week’s Pulse column, on Virtual YouTubers colliding with geopolitical issues. It kind of proved as a test run for BTS running into a similar, equally dumb controversy like the next day.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies