Great Japanese Pop

I will second (third? fourth?) the Yuki recommendations in this thread wholeheartedly. Except I'll add that her solo albums (and, to some extent, her work with Judy & Mary) don't really have many of the tropes that one might associate with prototypical j-pop. Musically, I think they probably sound much less foreign to Western ears, but they're very solid and well worth checking out.

Here's the video for Yuki's "End Of Shite" (from Prismic, which is indeed great):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrC7zxjGCGc&search=Pv

I'm going to order 'Tadaima' and the Yukihiro Takahashi album 'Blue Moon Blue' from cdjapan.co.jp

Never used yesasia...but cdjapan is at least reliable.

http://www.waxpoetics.com/music/mixtape/citypop-japanese-aor-mixtape

Japanese DJ Bawxxx recently hipped us to his mix of citypop (Japanese AOR), lovingly called Melancholy of Suburbia, and we’re feeling this! Good luck ever finding these records! We don’t know much about Mr. Bawxxx, but with a little snooping we found out that he apparently hails from Nagoya and eats quite well!

i've been listening to tons of japanese electronic pop of the 1980s, esp. 1980-84, lately. there doesn't seem to be as much of a division between what we might consider "pop" versus "experimental" in japan. that goes for music as much as, say, film. people like hosono and others move freely--even on a single album--between modes. i like that aspect a lot. not that western pop music doesn't have its experimental elements.

that said, the "city pop" of the kind on that mix is not very experimental, but it can be very enjoyable. i don't have my laptop to hand to check out the names of the bands/albums in that mode that i've been enjoying, but i can check later. if anyone cares.

the album i've been addicted to in particular is a one-off studio group called "aragon" (that's what the album is called, too). it's a kind of electronic MOR/jazz fusion/4th world/ambient thing. which could sound terrible. amazingly my fave track is on youtube, i'm curious what others think. i think it's lovely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqNzycK7rY

oh yeah, I love the closer on that aragon album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSBH2EGcNHo

oh man, somebody else who knows this record! it seems hopelessly obscure. good luck finding an actual copy in the states.

don't have a physical copy myself, but yeah, it's a good one!

if you haven't heard it, I'd recommend the ichiko hashimoto's beauty if you dig that aragon lp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UELvVDDXEG0

similar understated experimental '4th world' pop vibe on a couple tracks (it's pretty eclectic tho, others are nothing like that one)

these 80s japanese LPs are some of things i don't feel bad about downloading, since in many cases i'd never find a copy. in some cases there have been reissues but given typical japanese prices and exchange rates they'd be like $50+

also it'd be hard for me to even look them up since i don't read kanji :(

haha yeah :-/

going back to this - there doesn't seem to be as much of a division between what we might consider "pop" versus "experimental"

def also really like that about hosono & lots of his contemporaries from that era. his work in the 80s kinda straddles the line between the two but even his ambient music has this abstracted catchiness to it. maybe bc a lot of this crew also did work for movies, anime, video games, commercials, etc.?

*bookmarked*

ooh that hashimoto track is nice

here's one from colored music LP from 1981

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHL2e9VkiyU

here's some hosono-produced weirdness from 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTiY4RbIaZc

that's not a takahashi track? it's on one of his solo lps, so just assumed it was

super hilarious hosono cmaeos in this sandii vid btw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxSV8Xu0RUk

i think takahashi did it first, def his roxy music track -- so good.

re: finding aragon in the US...probably like 4 or 5 years ago i found a copy in the collection of a weird reclusive ex-EBM DJ from florida that used to be a buyer at princeton record exchange back in the day. still had the store-made hype sticker from (i'm assuming) the 80s, which immediately had me pretty stoked:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b39/spencerd63/IMG_6603_zps37d828c7.jpg

not sure how to post pictures here, hopefully that worked. but yeah, remarkable album. there's a really weird "making-of" type LP called "the studio works" that was issued the same year made up of studio demos and outtakes, worth seeking out if you're a fan. nishimatsu kazuhiro (the vocalist) has a solo album form the same time too, though it's titled a little too far into schmaltz territory for my taste.

you're the same spencer d that did the "fairlights mallets and bamboo" mixes, yeah?

yup.

and oops, i meant tilted, not titled.

sweet, love those mixes and play them often

yeah those mixes are the best, i bow to you spencer.

btw the aragon vocals are sometimes "in japanese" per the sticker but i think a lot of them are just wordless oohs and aaahs etc.

there's a really weird "making-of" type LP called "the studio works" that was issued the same year made up of studio demos and outtakes, worth seeking out if you're a fan.

ha, i'm not likely to find this anywhere. YSI?

the album i've been listening to the last few days is satoshi ashikawa's "wave notation 2: still way" which is pretty purely ambient, and yet like some of hosono's ambient work (or eno's for that matter) there's a subliminal catchiness to it. i believe you can download the whole thing on root blog, just google around and you'll find it.

what else? there's the mallet-heavy yet (yet?) awesome mkawju ensemble LP from 1981, most of it written/produced by future film-score god joe hsaishi. can't seem to find a clip on youtube.

<3 still way so much. is it really the only thing ashikawa did? was never able to find any info about other recordings.

can we talk abt how great miharu koshi's "boy soprano" is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8EPTE41c5Q

Lost that one in a crash. Only have one song now from it. Rice Music from Ippu Do also.

Digging the second volume of Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo.

"sur la terra" - super beautiful hosono production

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKUcR2Z9DYY

starts ~4mins in

New music from Furukawa Miki:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KS1qzueR90

I pretty much consider this the perfect pop song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tdMHZRiGd8

this city pop mix is p tight overall but mariya takeuchi "plastic love" at 31:20 is a monster:
https://soundcloud.com/bawxxx/melancholy-of-suburbia#t=31:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14RxICxtM5Q

So good. Been listening to Miharu Koshi all across youtube. Lots of cool stuff.

And yes it does have a Led Zeppelin reference in the lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsPXl-OxW28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEZSpj5R5L4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIVGQ-B9G38&list=PL36B51C25BBF3B00B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2wW--l1OHk

electro prom in the foggy forest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSYWR6jKjpA

The intro to this is straight out of a Final Fantasy boss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u393a9VJo2Y

Mariah Carey cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTOfH3Sjb9U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73e-gV50SKk

The piano necktie on a miniature red piano is amazing. So 80s.

RIP

Yumi Ito
1941 - 2016

Death of Yumi Ito of twin pop duo The Peanuts confirmed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX0rrArs46A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR7GAvKBIO4

man I could tell in the first 5 seconds that was Hosono

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Arg36CZvHA

Not 80s but Nihonjin:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4mrih3yZgEBes83YSy3WXM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KKCt_Ur2ik

i've been listening to Salon Music's "My Girl Friday" (1983). i absolutely love the opener song "Muscle Daughter". kind of reminds me of The Vaselines.

was surprised when they apparently got robert fripp in to do the guitar solo