The J-Pop Thread

Ippu-Do/Masami Tsuchiya
Miharu Koshi
Chakra
Moon Riders
Akiko Yano
P-Model
Taeko Ohnuki/Mishio Ogawa
YMO (of course) / Sakamoto / Takahashi
Melon
Zelda

Here's Tommy February - Hey Bad Boy
http://s45.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=20QG4O8JQGQO821ID8ECY69XRC

Great Japanese Pop

Regardless, saying "J-pop really fucking sucks" is really dismissive.

I will bow out of the thread now as it's obviously not for me. Toodle pip.

i 2nd snowballing's tommy february6 recommendation. see also; tommy heavenly6 & brilliant green.

not sure if shiina ringo belongs on this thread but everybody should search.

I didn't know Plus-Tech Squeeze Box qualified. Awesome.

It'll probably be hard to search for W, but I'll try the rest.

Haha, which country HASN'T been doing stuff like this recently?

I guess what I like about this stuff is its resilience. It's this "Nothing is going to stop this motherfucking bubblegum brigade.. we're going to use every odd modern production technique out there to create this kaleidoscopic maximalist sugar rush of a song" attitude that I appreciate. It's a love or hate thing, I guess. But I'm noticing that I'm starting to like the more conservative stuff as well. ah, age.

"I'm confident that there IS good music in Japan, it's just really hard to find."

Wrong, wrong, wrong! One of the best things about living in Japan is the huge variety of record shops catering to any genre you can imagine, plus a few you've probably never heard of. Furthermore, if you live in nearly any of the major cities, you've got plenty of options with regards to club nights, live shows, not to mention the festivals which go on all summer. Judging the state of Japanese music based on Ayumi Hamasaki and her ilk is just plain ignorant.

I've said it before on a bunch of other threads but anyone interested in Japanese music needs to check out SUPERCAR. 'nuff said.

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

for anyone interested the French label that has put out Haru Nemuri, Suiyobi no Campanella, Charisma.com etc LPs in the past has a 2LP Oomori Seiko set out at the moment. only 500 copies pressed, just got mine in the post this morning.
https://specific.bandcamp.com/album/alchemy

Nice. They're also selling all 56 of their digital releases for €8.50?!

noticed that on the Campanella release page.. that release is just pay-whatever-you-want for the files. Anyway thanks I'm gonna check some of this out.

just did represses of the nemuri records too

still kinda hurts to think about how charisma.com turned out after that sick first record

keep going back to this new dempagumi single. looks like hyadain wrote it, which man, of course he did. hope there's more...

have we talked about Atarashii Gakko no Leaders yet?
I love their cartoonish energy, how much fun they seem to be having.
I believe they do all that insane choreography themselves too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3venzR3TnQ

thanks for that. i love it. i feel a tokyo jihen influence

hah tokyo jihen influence might explain why it's musically not for me but that video is definitely pretty great

they are quite varied musically, this is the song that got me into them (and the synchronized head jerks haha)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yR1IBtixHY

for anyone interested the French label that has put out Haru Nemuri, Suiyobi no Campanella, Charisma.com etc LPs in the past has a 2LP Oomori Seiko set out at the moment. only 500 copies pressed, just got mine in the post this morning.
https://specific.bandcamp.com/album/alchemy

thanks for the heads up on this, I snagged literally the last copy

woah good timing! I wonder how many copies made their way to Japan via forwarding services

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRwHZ0nsbBY

kenmochi hidefumi of wednesday campanella fame has gotten really into footwork lately, here's kanano senritsu - "drop" which he produced

looks like she's a ZOC member. man, that newish ZOC double album rules, one of my fave things in the seiko-verse from the last few years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HChQoG282bM

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

ryutist - "mizugurasu"

love this

oh man, that IS great!

also, my ZOC enthusiasm has gone down the last few days... anyone else following this?
https://aramajapan.com/news/gossip/oomori-seiko-bullies-and-beats-fellow-zoc-member-kannagi-maro-in-shocking-audio-clip/114778/

but then oomori was promoting a new maro single on social media the next day and that was weird.

then there were many apologies during a subsequent live ZOC performance:
https://storywriter.tokyo/2021/08/15/4992/

here's a translation of some of what oomori said then:

I translated what Seiko & Maro said about the incident at their recent live #ZOC pic.twitter.com/nTKb0Kk2lc

— -アンナ- (Anna) (@0kada_Akiko) August 16, 2021

I honestly can't follow exactly what's going on but it sure doesn't seem good

yeh it's awful, there have been rumours for a while about Seiko being a mess behind the scenes but hearing it for yourself is a whole other thing

yeah, the whole thing is bumming me out, she should take a little breather and definitely step away from this particular project (altho she's basically what made it so interesting, sigh...)

yeah this stuff is depressing, if she's just going to recreate the worst abusive dynamics of the idol industry what the hell is the point

yea exactly

watching this old video of seiko with bis, it was easy (for me) to fall into the narrative of "ZOC is her using the clout she's built up to make a fun dream from when she was younger happen"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXj5yP-OKQM

but turns out she's just been using her position of power to do shitty things (like what happened with bis I guess, hmm), kinda kills the whole thing

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu with "Dodonpa"... or should it be Din Daa Daa?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6xG_zFoE8g

Air ni ni by Hakushi Hasegawa is a pretty wild album - hyperactive synth-heavy jazz-pop/breakcore fusion

here's a spotify link since the only track from it on youtube is the first which is a little unrepresentative of just how wild it gets
https://open.spotify.com/album/1ikOY8ht1sAQAGuK5dTl4k

― ufo, Saturday, November 23, 2019 5:46 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

holy shit you weren't kidding, first track makes it seem like some Plus-Tech Squeeze Box thing then it immediately ramps up to like 300 BPM

reminds me a bit of Sayohimebou. this is better though

Wednesday Campanella's new vocalist making a splash

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

sounds like a solid replacement at least

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBwT2Sgb1yY

oh i like the other new single "alice" more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejAMVcO_kF8

quite enjoying this recent demagumi single which is like, prog-pop-punk/metal

the new kyary album is good actually, utterly bonkers in places (like "Dodonpa" posted upthread)

title track "Candy Racer"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umec0eIhKp8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I6di1S0Mqw

batten girls - "watashi koi hajimetatteyo!"

love this

really like this one!

think I account for half the views on this lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKBWXhKUX8I

LOVE that!

Oh yes, this is good! Liking their 'Blue Baton' as well.

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