Issue #79: On the Edge
Exploring the new kegøn album, MAX's breakthrough single, and the songs of the 2010 film Solanin
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Even before Solanin officially introduces its title track written by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, the film provides material that also reflects the world portrayed in the music of the great alt-rock band. Much of the story unfolds in a tiny apartment shared by main protagonist Meiko and her boyfriend Taneda. If you’ve already seen a few movies or dramas centered on early freeter twenty-somethings living in the Japanese suburbs, you’ve probably seen the kind of small LDK unit where Meiko returns to after quitting her dull desk job, and sometimes see Taneda playing the guitar after he, too, has come back from his unfulfilling part-time gig.
This image of lost young adults in a cramped apartment room resembles a scene seemingly out of an AKG song. “Far away / skyscrapers sting with hollowness / and the apartment goes numb from the reality,” sings frontman Masafumi Gotoh in “World’s Apart,” his band’s 2006 single that Solanin evoked in particular for me, especially as the film follows Taneda, who grows frustrated about the aimlessness of his life. He tries to ignite the spark for his band Rotti formed with his college club mates by recording a new song called “Solanin.” But not only does the demo flop, their band gets called up for a totally unrelated gig as a backing band for a gravure idol. Discouraged, Taneda further loses confidence while his relationship with Meiko starts to crumble.
Trailer for Solanin (2010)
“I can’t help placing myself in the shoes of the main characters in Solanin,” Gotoh said about Inio Asano’s manga of the same name that was adapted into the 2010 live-action movie. “I spent a similar time as them during college, and then thrown into society filled with this vague worry. We are from an era they called the ‘lost generation.’ And I thought that was portrayed as is, and I get really sentimental no matter how many times I read it.”
Some years prior to his band being tapped to write a song for the film, Gotoh took inspiration from Solanin, the original manga, to write “Mustang”—a remix of which appears during the film’s ending credits. A pang of melancholy immediately permeates the track through AKG’s signature downcast, emo-inspired riff as the frontman begins to narrate the gradual disenchantment of a once-optimistic, naive soul. “We will pollute the world,” he sings the refrain, first as an eager declaration of rebellion but later with embarrassment from his lack of material success.
If “Mustang” follows the events of Solanin, the book, in real time, according to Gotoh, “Solanin” is the product of the frontman embedding himself in the world of the film. While that’s certainly from the circumstance of “Solanin” being made to function as a plot device, you also figure Taneda would have written a song that sounded quite like AKG. Rock music during the mid-2000s1, the period in which Asano’s book began publication, sounded like the music coming from acts like Fujifabric, Straightener and, yes, AKG: a sort of style parallel to the rock music emerging in the U.S. and the U.K. after the garage-rock boom kicked off by The Strokes, if with more influence from emo and pop punk. When writing the songs for Lotti with his two college mates, he must have idolized this scene while reading up on the latest issue of Rockin’On Japan.
More than the sound, the lyric of “Solanin” play central for the characters in the film as they spend time examining them like a clue into the mind of Taneda. It’s hard to blame all of the characters reading back the lyrics as a sort of last message their best friend left behind after Taneda gets into a fatal traffic accident. During their early stages of grief, some of the verses must have felt like premonition. “Let’s say this lazy joy kept going on and on / a bad seed will sprout / and it’ll be the end for us,” he sings in the chorus after a set of equally bleak verses. The signs were seemingly there of him ready to give up. How did they not see it?
“Solanin” by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
In a sudden turn of events, Meiko decides to pick up Taneda’s guitar after his passing and continue with Lotti. The film’s climactic scene shows the band performing at a club and playing “Solanin” in full as a set closer. Right before they get on stage, they form a huddle where drummer Billy gives a word to Meiko: “We can go forever saying what we’re not satisfied about. But today, I’m having a lot of fun. Life, for me, just being able to live is good enough.”
The other two laughs off what he said as lame and sappy, a failed attempt at sounding cool and profound. But his spiel is what I agree with the most out of the two hours spent contemplating life in your twenties. I definitely feel for the characters’ desires to find some bigger meaning in their lives beyond their occupations, and letting one’s creative pursuits be the channel in which to find the answer for that. Sometimes that shifts into this urge to give a shot at maybe making it, whatever that can mean: realigning your art as your whole livelihood, turning it into a source of income, letting the success of your art subsequently be the measure for the success of your life.
But I’m on the other side of that idea now. I’m content on playing just for the sake of playing, or in my case, writing for the sake of writing. Maybe I’m just settling with my own lack of trying, but I at the very least no longer see my own disinterest in realizing my hobby into something bigger, like a job or career, as some loss of potential. I now know I can participate both in writing and a job completely unrelated to my actual interest and it’s totally OK if that’s what I want. It’s at least a food for thought that I can take in more clearly after a long time with my craft and as I begin my thirties.
I wish Taneda could have saw it this way, too, before it was too late as he squirms in his chair at his day job, wishing he was out playing music instead. The rest of Lotti meanwhile learns of the contentment in playing for playing’s sake after the fact. The band becomes partly a way to cope with a friend’s death, an excuse to play because there’s not much else they can do. “A promise with you / that I won’t ever forget / that’s the only thing I’m proud of,” Gotoh sings in the chorus of “Mustang.” Meiko and friends play music in memory of their late best friend. And sometimes, that’s all one really needs to do to keep on going.
Apologies again for this issue coming a day late… I am hoping to get things back on track after our brief break during April. So, yes, the next This Side of Japan won’t be out until May. It’s something I decided to book in the publication schedule so I can take a break, recharge and do prep work for future issues. Hope you understand.
For this issue, though, we have some hyperpop, math rock, Eurobeat and things in between. Happy listening!
Album of the Week
On the Edge by kegøn [self-released]
*Recommended track: “Arakawa” | Listen to it on Spotify
If kegøn appears to be stuck up, don’t say they didn’t warn you about their current volatile mood in their transparently titled new album, On the Edge. A strumming of a forlorn emo riff makes apparent of their gloom in the dreamy rap of “BandAid” before the cloudy ambient synth pad settles in. “I’m wet, walking on the moon and the dried sand,” they confess, teary-eyed, with a rapid-fire flow. “I really hate loud bitch and textbook lines / Gonna quit being idle, seeing clearer with these red eyes.” And throughout the half-hour record, they fire stray shots at people who could use less yapping and more hustling, but most of all, they telegraph their want to just be left alone.
“For now, pls don’t touch me,” kegøn sheepishly sing-raps in “Bighouse.” That such a bummer display of insecurity comes wrapped in a sugar fuzz of an electro-pop beat not unlike Yasutaka Nakata’s circa 2008 adds a new wrinkle to their music, especially following the more cagey raps of their previous spike EP. Despite the anxiety-ridden title, the production of On the Edge overall scrubs away the distortion obscuring the raps of spike in favor of the sleek and shine reflecting off the fluorescent video-game synths. And if their other 2022 release, youthquake, was an attempt to realize the “rock star” part of their rock star dreams through the record’s sound of bedroom-pop-filtered pop punk, On the Edge emphasizes more of the latter through its synth-pop flourishes but not without fully putting down the guitars.
kegøn surrounds themselves with like minds, who don’t cleanly fit in a framework of punk, EDM or rap. Their internet-fried blend of all three perhaps would’ve more easily been described as hyperpop at the start of this decade. On the Edge invites on some of their peers. But whereas Lil Soft Tennis has been drawing out more of his rock roots and lilbesh ramko is prone to deploy blown-out future-bass drops, kegøn is informed most by rap as shown best in their lyric writing. Juvenile thoughts on unrequited love and everyday annoyances unpack in the form of trap-rap double-time or Lil Uzi Vert-like croons. Their bars sometimes reveal a teenage pettiness in their show of bravado, flexing of designer brands or calling out the fakeness of their enemies. “Sometimes, I don’t know, everything is too loud / my head’s about to blow,” they rap in “Arakawa,” bothered by intrusive late-night thoughts but more so here by “posers” who needs to shut the fuck up.
The past full-length releases of kegøn found the artist compartmentalizing these two facets of their personality — the naive bedroom-pop rocker and the boastful SoundCloud rapper — as subjects of independent focuses. On the Edge lets both coexist on the same project, and the record arrives at its colorful moments when one side bleeds into the other. A collaboration with Lil Soft Tennis, “Friendship” updates the rock-star sound of Youthquake but also complicates the innocent personality as kegøn reacts to a soured friendship with bitterness. It also goes the other way around: “Arakawa” teases the cocky rapper at their more wide-eyed, sticking expressions of bewilderment from the new connections forged by their music alongside a detail of VVS clothes scattered all across the bedroom floor. Making room for chiptune confessions and rap-star ambitions, On the Edge presents a more whole, varied version of its central artist.
Singles Club
“You’ll Miss My Sine.wav” by Milky & cyber milk chan [self-released]
Milky in her new single has shaken off almost all the depressive haze that shrouded their trance-pop in last year’s so empty, so sad EP. As dreamy as it is a harsh, the production of “You’ll Miss My Sine.wav” is a turbulent spin cycle with screeching dial-up synths and Jersey-club bed squeaks swirling in a languid cloud of dream-pop. The drums meanwhile insistently bang out brash, blown-out stomps reminiscent of happy hardcore. From this rave-pop maelstrom emerges the sighing voice of Milky as well as cyber milk chan, her collaborator who else deals with this type of devilishly sweet trance-rave. They’re ready to indulge after a stint of hibernation, and if the title of Milky’s last EP summed up the gloom of her previous outing, perhaps the B-side to this new one describes the off-the-wall outbursts here: “I Want to Split My Head with a Weapon.”
You’ll Miss My Sine.wav is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Magic Sword” by 4s4ki; “mumin” by Tokyo Dennou ft. Native Rapper
“Idyllic” by RIM & KOKO [PHENOMENON]
One of the best J-pop albums of 2023, RIM’s December release, NEW ROMANCER2, stood out in part through the variety of styles on display by the virtual singer and her main producer Mao Sasagawa. From sticky funk to groovy math rock, glitch-y electro-pop to slick R&B, the record had it all, and yet RIM’s new single with fellow V.W.P. member KOKO shows off an arrangement done in a style untapped in her recent album. While led by a pensive emo riff, “Idyllic” eventually grows into a big rock number that boasts a cathartic belter of a chorus. “I’ll say it out loud as a joke / I hope something great happens to you!” RIM and KOKO shout after dealing with their somber, late-night thoughts. They immediately back track the earnestness of the latter lyric partially out of embarrassment, yet it’s already apparent to everyone involved they not-so-secretly wish to manifest it into existence.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Value” by Ado; “Parallel World” by DAZBEE
“beyond me” by Suichu Spica [self-released]
The pastoral breeze as well as the busy math-rock riffs of Suichi Spica place the indie-rock quartet among the direct lineage of an act like JYOCHO. Their new single meanwhile taps deeper into the essence of their predecessors than mere musical resemblance as they jam along to reach a kind of spiritual transcendence. As the sprawling instrumental soars, frontwoman Chiaki searches for meaning in a decade’s worth of wear and tear inflicted from life’s cyclical waves. Rather than the doom and gloom of staring into eternity, though, “beyond me” ultimately sparkles with the blind optimism that everything will make sense in the end.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Marude Dame Na Joshi Kousei Wa Bandman Ni Natta” by Chakra; “Hoshi Ga Furu Yoru Ni” by my sister circle
This Week in 1996…
This section is usually dedicated to the Oricon number ones throughout the chart’s history, but for this issue, I’ll write about a hit that did not make it to the very top.
“TORA TORA TORA” by MAX [Avex Trax, 1996]
Highest position at #19 during the week of March 18, 1996 | Listen to it on YouTube/Spotify
The future of MAX counted on the success of “TORA TORA TORA.” Originally planned for just a one-off single promoting night club Velfarre owned by their label Avex Trax, the idol group was lucky to be given a second shot with 1995’s “Kiss Me Kiss Me Baby.” But the resources poured into the follow-up didn’t bear fruit, the record stalling on the Oricon at number 60. So if this third release flopped, the adults in charge told the young idols they’d be sent back home to Okinawa.
“When we were the SUPER MONKEYS, we were popular stars wherever we went,” the group’s LINA said to BARKS in 2015 about her time during the quartet’s former iteration before its lead star, Namie Amuro, split off into her solo career. “When we formed MAX, I thought everyone would welcome us the same way, but every show was met with a lot of blank faces and cold stares. This is when I cultivated this kind of hunger, this attitude of ‘I‘ll show you that I can do a lot more than this!’”
The idols’ urge to show and prove comes through the combative fashion in which MAX wield the Eurobeat production for “TORA TORA TORA.” They work the love-as-war angle with hardly any subtlety, spinning the Japanese military code word for the Pearl Harbor attack into a hook to announce their preemptive strike. As the spiked synth beat rages on, the four make their intent loud and clear, especially in the chorus: “I’m going to muster up all my confidence / and throw all of me to you,” they sing, ready to risk it all to capture the target caught in their crosshairs.
As the idols constantly press on with urgency, the weight of their stakes add into an Eurobeat production already pounding with vigor. While the high-energy dance sound itself wasn’t foreign to the group’s oeuvre, the music for “TORA TORA TORA” signaled a different sense of purpose from before, doubling in speed and intensity. “Heart’s getting excited / stare into the mirror and get my confidence up / my smile is my only weapon,” the idols sing before the hot chorus, and the beat captures the pressure of them prepared to enter a battlefield. But MAX come out appearing even more fierce, unwavering as they tackle the demanding music with their war commands.
If MAX initially treated the disco as little more than the product they were launched to sell — the club events at Velfarre but perhaps also the Super Eurobeat compilations also put out by Avex, which features several of the Eurobeat originals the group reworked for their singles during this period — they were ready to deeply commit to its sounds and cultures by “TORA TORA TORA.” After the group tapped into the larger narrative of the club as a realm of blooming romance in “Kiss Me Kiss Me Baby,” they further expanded on the concept, imagining the dance floor as a frontier unfolding with plays and battle tactics all in the pursuit of love. “Locked on / let’s fight,” they profess in the chorus. From their new attitude to conceptual approach, the game had changed for MAX with “TORA TORA TORA” as a turning point.
You can listen to all of the songs covered so far in this section in this playlist here.
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I’d even contend the stereotypical music played by amateur bandmen, fictional but perhaps also real, pulling a crowd of a dozen people still sound more or less like this.