Friends Recommends #1: Bad Days and 20 Million Yen
A new column for This Side of Japan invites friends to recommend new Japanese releases to our readers
It was a simple idea that came to my mind one night while I was out drinking: why don’t I invite other people to recommend us their favorite new Japanese releases on This Side of Japan? Getting top 10 lists from other folks is my favorite thing to do at the end of an year, and it’s a good time whenever I get outside writers to write about their song of choice for the Flipped issues. Whoever I get on, they always bring on something that would have not been on the newsletters otherwise. So here’s the first edition of this idea—welcome to Friends Recommends.
We already got a great round of singles from my friends, some of whom you may recognize as past contributors. With it still being pretty early in the year—I asked them if they want to contribute on the second week of 2024—I opened it up to music from 2023 as well. Take it as a moment to also catch up on what you’ve missed.
I want to make this a recurring section going forward. I already have names I want to tap for the next one. And I’m open for my readers to contribute as well if they are interested. I have not figured out how to let my readers reach out exactly for this… Maybe you can like or comment on this post? We’ll figure something out.
Anyway, here are four recommendations from our dear friends of This Side of Japan.
Dorian recommends…
“Inner Child” by Maika Loubté [WATER, 2023]
Even at her most euphoric, and “Inner Child” is about as euphoric as she gets, there's an undercurrent of melancholy to Maika Loubté's music. Part of it, here, is the cavernous reverb in the production, which makes her voice feel remote in the most literal sense. Part of it is the decidedly bittersweet lyrics—this is very much a song about finding one’s way through the dark. But for my money, the biggest factor, and one of the greatest strengths of her work overall, is her juxtaposition of overtly electronic, dance-y production with achingly human vocal performance.
Loubté's production style is one I typically associate with a highly-polished, highly-technical, and ultimately somewhat anonymous vocal track. And certainly the vocals in “Inner Child” are meticulously multi-tracked, clipped and panned; there's nothing off-the-cuff about them. But any individual vocal line feels spontaneous and roughly hewn, like something you’d hear from a singer at a coffeehouse. It’s an unusual combination, and one she’s been employing to great effect for years. —Dorian
mani mani is out now. Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
Dorian has previously wrote about FictionJunction YUUKA for This Side of Japan (Flipped) issue #35.
Cal recommends…
“Yakudou” by GANG PARADE [Warner Music Japan]
When WACK began to shift away sonically from the SCRAMBLES studio sound, many fans were unsure of what this would mean for a lot of their favourite groups. Most of all for GANG PARADE, ever the chaotic mishmash yet with an underlying familiarity that’s a calm in that storm. “Yakudou” is the perfect example of this new era: shoving something new right at you, but with the same 13 faces there to remind you that this is still the same group. Sure, older fans might not have expected something like future bass from them, though honestly, what’s more GANG PARADE than Yui Ga Dockson inviting you to dance to a song that could realistically be described as “Murasaki Shikibu’s twerk anthem”? —Cal
Listen to it on Spotify.
Cal has previously wrote about Yukiko Okada for Idol Watch #9.
poteto recommends…
“EGO” by LiVS [self-released, 2023]
If you were given 20 million yen to start an idol group, how would you do it? Somewhere in Tokyo, a teenage girl was asked this very question, and the results have been impossible to look away from.
When news broke last year that WACK’s infamous producer Junnosuke Watanabe had given 20 million yen to a high-school girl who had passed his producer course, many idol fans were rightfully skeptical. Is this a joke? Another controversy for the sake of making headlines? But with this investment, recipient Suzuki created THE LAST CHANCE PROJECT, an idol-group audition where the participants vowed that if they failed, they would completely give up on their dreams of becoming an idol. Her reasoning behind this make-or-break style audition was simple: She wanted to see what possibilities arose from a group that truly believed “this is my last chance.”
During the four-day audition camp held last spring, the auditionees were introduced to a song with a strong city-pop feel called “EGO.” Suzuki had told the song’s composer, Kosei Nishiyama, about her feelings behind THE LAST CHANCE PROJECT, and his songwriting does an excellent job at reflecting it. Synths, electric piano, and the moving guitar and bass parts paint the ever-vivid picture of youth in motion. While the verses give us a sense of uncertainty, nebulous with only the outlines of the chord progression, the chorus answers these feelings with driving words of self affirmation: “I definitely want to change / I don’t want to give in / This feeling is EGO / Resonate EGO / Let’s keep on singing / Embrace me as I am.”
Some could say this level of egotism from an underground idol is arrogance, but to wholeheartedly take on a challenge where failure meant the end of your dreams is courageous. I think a little ego is warranted for coming out on top under these circumstances. This past January gave us another audition camp to find a seventh member. While they were able to find a new one, they had nearly lost one of their original members in the process. With their resolve renewed, will they achieve their goals? Will Suzuki’s miracle come to fruition? Personally, I believe LiVS is going to be one of the groups to really watch out for in the future. チェックYOLO。—poteto
NEW ERROR is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
You can find poteto on Twitter.
Michael recommends…
“Bad Days on Fire” by Mom [ClubDetox, 2023]
Across his sprawling sixth album, pop wunderkind Mom continues to resist the confines of genre. Two-thirds into opener “Gomen ne,” he switches from gracefully finger-plucked guitar and airy whistles to static haze; “Jikken” places his gawky rapping behind pounding drums and pterodactyl screams. Kanashi Dekigoto -The Overkill- is built on these fragments—of spliced together recording and volatile hooks, blown-out drums and vocals bathed in feedback—to form a genre-hopping collection of what the artist describes as “a record of sad days no one knows.”
“Bad Days on Fire” best represents the album’s need to move through. Mom clumsily attempts to describe empty feelings as he walks across the bass tremors, sighing “the days I failed to burn are replayed on loop.” Peppered with whoops and pressurized whistles, the quiet “on fire” tacked on to the end of his hum is an embrace of the reality and a combustion of the memory that comes with it. But nestled in the destruction is a tenderhearted optimist. Mom pauses for a second: “one day I’ll love someone.” “But for now, now, bad days,” he sings, staring down as he sways back and forth, illuminated by flashing red lights. And for the rest of the music video, he resists facing the camera. That’s how we get through: we look forward with optimism but rage through the bad days. —Michael
Kanashi Dekigoto -The Overkill- is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
Michael writes about Mandopop on his Substack The Mando Gap. He previously collaborated with me on Not So Foreign: A Conversation on Writing About Non-Western Music for This Side of Japan issue #27.
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