The J-Pop Thread

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.

But Spending All My Time still doesn't sound remotely like 'the sound' it's referencing, I mean, it's there in some form but the song otherwise more or less ignores it and the result is so different from that.

yeah, maybe my hatred of those synth stabs is causing me to overreact but this sounds like a nakata rihanna remix to me. smoother and less frenzied, and yeah, agreed that the result isn't a carbon copy. but there's enough in the final product to irritate me.

but like I said, I'm a grouch about these productions in general.

I like "Spending All My Time" way more than "Point." Too skittery and herky-jerky for me; the beat works against their vocal style.

Maybe that's the point.

(I don't like it either, but I never got the Perfume bug.)

not perfume or particularly perfume-esque, but here is the song most listened to by my group of friends in japan this time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyDCdpDQ5c

whoa i was not expecting that to become an american football song

Did the world need an instrumental hiphop mixtape made from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu samples? No, but it's fun nonetheless.
http://makebelievemelodies.com/?p=7606

Have I posted this link before? Blog of the author of a book I'm reading on the roots of Jpop:

http://bourdaghs.com/blog/category/j-pop/

Probably leans more to the artier side of the spectrum than a lot of the regulars here would prefer, however. I'm happy I discovered a new Zazen Boys song this way.

new Sakanaction single
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AozElbRnTM

I just watched that from the Bourdaghs blog. The video is kind of interesting as it goes on, but not enough to carry this type of song for me. I like the bass player's hair!

The Bourdaghs book I mentioned earlier is good by the way. Every time I read anything remotely historical it reminds me of how utterly ignorant I am of everything. It gets into fascinating issues of how Japan's national identity necessarily shifted after the war, and the sort of backing off from a pan-Asian cultural approach (not a term from the author and probably not how he would say it) in the wake of Japan's lost empire in Asia. What do I know of imperial Japan? Essentially nothing.

The Korean musical roots of enka. . .

Stuff like that.

was hedging on buying that. but yeah, sold.

Genuinely amazing scenes as Perfume takes on the 'Rock In Japan' fest

http://youtu.be/Gvgh7jn1Atw
http://youtu.be/tuuJvSaJseY

holy crap

New Kyary Pamyu Pamyu video; it's called "Fashion Monster."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GivkxpAVVC4

!

I'll say it again: WOW.

I've always enjoyed this band's catchy singles but couldn't really call them anything special - catchy straight j-rock by the book. This year, though.. 8 months after this song's release I can confidently say it's a Big Song. The instrumental hook is soo satisfyingly huge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ufh2CL-K4k

Also I'm seeing Perfume live in a month omg.

Also I'm seeing Perfume live in a month omg.

!!!

x-post

I kind of like that. The vocal sound, especially when they all sing together, is what stands out the most to me. Would you agree it's a little out of the ordinary, or no? I'm not familiar enough with j-rock/j-pop to say. I could almost see them go j-country or something.

(I wish I could learn to drink the perfume kool aid. You all seem to have so much fun with it.)

Yeah, the huge contrast between the two lead vocals make for fun dynamics on some of their tracks. Some people don't like the bassist's chipmunky voice but it stands out when used in harmony. She does a fun track on their new album http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtx34u_scandal-kill-the-virgin-queens-are-trumps-track-06_music

Here's the Perfume crowd pleasing at Rock in Japan re-uploaded http://vimeo.com/49485967

I'll see them at a much smaller venue, but I'm sure it'll be a party.