Make Believe Melodies For September 13, 2021
Read to the end for thoughts on...the future of Tokyo tourism
Dr. Anon — “Advance”
Of course artists involved in this group grew up on Vocaloid. Founding member e5 says the singing-synthesizer software and the community blossoming out of it served as her gateway in an interview with PRKS9 (a blog at the forefront of this variety of Japanese SoundCloud-centric rap / HyperPop). This puts her shape-shifting solo offerings and the work she helps make as part of trio Dr. Anon into the same lane as, like, Ado and YOASOBI, a reminder of how deep Vocaloid’s influence goes in contemporary Japanese music.
It’s all over “Advance,” the group’s newest upload. What makes this corner of Japanese music — and HyperPop on a global level — so interesting to me is the glee artists take in warping their voices for filters and effects. Few musical elements are as boring as a trained singing voice, so bless Dr. Anon and like-minded creators in seeing how much fun they can have with their natural instrument. “Advance” leans closer to rap-pop than early dives into dizzying electro pop, putting more of a focus on each member’s approach to rapping and allowing room for them to flex their own preferred interpretation of vocal delivery (member Polinka boasts the most familiar “hip-hop” background having initially appeared when “SoundCloud rap” was blowing up, while Haku…was one of the first members of Los An Jewels, who were sort of out front on all this). A lot of sonic throughlines manifest themselves in Dr. Anon and “Advance,” but what really clicks is them finding their perspective on it. Listen above.
Yurufuwa Gang — “Ying Yang”
Show me a greater skill than being able to drift into the void…and pull yourself out when needed. Yurufuwa Gang spent last year indulging in Goa-fueled rave, but return with “Ying Yang,” a surprisingly sturdy number reminding that they earned all that attention for Mars Ice House a few years ago for way more reasons than being oddballs. Listen above.
Guchon — Tropical Pizza EP
Guchon & Pharakami Sanders — Summer Cutz
Leave it to a foundational netlabel artist to imagine more delirious times — Guchon just flexes out across these two releases, with the Pizza Cat EP being particularly party-starting (the title track and “Hot Cat” merging Miami Bass looseness with sillier online touches, keeping everything light and flirty). Let’s not forget Pharakami Sanders though, especially since “Ride On Time” turns its central vocal samples into ecstasy. Listen above, and click those links!
CAPSULE — “Future Wave”
More of a slow-fizzling neon light than the instant light-up of “Hikari No Disco,” but still a promising peak at CAPSULE’s new album. The build pays off late when Nakata lets the synths just run wild before embracing some space, which makes the final vocal stretch hit harder than most exercises in retro. Listen above.
AmPm —Jakarta
Considering AmPm’s whole approach to music from the beginning has been taking advantage of Spotify trends and turning into the first Japanese act to really flourish on the platform, an EPs worth of songs named after cities where their songs probably perform well (they’ve played live in Indonesia!) is probably another data-driven decision. Sometimes though, cynically playing the algorithm can inspire good work! The trio of new tracks here — all minus vocalists, which also plays a big role in why they work so well — have to rely on pace and mood to stand out, and AmPm offer some of their best work to date via the dizzying flourishes of “Tokyo” and the house euphoria of “New York.” Listen above.
iyan D1KE And Cybermilk — “CUTiE collection”
Some upbeat HyperPop-adjacent stuff before we dive into the murk.
Tavito Nanao — 911 Fantasia (2007)
Like any epoch-shifting event, the easy way out of talking about September 11th’s impact on music is to just say everything released in the years after that catastrophe owes some influence to that Tuesday. Music reflects the times it was made and everything is political blah blah blah, go read Twitter. Far more interesting as we move past the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is looking at art specifically referencing the attack itself, and it makes for a weird bunching of music in particularly. You’ve got the coincidental and aesthetic (The Disintegration Loops), the painfully personal look at the world after (In What Language?), the persevering (The Rising) and the jingoistic (spin a wheel of mid-Aughts country songs!).
Nothing in the 9/11 canon, though, might be as ambitious and batshit as 911 Fantasia, singer/songwriter Tavito Nanao’s 2007 album inspired by…well, 9/11, but also a lot more.
I’ll say upfront that I’m generally down on Nanao’s work and think his best moments are when he celebrates cooler artists and sounds via his platform. Still, even I can give him credit for the sheer audacity of this behemoth, a three-CD release bordering on three hours long recorded by Nanao alone. Conceptually, Nanao devises a whole story centered around an old person talking to his grandkid in the year 2051, about the experience of living through the first half of the 21st century. Of course 9/11 is central to that…but Nanao stretches it back to the moon landing, which was fake, and allowed America to spread “fantasy” en route to world domination and endless wars stretching into the mid 2000s. Also, Japanese society changes and, uhhh, music is powerful and we shouldn’t forget that?
This cost the equivalent of $45 USD when it came out!
The album itself swings between folk song, sample-centric experimentation and a lot of spoken word, with Nanao committing so much he pretends to be both geriatric and, like, six years old. If that horrible, well it kind of is, though scattered moments of charm and brilliance do pop up sometimes (the stretch from “Laughter Of The Century” to the start of “Sweet” being the highlight). Japanese critics love it, partially due to its thematic weight and partially due to just how ambitious it is…but man, sitting through a movies-worth of spoken word musings on terrorist attacks and the magic of art some glitchy pop experiments doesn’t feel great.
Yet this could also be the ultimate 9/11 album in existence. I think the most interesting element of 911 Fantasia is that it comes from a non-American perspective. Lots of Western music wrangling with the disaster emphasize how important it is — but Nanao is the only one who made a three-hour work doubling as a conspiracy chart about how it was the single most impactful event in modern history and its fallout both real and imagined. He accidentally captures both the accurate (one of the worst tragedies in American history, also America bad) and overstuffed (everything connects to 9/11 folks) that defined this decade. It’s a mess to listen to, but even the wackiness kind of works as a historical document of the times. 911 Fantasia deserves to be brought up whenever it’s time to reflect…and only then.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of August 30, 2021 To September 5, 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.
SKE48 — “Ano Koro No Kimi Wo Mitsuketa” (187,267 Copies Sold)
Can’t think up anything positive or even interesting to say about a “yay, summer!” song made for 2021, a year boasting a summer I’d like very much to forget about. Sometimes, we don’t need “songs of the summer” or mandatory seasonal pop…just let folks brood, you know?
News And Views
Since event organizer Creativeman decided not to cancel, postpone or limit the number of people allowed to attend this weekend’s Supersonic event, the Chiba government pulled its sponsorship of the fest — and the money that goes with it. Clearly a reaction to the continued fallout from NAMIMONOGATARI (which I wrote about a bit more as well).
I respect that the Nikkan Sports article about Chiba’s decision notes that over 9000 people attended a baseball game on September 5 held at the same venue as Supersonic — there’s a very obvious target placed on music as opposed to other types of live events right now, and I’m glad someone in the Japanese media acknowledged it.Speaking of….we are now three weeks out of Fuji Rock and now signs of it being a superspreader event. Yet tabloids were sending reporters to Niigata Prefecture like it was the Fall Of Saigon.
MIYAVI covered Nirvana. I’ll use this space to note…MIYAVI is very good on The Masked Singer Japan, and sits next to Perfume’s Kashiyuka, resulting in surprising chemistry as hosts.
GACKT suspends activity due to deteriorating health conditions.
Is it just me, or are entertainers caught with drugs coming back faster than before? Noriyuki Makihara, back in the biz.
Music producer Masaru Ezaki died after contracting COVID-19. He’s worked with several artists, though most prominently probably hy4_4yh.
Miss SMAP? Well, you can see the three members who stepped away from Johnny’s & Associates star in a new educational show starting today!
Speaking of Johnny & Associates, Ronald Taylor interviewed King & Prince for The Japan Times. It’s a great look at both the group and shifts taking place at the once hyper-conservative agency. Also, congrats Ronald, as the tweet promoting this story is easily the most-engaged-with in Japan Times’ history, earning way more attention than multiple natural disasters and other huge news (and like quadruple anything about the current prime minister election…media types, take note!).
Part of Johnny’s shift to the online realm has come via +81 DANCE STUDIO, a YouTube channel allowing young group Travis Japan the chance to “challenge” new dances set to classic Johnny’s songs weekly. It strikes me as something between The First Take and creative IP usage, allowing Johnny’s to both promote a fresh-faced project to the world while shining a light on older numbers that could get lost in the march of time. Here’s one example.
Are you reading this and not also subsribed to Ryo Miyauchi’s This Side Of Japan? Go fix that! The latest weekly edition features a lot of great writing, including a glance back at one of the most important / influential J-pop songs of the 2010s, AKB48’s “Koisuru Fortune Cookie.”
Pentatonix love Japan and Japanese music, explaining new number “Midnight In Tokyo” featuring Little Glee Monster. The tune itself downplays the group’s a capella side, which makes it the best Pentatonix song I’ve ever heard. Yet I’m more interested in the very idea of Japan becoming a place for escapism once again in pop, which reflects a general sense of an incoming tourist boom once the pandemic ends (or, more likely, is downplayed enough to the point people will just start traveling for fun again). I’m just as interested in how the landscape of Tokyo’s tourist attractions will shift when this day arrives. “Midnight In Tokyo” offers a clue backing up a personal theory — we’re about to see a reset of what constitutes “cool” Tokyo. The days of Nakameguro and even the lingering hipness of Shimokitazawa will be spun back in favor of the obvious, hollered out in Japanese here — “Harajuku, Shibuya.” Pentatonix isn’t Conde Nast Traveler, but their embrace of the big obvious spots reflects what’s going to be a shared desire for the accessible over the niche after a few years of having it closed off.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies