The J-Pop Thread

Did anyone get the last english-language Utada album?

i was thinking the other day that I needed to start a thread about j-pop in 2005 b/c i've really been out of the loop - anybody know of any great '05 releases in the genre?

"Long Way Home" by Speed is a lachrymose ballad in the "Careless Whisper" vein that kind of seeps under your skin after a few hearings. Dunno if they're anything to do with Speed, Glue and Shinki (I suspect not) but you can always hope.

Those are the only 2 j-pop songs I can remember actually. Are there any compilations / overviews marketed to the Western market? Or would that be a complete waste of any record companies time and money?

The Hillary Duff sounding song "Endless Love" from We Love Katamari soundtrack. So good!

This morning on the train I jammed out The Fantastic Plastic Machine's "too" which is total disco mindfuck.

spontine i had just bought LOve Jam, which is good, is Love punch better ?
Also i bought Chara "a scenery like me but had yet to listen"

not strictly jpop but i highy recommend Takako Minekawa "Roomic cube" and "Chat chat".

any other suggestion, expecially greatest hits, since i can permit to go bankrut and i buy tons od diverse genre of music. Yeh a J-Pop compilation for the wester market would be a goodidea, but probably noone is interested....

Kinokuniya Books sells "The Best in J-Pop! Volume X" type comps for better (yet slightly inflated but nowhere near Japanese import) prices.. so SOME labels (in the U.S. at least) have seen a market for this.

They also sell domestic releases of Japanese bands like Polysics and, occasionally, Boredoms related stuff... Still, I wish the buyers at Kinokuniya would be more on the off-the-radar tip -- but the AOR Japanese pop, J-Pop, and Japanese underground customer bases tend to be mutually exclusive, I guess.

BABYMETAL! I have nothing else to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QbAXXXOJF8

That's...quite something.

I guess there's always been a crossover between j-pop and metal with people like Aikawa Nanase and the vis kei bands but i've never heard anything like that.

Do not ignore their homepage:

http://www.babymetal.jp/

Amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKJdLkpqj6k

Have to post this here as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAOqbu_XEvk

(This being Momoiro Clover Z - the music video is great as well, but the official upload's sound is muffled http://youtu.be/TIokp4MonxE )

Big, amazing song. Marty Friedman featuring seems like a normal sort of thing for these girls. There's also this article from Japan Times:

The not-so-odd coupling between noise acts and J-pop http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fm20120223im.html

However, a lot of it is thoroughly sincere, and in Japan, the burning heart of this love affair is Momoiro Clover Z, a pop group who provoke squealing, teenage admiration from punks, indie kids, noise musicians and heavy-psychedelic longhairs throughout the Japanese underground music scene.

One such progressive rocker is Taigen Kawabe of U.K.-based psychedelic band Bo Ningen. More often seen in Tokyo playing alongside noise legends such as Keiji Haino, Kawabe's page on the website SoundCloud leads off with a curious mashup of his own band and Momioro Clover Z in which the former band's shifts in rhythm match surprisingly well with the idol group's distinctive penchant for chopping aggressively (and sometimes illogically) between seemingly unconnected melodies.

Interestingly, Momioro Clover's recent single, "Roudou Sanka," written by Ian Parton of British band The Go! Team, met with criticism from some fans for being too commercial, and the Hyadain-produced (and Friedman-enhanced) followup, the elaborately titled "Mouretsu Uchuu Koukyoukyoku Dainana Gakushou", is defiantly back in the group's previous furious conceptual mashup territory

Roudou Sanka is actually great http://youtu.be/Krj3dwKEaSk

the music isn't killing me as much as the video concepts, but the Megadeth guitar + Volga Boatmen Russian choral coda is definitely some kind of... thing? they're 9000 times less disturbing than AKB48 in any case, if I could take back watching that one video of theirs a friend forwarded I would

that Japan Times article is great though; Merzbow had been influencing western pop artists from the beginning of his career, but when Shiina Ringo began integrating full on Otomo Yoshihide levels of noise-solos in her pop songs it really did come across as national heritage rather than some kind of collage. almost confused Japan Times didn't reference Shiina even though she basically moved away from noise in 2004

Here's the song performed live with a full choir and marty on the guitar!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB3Oo1vihSo

I fell asleep listening to Perfume's JPN last night and had weird acidy candy store french electro dreams.

Whoa, I completely missed out on Momoiro Clover Z's nutsoid Christmas song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfli1WCcFA

^ the best bit is when it goes SANTA

Dude who writes most of their stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyUXKynmmiw

bet he's tired

Sufficiently so to forget his many chords in the new Momoiro tune- http://youtu.be/fATvdleWPtU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVn3_qeIrBA

TAKE FIVE! puts me in this really nostalgic mood

live track by Salyu, from her new Cornelius produced album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brec06BA6JU

I realize that i should have typed GIVE ME FIVE!. TAKE FIVE! is a dave brubeck song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BmnwuISzlA&feature=related

not often that i really dig auto-tune/vocoders. she has a couple great songs but i can't find youtube hosts of them.

here's a real treat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN0zuBHKHaM

Grabbed the new Ayumi Hamasaki album yesterday. The first few songs are pretty good in a blatantly Rihanna/pop-trance kind of way, but the album's latter two-thirds are all ballads with gloopy strings. Don't love it.

Saw L'Arc-en-Ciel at Madison Square Garden last night; reviewed it for the Voice. I took many more pictures than they used; I'll put some up on my blog, and link it later.

I really like the Ayumi Hamasaki album! I'm not big on ballads and gloopy strings either but they are much more restrained and creative than that description usually suggests. With the exception of the last one (the single) which, yes, is a bit much.

I don't know - my favorite of her recent albums is Rock 'n' Roll Circus, so with the title Party Queen I was kinda hoping for something more in that vein.

Here's the link to my L'Arc-en-Ciel photos.

Meta new Perfume

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VnPyW9LwxY

amazing. As usual.

yep, that's good

http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/03/japanese-idol-on-support-by-eating-positive-from-wbc/
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/04/another-member-of-tokio-hospitalized/

this song, wtf.
its like a Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure version of Jpop starring teenage girl space pirates, with choirs and the kitchen sink flung in. it feels like it goes on forever! the "aye aye sir" bits are pretty funny tho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIokp4MonxE

Yeah I posted about it some posts over you and their excellent Christmas classic also got posted.

Why didn't we already know about this:

http://bourdaghs.com/blog/

?

Description

From the beginning of the American Occupation in 1945 to the post-bubble period of the early 1990s, popular music provided Japanese listeners with a much-needed release, channeling their desires, fears, and frustrations into a pleasurable and fluid art. Pop music allowed Japanese artists and audiences to assume various identities, reflecting the country's uncomfortable position under American hegemony and its uncertainty within ever-shifting geopolitical realities.

In the first English-language study of this phenomenon, Michael K. Bourdaghs considers genres as diverse as boogie-woogie, rockabilly, "enka," 1960s rock and roll, 1970s new music, folk, and techno-pop. Reading these forms and their cultural import through music, literary, and cultural theory, he introduces readers to the sensual moods and meanings of modern Japan. As he unpacks the complexities of popular music production and consumption, Bourdaghs interprets Japan as it worked through (or tried to forget) its imperial past. These efforts grew even murkier as Japanese pop migrated to the nation's former colonies. In postwar Japan, pop music both accelerated and protested the commodification of everyday life, challenged and reproduced gender hierarchies, and insisted on the uniqueness of a national culture, even as it participated in an increasingly integrated global marketplace.

Each chapter in "Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon" examines a single genre through a particular theoretical lens: the relation of music to liberation; the influence of cultural mapping on musical appreciation; the role of translation in transmitting musical genres around the globe; the place of noise in music and its relation to historical change; the tenuous connection between ideologies of authenticity and imitation; the link between commercial success and artistic integrity; and the function of melodrama. Bourdaghs concludes with a look at recent Japanese pop music culture.

ha ha as to the entirety of the samples chosen for Japanese Popular Music Since 1990

http://bourdaghs.com/Sayonara-current-JPop.html

will buy this book

that being said if he's calling 'KZK' her second instead of her third solo album, I will hope that the factual details in the rest of the book have been better proofed

Well how do you think I googled this thing up to begin with? Funny though, I hadn't even made it that far yet (to the page you link to).

Japan Times review here: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fb20120513a2.html

And yes, that's some bad fact checking. University press too.

Had you seen this author's name previously?

There's a whole chapter on Misora Hibari.

certainly no way around that

new perfume!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCwzIJnJnFI

This one is way better than "Spending All My Time" imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCjcmOR1lT4

Kind of weird how Spending/Hurly Burly/Point all sound old-fashioned in different ways.

yeah, I don't care for "spending all my time" at all, really. seems like a kind of lame and late to the game attempt to jump on the sound that's been all over pop music for a few years now. admittedly I don't like this sound anyway...

"point" and "hurly burly" are fun tho.

strong CHARISMA.COM vibes, I guess it's the rapping

this is sick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jL4t8ABGmI

"In This World" - Mondo Grosso, Hikari Mitsushima, Ryuichi Sakamoto

so gorgeous, would love an extended mix

Also just learned that BoA re-recorded her vocals for "Everything Needs Love" last year <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d69btWfh_3o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah5EAnoFGyk

lyrical school are so good

hmm new sakanaction album is very very boring, easily their worst. hope the second album this year is better

agreed - i don't love the retro direction they've been going in. I miss their big rave choruses.

"plateau" is good though

"plateau" is solid but it's pretty by-numbers. they're still good at that one thing though which is enough to make it stand out from the rest of the album.

it's such a short & slight album and the other songs don't really have anything going for them, they're fairly mellow and restrained without their usual big hooks. it's not even like they don't have ideas, there's no reason the talking heads-esque disco pastiche of "shock" has to be so underwhelming - it's not bad but they're clearly capable of so much better. they've made going retro work extremely well before on "wasureranai no" but there's nothing like that here

flipping through it, I like it fine but yeah my general impression of this band is they're too interesting to be doing what they're doing. if this is "easily their worst" that's a good sign for the albums I haven't heard yet

I've liked a few Haruka Kudo (工藤晴香) songs before, but not with enough mindfulness to internalize the kanji and realize that without looking it up. But the new album, 流星列車 (Meteor Train?), is fantastic idol rock all the way through. Highly recommended!

https://open.spotify.com/album/43fD05oNZfTmSg6UZWo6UG

got to say I'm amused that altidol is already in the nostalgia phase with Bellring and Especia announcing oneoff reunions
only a matter of time before WACK scrape together a lineup of Lui and whoever is in the office at the time to do a BiS "hits" tour

anyway Ano has a major label debut single, it's OK?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JeCJ8kDmu

(copy/pasted that wrong)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JeCJ8kDmus

new wednesday campanella EP out today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feiToPhrzcI

it's solid, not special in the way their 2013-2018 run was, but i'm happy to have more from hidefumi

I think it was time for a bit of a lighter vibe. Utaha is growing on me. "Buckingham" goes.

greatly enjoying this debut album from ExWHYZ - first single "Wanna Dance" produced by Shinichi Osawa/Mondo Grosso:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn9EPV_atyQ

hey something WACK related that I actually like, been a while since that happened
(thought it was a 46 offshoot at first just going by the initial haircuts haha)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjzzPdG7RXw

ho6la - "idol fire" goes hard and goes places

ok this is cheating a bit cos they are from Thailand, but this Shimmer Shrimpner song is fun in a late 80s indiepop way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2AhynBC8o

speaking of cheating, is there a better place to talk about the lexie liu record?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tyThWCYU0

oh and nakata continues bringing the good stuff again with the new capsule

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXlbYV9RhAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n8WiBNCZpY

very confused by this sailor moon-themed idol group putting out this weird atonal track produced by hudson mohawke & bloodpop

Sakurazaka46 (formerly Keyakizaka46) have been steadily ruling this year

"Start Over" - such a rush

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJRFD1AdaUE

"Shoninyokkyu" - currently no.1 in Japan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_BjvhMW9TE

love the weird ass tempo changes in this, makes my brain feel like it's being squished together and pulled apart simultaneously

RYUGUJO - Deep Waves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w--X4i-K1Wk

it's not just tempo but time signature too, extremely bold

Yeah, that's wild.