Make Believe Melodies For October 1, 2024
Sometimes You Have To Give It Up To Enon Kawatani
Ikkyu Nakajima — LOVE
Earlier this year, tricot lead singer and rising talent Ikkyu Nakajima released a solo album called DEAD. It’s alright, more an exercise in Sheena Ringo cosplay than anything else. Yet within it were two fascinating tracks, both made in conjunction with producer in the blue shirt, which played around with Nakajima’s own singing, transforming her words into sonic texture.
Follow-up release LOVE leans further into this experimental approach, and results in a genuinely fascinating (and fun) listen from Nakajima. All it takes for me to get giddy about this one is a look at who she brought in to help her — Cwondo offers his ability to turn sound into something resembling rippling water on the title track and “Ana,” while former Number Girl member Kentaro Nakao adds a dash of skittering energy to “EFFECT” and “By my side” — both aided by shoegaze-mutator Acidclank, whose surreal qualities come across clearly.
It’s an approach reminiscent to what Enon Kawatani, her bandmate in Genie High, has done for quite some time, which is recruit cutting-edge artists to remix or produce works that could have easily been traditional rock cuts or ballads, but twist them into something unnerving and interesting. The highlights on LOVE focus on Nakajima’s voice, and how it can be manipulated into something as emotionally as rich as the music around it (the best example being the title song, which starts as hushed piano ballad but soon malfunctions into a glitching work capturing the sensation of the titular feeling in all its nervous forms). At its best, it approaches the abstractions of NINI TOUNUMA, the solo project of Spangle Call Lilli Line’s Kana Otsubo. Listen above.
Uilou — “What a Mess”
Agoraphobic dance-pop duo Uilou slow the tempo down slightly to revel in the sloppiness of newfound love. “What a Mess” posits a crush as a potential headache in waiting — “what a mess / I’m attracted to you” — but goes along with it. Whereas a lot of contemporary stabs at garage-influenced pop celebrate the thrill of connection via its dash, “What a Mess” avoids the rush in favor of taking in all the complications accompanying the giddiness. Listen above.
sysmo — “Greenman”
Imagine all the electronic rippling feels the above projects deal in…but also with It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia samples. Listen above.
CANDYGIRL — BLUEBERRY
Three year since releasing one of the trippier dance-pop albums of the decade so far, duo CANDYGRIL return with a new set of songs to experience a head rush with. BLUEBERRY moves at a swift pace reflecting modern pop trends, but uses warped vocal samples and synth touches to give the songs here a fittingly hazy vibe (almost too on the eye via highlight “CANNABIS”). Listen above.
MPC GIRL USAGI — MOMENT EP
An opportunity for MPC GIRL USAGI to flex her skills with the instrument in her artist name. The bulk of MOMENT revolves around beatmaking, ranging from the fragmented party bounce of “NO NEED TO WIN” to the woozier lo-fi swirl of Summer in Korea 2024. What elevates this one, though, is the one time she does let her voice poke through, on the title track, joined by (again!) Acidclank, who offers a joyful disorientation to her creation. Listen above.
Various Artists — v.o.c EP 4
I ended up at a footwork night in Tokyo this past weekend, not planned but happy to spend the hours until first train being reminded of how much artists in Japan have embraced the Chicago-born style. It was a release party by VibesOnlyCrew for this compilation, celebrating the current state of the skittery style in the country in all its forms. An absolute trip to go through, it gets bonus points for a semi-juke track courtesy of underground chaos bringers Nature Danger Gang. Listen above, or get it here.
pencil — “New World”
Here’s a great mutation on footowrk courtesy of pencil, who pushes the skittering tempos up against rave electronics to create euphoria. In the club or on SoundCloud, the scene still shines. Listen above.
imase And Natori — “Metrocity”
To riff off of last week’s edition of the round-up, it feels like more and more prominent J-pop acts are starting to link up. Scroll down to the news — peak behind the curtain, I tend to write that first, resulting in moments like this where I’m repeating myself — to see Ayase of YOASOBI and Ado are prepping a new song, while the duo of Kento Nakajima and Tatsuya Kitani have performed well as GEMN. Here’s another collab hoping that twice can be quite nice. Natori and imase have worked together before, but “Metrocity” delivers a particularly sleek retro-pop sound, creeping towards “city pop” but never quite as dazzling. It’s a solid work, boosted by Natori’s knack for great hooks and a general upbeat energy. Maybe it won’t be the hit of the fall…but it points towards what could work. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of September 16 2024 To September 22, 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.
Hinatazaka46 — “Zettaiteki Dairokkan” (475,887 Copies Sold)
The latest from Hinatazaka46 spruces up familiar idol sounds with a few novel percussive touches (the conga hits offering a party vibe to an otherwise tense song about longing, the breakdown featuring a tinny machine beat). It’s totally above average, with enough neat details to lift it above the basic -46 form.
Over on the album side of Oricon, an interesting clash played out this week. Nishino Kana made her grand return to the J-pop stage with her first full-length in seven years Love Again. Given her status as the biggest female J-pop act of the early 2010s, it was a super anticipated release, and sold well, moving over 97,000 units. Yet that wasn’t good enough for the top spot, as STARDUST boy group BUDDiiS beat her. A reminder of the overall idol leaning of this whole chart…and that maybe 2010s nostalgia isn’t quite a phenomena yet.
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Last week, I went to an emotionally powerful live show in a mall.
News And Views
Singer-songwriter Sayuri died at the age of 28, according to a post shared by her husband. Sayuri released several albums while also providing multiple songs for anime openings and endings, including the closing number for the first season of Lycoris Recoil. A very tragic situation, and one that has really effected a lot of people.
Let’s venture into K-pop for a second, because the continued drama around NewJeans remains the most fascinating music story of 2024 in my little opinion. Last week, audio surfaced of HYBE downplaying the group’s success, particularly in Japan, which is its target market. Ignoring the insanity of a K-pop company “caring” about the “truth” of sales — oh the press releases I’ve gotten about bullshit “the most YouTube plays in a 24-hour-period by a rookie girl group with one non-Korean member!” — I find it weird they fixate on the one place where I think NewJeans is thriving. Like, they sold out Tokyo Dome for two nights and singles have performed well in Japan. Apologies for giving HYBE free advice, but if you went down this path…maybe focus on how it seems like they’ve become an afterthought in the United States? Or I don’t know, be better with your groups.
Go help Asagaya Drift by donating to their campaign to pay for better sound-proofing equipment so they don’t get kicked out of their building!
Talked with the head of Kansai Music Conference for The Japan Times.
I was invited to check out a taping of NHK’s tiny desk concerts JAPAN, which also meant having a chance to talk with NHK and visiting NPR officials about the program. Wrote about that for The Japan Times. It pretty much backed up my feelings from seeing the show earlier this year, which is it isn’t quite as accessible as it probably should be (though still available online at NHK World…but still one step too many for many, I imagine) but it’s approach comes from a good place. Also, watching it happen in person was genuinely pretty sick.
Perfume caught up with Kaela Kimura, who helped break them into the mainstream.
Universal Music Japan signing up even more VTubers for music release.
Number_i’s debut album performing well on Spotify’s global charts.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote about Pony Canyon, which is interesting…though I’m much more interested how much they had to pay to get this feature in the publication (I’m not being shady either, it’s “partner content” which implies advertorial, what are the rates on that?).
Worksight has an interesting interview with the head of Canteen.
I spent a whole edition of this newsletter wondering where J-pop might go next for the rest of 2024. Did not see “Kenshi Yonezu revisits his Vocaloid project, updating a classic of the genre” coming. And hey, maybe that becomes the hit of the fall…it’s already on a great pace in terms of YouTube views.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
