Make Believe Melodies For September 25, 2023

Walkin' About

RYOKO2000 — Unknown Things

Let us take a moment to celebrate the joys of walking around enjoying music. While I won’t fault the American mind for defaulting to the idea of songs playing in your car as the ideal way of experiencing the medium — I grew up in Southern California, I had one of those goofy cassette-tape-looking doodads you plugged into an iPod — living in urban-ish areas of Japan for a decade-plus has taught me how great listening and strolling about can be. Tokyo in particular excels for this purpose, offering both movie-ready downtowns full of skyscrapers and video screens and sleepier suburbs for more reflective moments.

Recently, duo RYOKO2000’s Unknown Things has been dominating both the brisk walks to work-dictated destination and the more aimless jaunts around the block once the sun sets. It’s a speedy album but rarely urgent, instead happy to use an uptempo pace as a way to play with sounds. The pair revel in playfulness, whether in turning synths into squiggles or transforming, like, telephone samples into jams.

Unknown Things is RYOKO2000 getting a touch weirder and wilder following 2021’s Travel Guide, an equally speedy set more focused on showcasing their chops. The tracks here reveal new tricks in their sonic palette, along with a willingness to be a bit sillier. That’s clear from the synths swirling around opener “Sprout,” lithe and jolly, the pair building it up while never losing the looseness at its core. “Jungle Taitei” toys with ‘90s video game vibes, while “Powder Moon” adds specks of distortion to its otherwise twinkly skip. The duo’s best work comes when they pick up the pace a little, without letting the songs become too hectic, whether via the telephone-operator-sampling glitch party of “Telecomm” or the swift electronic pulsing of “Haze,” the one moment where huge swells of noise disrupt the flow, but which only makes the dash that follows all the more exhilarating.

They flip the familiar into something new, which works especially well when out and about amongst places you see everyday…nothing wrong in letting songs transform those settings into something different, at least for a few minutes. Get it here, or listen above.

Setagaya Inshu Kaiwai — “Kimi To Paris”

Nothing wrong with a nice late-night depressed walk, either. Setagaya Inshu Kaiwai soaks in their own sadness for “Kimi To Paris,” a slightly buzzed ode to longing for an ex off having fun while you stumble around Shimokitazawa. The way the group plays off the beat — itself feeling tipsy — helps drive the stupid longing of youth home, with just enough self-awareness flowing through (they at least seem aware how pathetic this seems…but even when you know you look like a fool, that shit is still real). Listen above.

FNCY — “Speeder”

I figured FNCY was on an extended hiatus, but here they are, back with a new song (plus an appearance at Ringo Festival this past weekend). The trio dabble in shuffling 2-step, while still allowing their individual voices to sprawl out in all their glory (ZEN-LA-ROCK…what a delivery). Listen above.

u.u — Anata No Obake

KAOMOZI continues to be the most exciting music label of 2023 with the latest from u.u, a set split between heartfelt synth-pop and blissed-out dance cuts. Large chunks of this release — with its sweet, simple singing set over bright synth backdrops — reminds of early 2010s favorite Her Ghost Friend (album title also referencing ghosts, something to that), with the same sense of wonder and melancholy intertwined. That this tension comes out best in the spirit bomb that is “Fragment” — a glassy dance number using u.u’s syllablic delivery and 8-bit notes as a lift towards pure release — is especially wonderful. Get it here, or listen above.

Wang Dang Doodle — “kiss kiss kiss”

Neo Shibuya-kei in good hands it seems. Listen above.

yama And Tatsuya Kitani — “Akogare No Mama Ni”

Wherein one act boosted by anime collides with another to create a song for a car…and both come out with a darty little gem. Both yama and Tatsuya Kitani have enjoyed domestic love and international looks thanks in part to songs written for huge anime series, and now they come together to sing the praises of the Hyundai Kona…or, at least the spirit said automobile represents. That ends up being not too big a deterrent to enjoying the number itself¹, a quick-moving guitar number nodding to the early 2020s glum wave (of which yama emerged from) but adding a splash of neon brightness via the synth, which reminds me of…Sakanaction? Never a bad thing, personally, and the pair’s voices work really well together. Listen above.

Consider Subscribing (Or Going Paid)!

Hey, if those two can promote a hybrid SUV, I can promote that fact that you can subscribe to Make Believe Melodies, including a paid level that gets you access to a bonus post each week. Lots of shorter glimpses into Tokyo’s music ecosystem, along with a few oddball posts and a touch more hatin’ from me than you’ll find around here.

Oricon Trail For The Week Of September 11, 2023 To September 17, 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.

Naniwa Danshi — “Make Up Day / Missing” (394,213 Copies Sold)

Last week, Vulture’s Into It podcast looked at the state of America’s Hot 100, and how it “doesn’t make sense” in 2023. It’s an interesting listen, if for no other reason than to be further convinced that the global pop industry has entered its “J-pop in the early 2010s” phase, aka the “everything is AKB” epoch. It’s an especially interesting discussion to consider now, as we have an odd “this is your future” moment playing out in Japan, where three charts boast three different number one songs. Oricon, the traditional metric, is topped by a surprisingly deft dance-pop cut and piano-slink groove from Naniwa Danshi. No surprises — even amidst a huge decades-long scandal, this Johnny’s outfit triumphs in the traditional charts.

Over at Billboard Japan, though, a group representing the fragmentation of modern J-pop takes the top spot, with BMSG flagship outfit BE:FIRST’s “Mainstream,” a kind of subversion of the idea of trendiness wherein the group celebrate individuality over following the pack. They do so over the type of beat that has been omnipresent in K-pop for like five years now, but I digress. While musically I don’t think there’s some huge gap between the two — the Naniwa Danshi songs are quite sleek, avoiding the grating Johnny’s dinner-theater vibes bogging down so many of their groups at their worst — there’s certainly an image difference, and it does feel noteworthy that BE:FIRST has achieved a breakthrough on this chart.

But what if we are missing a constant lesson…

Various streaming charts and YouTube’s own “trending music” tab have the latest single from King Gnu at number one — BE:FIRST is down in the teens, Naniwa Danshi isn’t even available on any outside of YouTube — which makes it the representative for the “new age” of Japan’s music industry, one where digital realities are finally embraced. It’s the sort of song that would never top Oricon (maybe Billboard), but might be the most ever-present in Japan of the trio right now if you choose to measure a song by its widespread presence rather than fandom-powered efforts (no judgement on either!). Vulture might be confused in 2023, but the truth is that finding answers to the questions hey ask requires more work…like what anyone in Japan with interest in this industry has to do now.

News And Views

• YOASOBI appeared on MNET’s M Countdown this past week to perform “IDOL.”
  

Meanwhile, in America, Japanese dance troupe Avantgardey wowed viewers of America’s Got Talent (which includes my father) with a performance set to…YOASOBI’s “IDOL².”

So yeah pretty clear who the biggest J-pop act of 2023 has been on a global scale, if you needed further confirmation.

• X-Con is shaping up to be one of the weirdest festivals I’ve ever seen in Japan…De La Soul and VTubers, on the same bill!…and helping to make it such a wild concept is the event will serve as the debut ground for a new female pop group put together via an AbeMa audition show. The group will be representative of “hyper gacha pop,” which means I’ll have to watch this show now.
  

• Another group prominently featuring “X” in their name…XG, the catalyst for Avex’s CEO Katsumi Kuroiwa getting interviewed by Billboard Japan. It’s pretty standard stuff that’s already been shared, the same bits about how XG aren’t J-pop or K-pop but *shudder* X-pop, with the added wrinkle that they want to create something called “XG Rhythm.” The most interesting bits come from bigger picture points about Avex, such as optimism about Japanese music globally along with plans for further expansion in Asia and…Saudi Arabia, a country where Avex already helped put on the successful “Anime Village” event. Well, at least Avex has experience dealing with geopolitical conundrums!
  

• John Williams and Seiji Ozawa reunited at a Nagano festival.
  

• The second season of SPY X FAMILY is around the corner, and today Toho revealed the opening song will be done by Ado, and the closing song will be by Vaundy (featuring Cory Wong).
  

• OK, Johnny’s corner for this week: Commercial sponsors continue to shy away from the agency and its talents…at least for now. A good summary of that is Suntory making a big deal about possibly stopping any promotion during TV programming featuring Johnny’s talent…if the agency doesn’t figure this all out in the next two to three months. Kind of gives away that a lot of current egads-ness about this is purely optical, and the moment enough time has passed (assuming Johnny’s does enough to appear like they are doing something), they’ll be totally OK with this. Don’t trust corporations!!!; NHK's Kohaku Uta Gassen is rumored to limit the number of Johnny’s acts that appear on their show this year, from like over six to less than half of that…which, again, isn’t really taking a stance, if true; Broadcaster TBS swung the other way, announcing Johnny’s talent will continue to appear on their network; even non-Johnny’s performers now have to deal with Johnny’s fallout, as former Johnny’s talent and current TOBE CEO Hideaki Takizawa denied allegations of sexual abuse.
  

• Unrelated to any of that…Fumito Kawai leaving the group A.B.C.-Z.
  

• Every knucklehead on Twitter is freaking out and/or bemoaning their forever alone status and/or Abe memeing over this McDonald’s ad, but I’m here being like “wow, lo-fi hip-hop beats to relax and study to really has made it.”
  

• Tokyo nightlife loses a critical establishment…but seriously, having places to wait for first train are important, one of the biggest issues moving forward.
  

I forget when I followed a YouTube channel sharing footage of the Osaka Expo ‘70, but whoever runs it has made a music video featuring video of the event soundtracked by T-Rex.

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

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1. An aside I can’t get over…the single artwork for this song is by Tsunotsuno, an artist whose approach is basically “imagine big ol’ anime girls standing around Tokyo.” If that sounds familiar and you too are broken by internet-centric music, you’ve probably seen their work as the image accompanying viral song “Supido,” specifically a huge anime police lady standing over a toll booth. No idea if that’s official use or if Tsunotsuno sees anything from it…but it’s generally weird seeing their art around two prominent songs in very different lanes at the same time.

2. Though they use a weird mutant version that is half Japanese original, half English version.