Make Believe Melodies For October 24, 2023

Nostalgia Not Needed

Lamp — Dusk To Dawn

Japanese trio Lamp are one of the most successful acts out of the country in the 21st century. At least if you look at streaming data — one of the more interesting stories to follow in 2023 has been the realization that folks around the world love Lamp, to the point where their play numbers on Spotify dwarf some J-pop names (and surpass the likes of Hoshino Gen).

Poking around social media and YouTube comments, a common theme from listeners Japanese and foreign pops up — the group conjures up feelings of nostalgia. To speak generally, the prior group find connection with the dying embers of Shibuya-kei circa 2000 and draw comparisons to like Kahimi Karie. The latter drift towards a more nebulous idea of “yesteryear,” most likely shaped by city pop or “new music.” Listening to their latest album Dusk To Dawn — Lamp’s longest to date, coming in at one hour and 14 minutes — I get the impulse to look backward. But for me, it’s not an effort to slip back, but rather a continued effort to build on their sonic foundation¹.

Dusk To Dawn is a post-pandemic rush of an ideas from a three-piece mining a very specific sound since 2000 (explaining all the Shibuya-kei flashbacks). The group have been open about their influences — The Beach Boys, ‘70s folk-rock, bossa nova, much more primarily from the 1990s (again, explaining all the Shibuya-kei flashbacks) — but they always tinker with it, avoiding simple repetition in favor of seeing what new sonic and emotional depth they can pull out of their bricolage. Here, there’s melancholy abounding via personal favorites “Cold Way Home” and the sax-assisted “Misty Town,” both playing with city-pop-era expectations by covering smoothness with sadness. They do their best Brian Wilson on the spangle-eyed slow-build of “Night Drizzle,” and totally unwind on the understated ecstasy of “August Calendar.” If it’s pining for the past, that’s only as influence — this is the sound of artists living in the moment, seeing how to adapt and evolve. Get it here, or listen above.

Meme Tokyo — “AGAIN AND AGAIN”

A wonderful collision of scenes resulting in a pop pile-up. Meme Tokyo bring the idol energy and spirit (see the sugar crush of a hook), but here get tossed into an absurd dance track co-created by chelmico (who also handled lyrics…and it’s kind of funny how Rachel-and-Mamiko-ed the unit sound delivering their words) and Kokushimusou, the duo of netlabel staples Guchon and Hujiko pro. Here’s the spirit of like Sabacan Records underground-nurtured dance sound surfacing after a few years and being given to a pop project always open for something left of center. Listen above.

lazydoll — plant + pixel

I know the cliches I lean on — “fever dream,” absolutely up there. But plant + pixel actually kind of fits the description. The latest from lazydoll blurs together in a way few albums — even from this lucid corner of SoundCloud rap in Japan — do. The way the synths blur together are closer to Flau gone off three Strong Zeroes than anything else, with moments of clarity coming through when lazydoll lets the beat push through the sonic mist (“away”). Listen above.

Uilou — “narcissism”

The duo of electronic producer AFAMoo and singer june-chan recently toyed around with the garage revival currently on its last legs in the global pop sphere, but I’ll take the release before that as a highlight from the fledgling group. While just as swift, it boasts an element of unpredictability courtesy of june-chan’s singing (bonus points for the depth-shaking use of “heys” throughout), which even dips into ASMR whispering at times. Listen above.

Hoshimiya Toto And TEMPLIME — “POP-AID”

This collaboration keeps teasing a new album…and man, do I want it to get here already. Listen above.

dizzy Featuring Lil Chill — “DISASTER”

My old brain hears this and thinks “sounds like if Isaac Brock grew up listening to sad rap and EDM.”

I appreciate the slight folk twang dizzy and Lil Chill offer to the front of this one, eschewing the pop-punk platitudes oh so common in this space for something like…Sunset Rubdown? Whatever Aughts-era Pitchfork darling I want to compare this to, the real magic of “DISASTER” is the way it builds to a huge skittering chug, avoiding hyperpop theatrics for sustained release. Listen above.

MOUNTAIN/FULL EDITION — “The Floating Insomnia Puzzle Room Sorting out a few things”

Have you ever encountered an act where you’re like “I have no idea what’s going on but I love it?” This Kyoto band offers it for me, offering a psychedelic rock experience disrupted by modern electronic percussive elements. Listen above.

Suiyoubi No Campanella — “Prince Shoutoku”

On the one hand, this is Suiyoubi No Campanella New Recipe’s effort at recreating “Ikkyu-san.” It’s a deliberate flattening of an oddball sound to make something more mainstream — though, check those fiddles up front, what the fuck is that — and hey seeing as this group is somehow a hit project again, got to chase it. It’s catchy, though I’ll still gravitate towards the group’s celebration of the highway system “Shadow” more, as the chorus is more than TikTok bait.

But let’s appreciate one important element of this song — the lyrics². If this is a stab at the mainstream, god bless Suiyoubi No Campanella for making their latest shot revolve around an ancient politician. Like, no J-pop song is going to urge listeners to chant “Asuka period!” in song, and I appreciate how nerdy and gleefully goofy the group gets. It’s also clever — re-imagining Japanese history and folklore for modern times has always been the group’s creative strong suite, and here they are still mining textbooks for creative fuel. Listen above.

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Oricon Trail For The Week Of October 9, 2023 To October 15, 2023

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.

INI — Tag Me (306,486 Copies Sold)

The best way to distract me from flipping out over an EP somehow being considered a single by the sickos at Oricon? Well, feature at least one great song on said release. INI’s Tag Me is a mixed experience highlighting both the potential and pitfalls male pop groups in Japan face — the group get room to play around with different ideas, but unfortunately one of those is the exhausted cling-clanging stupidity of “TAG,” topped off by the do-kids-still-use-those line “follow my hashtag.” But it’s all worth it for the above, a tingly rock-based number presenting the best side of these sort of groups (see also: JO1’s “Shine A Light”). It’s dramatic and celebratory in equal measures, all about capturing the tenderness of youth before its shine fades away. A highlight from INI, arriving at a time when new lanes have opened up for them in the male pop star market.

Meanwhile on Oricon…did you know Wanima put out a new album? And nobody bought physical copies of it (OK, 17,000+ is not shabby, but only good for fourth this week)? Those pop-punkers are going to be fine, but it’s a bit of a wake-up call because it wasn’t that long ago they were absolutely killing it with physical sales. Maybe they were right to be a little uneasy about throwing all their music on streaming…

News And Views

• BUCK-TICK vocalist Atsushi Sakurai has died at age 57 according to a statement put out by the band. The news came Tuesday and sent immediate shock through music communities online. He died on the night of October 19, after feeling unwell at a show in Yokohama, which they cancelled early into the set.
  

• Johnny’s West officially changed their name in the wake of the reckoning with Johnny & Associates’ founder Johnny Kitagawa’s decades-long sexual assault of minors. That signifies an important step towards the company actually scrubbing his legacy away from their history and J-pop’s timeline. Now, what is the new name you ask? After receiving suggestions from fans and no doubt thinking it over very hard, the group settled on…

  

  Don’t get it confused…they did not just drop the first half of their name off. They are WEST., all caps and with a period tacked on to, as one member explained, make a point about…something.
  
  I also think this episode marks a pretty big shift in how the Johnny’s scandal is covered…based on the coverage devoted to this and the multiple “breaking news” notifications (usually reserved for earthquakes and world calamities) I got via LINE News about the name change, this feels like the moment where the media’s attention on the agency’s every move results in something closer to promotion than journalistic pressure. Like, despite what a lot of people wish would happen within the media sphere, the agency formerly known as Johnny & Associates is still chugging along, so I’m not getting the value for mainstream outlets in treating this the same way, say, election results come in.
  

• Speaking of the company…King & Prince performed at the newly opened K Arena in Yokohama and holy shit these lines look insane. This actually says more about the new venue, specifically how they might have opened it a little too soon because the way it is designed — at least before additional bridge paths open next year —results in lines described as “hell” because there’s only one way in and out. That’s particularly a problem when you have a super-popular group performing two shows in one day, with the first crowd trying to get out while the second crowd is angling to get in. Though even punters at the night show felt the pressure to get out as soon as possible.
  

• Yuming and YOASOBI, together at last.
  

• AKB48 held a three-day bonanza at Nippon Budokan this past weekend to celebrate the group’s rich history, and boy did they keep busy. Long-running member Yuki Kashiwagi announced her graduation. Janken came back! Auditions on the way! If you like nostalgia, this one was aimed right at you.
  

• Festival season in Japan is practically a year-long period now — you can now watch Diplo in the middle of February at a ski resort if that’s your vibe — so it’s natural to see a bunch of festival stories. The Mainichi travels back to July to look at LuckyFes, a gathering basically serving as Ibaraki Prefecture’s attempt to have a ROCK IN JAPAN festival after said biggie-sized event ditched the region due to their strict COVID-19 protocols. I’m baffled why this story was published now, and the framing is pretty stupid — “LuckyFes beating drum for future of music festivals in Japan” without mentioning what that means beyond “a festival happened” — but it is a reminder that the live industry roared back this year, and I think it’s a preview of the near future, where you’ll see many more festivals launched all over the country.
  

• Peter Barakan’s festival, still going strong!
  

• Thu-Huong Ha attended this year’s The Labyrinth techno event for The Japan Times, set against the backdrop of the organizer of the festival being openly against the transgender rights movement. A thoughtful meditation!
  

• Very sweet tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto in The New Yorker (though, let’s put some more respect on Yellow Magic Orchestra, much more than a “jingle” group).
  

• “The Pokemon Inside My Heart” featuring Hatsune Miku, yep I’m sold.
  

• Sapporo’s wonderfully wacky KING∞XMHU club is now being torn down.
  

• Not directly linked to music per se, but certainly ripples to the live and nightlife industry…Shibuya Halloween week is upon us, and the district wants nobody around for it! They released a wildly goofy video urging people to avoid the area (“Some People Live In Shibuya”) alongside a huge billboard near the JR exit saying the same thing. While there’s validity to trying to curb Halloween havoc — both due to littering issues and worries in the wake of last year’s Itaewon tragedy — urging people to just skip Shibuya entirely seems pretty lazy, and also impacts local venues, bars, restaurants and clubs that anticipate big business. Then again, this isn’t a law or anything — rather, just a recommendation. Expect plenty of Doraemon-clad folks clutching Strong Zeroes in the area, just maybe less than before.
  

• Singer Masayoshi Yamazaki held a live performance in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture on October 21…and it sounds bizarre. He performed about eight songs, but mostly rambled and did crowd work for two hours? The writer of that blog post, who attended the show, notes many wondered if he was OK, or maybe drunk. This one went wild on social media.
  

• League Of Legends has a new boy band / set of in-game skins entering its world and…one of them loves Foodman? I’m onboard with that.
  

• Singer/songwriter Yoshinori Monta died at age 72. Listen to his representative hit below.

• Everything is AKB? Everything is AKB.
  

• A Taut Line has launched a new Substack! Go and subscribe to that (and revisit my interview with him and label mate BD1982).
  

• In neat news that still feels a, uh, decade late, EXILE will be holding their first international show in Taiwan this December.
  

• OK so this is niche but I’ll say…perhaps the most exciting reissue news I’ve heard all year is indie-pop duo 800 Cherries’ 1999 album Romantico will get a vinyl and cassette reissue this December. An absolute masterpiece — end-of-Shibuya-kei-era electronic indie-pop album blurring the line between lounge sounds and something dreamier. Twee at heart but happy to mutate sonically. “Honeydew Blue” is a masterpiece. I listened to this album on loop while at college — under layers of snow and forced to stay indoors, the optimal listening condition — and cherish it to this day. I probably won’t shut up about this in two months.
  

  Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
  Twitter — @mbmelodies

  Follow the Best of 2023 Spotify Playlist Here!

1. Here’s where I let the cover slip and say…stay tuned for more Lamp content coming to certain English-language newspapers in Japan in the near future…this is my effort to point to a great album and be like “listen now! listen now!”

2. They have official English ones on the YouTube, you have no excuses.