Issue #4: Monday at Nine
Looking at Tokyo pop nostalgia, the new Envy album, and four new rap singles
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Perhaps it’s telling that my feelings on Urbangarde’s new album, Tokyopop, isn’t exactly enthusiastic when one of my favorite tracks is essentially an interlude. “FM-ppoi No Suki,” or “I Like It FM-ish,” recreates the group in a radio interview as alluded in the title. Their conversation is too low in the mix to really make out the dialogue while the house instrumental plays, but it still establishes a firm sense of time and place fitting for an album so focused on the when and the where.
With Tokyopop, Urbangarde offers a new entry to the growing canon of J-pop that suggests the sound of Reiwa. Artists have already threw in their ideas for the era’s sound during the latter half of the 2010s with a rising pop aesthetic that collapses time into something non-linear. Sakanaction comes to mind as a prominent example with Ichiro Yamaguchi writing the pop hits of now by keeping one eye in the past and another in the future. Tokyopop also resists easy placement upon the pop timeline with its synth-pop sounding very current yet also winking to a bygone era.
While Tokyopop provides a good example of J-pop as it stands today, it gives a stronger argument for the current state of the titular subgenre, perhaps better known as city pop. The subtitles referencing different wards such as Shinjuku and Harajuku remind that city pop remains Tokyo-centric in narrative after all these years. The freshest, shiniest music still come from the country’s capital, as the remixes by Seiho and Yunomi seems to suggest, but more than ever, it also faithfully recreates how it used to be when city pop as well as its favorite city was initially booming.
“FM-ppoi No Suki” hints at an atmosphere of Tokyo that has gone unchanged despite all of the urban sprawl. The dialogue makes the interlude unmistakably a slice of life from the current day—“the time is 0 o’clock in Reiwa,” the imaginary radio host begins the mock interview with the band—but the radio format otherwise makes it feel timeless as if it could be a dispatch from the city from any modern era. There’s something so city-centric about the radio because it implies a busy lifestyle where one has to tune into the news on the go. The track also reminds how radio is still a dominant form of communication within a culture and era so attached to the internet, and it’s still central enough for artists like Urbangarde to be inspired to recreate it for another medium.
Tokyopop is ambitious in how it approaches form and concept, but I find the songs rather tedious as songs. The production might be impressive with its glossy sheen and sound design, but the members’ voices don’t work as well as I’d like. Sometimes the ‘80s pastiche becomes too obvious to ignore, and others like “Skirt Kakumei” turn the rich production into songs that feels a bit too much like novelty. There’s a grand concept album in here, though I’m not sure if Urbangarde is the exact band needed for the job.
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For this newsletter, I also look back at another piece of Tokyo nostalgia as I discuss this issue’s choice of Oricon number-one of the past. We also have a bit of a rap theme going on for our new recommended singles with four picks this time that touch on rapping. And don’t forget to check out our Album of the Week!
Here is this month’s Spotify playlist. I’ll continue to add new finds for the next week or so. It’s currently not yet sequenced, but I’ll get that organized by the time when I post February’s Monthly Listening round-up.
Album of the Week
The Fallen Crimson by Envy [Temporary Residence]
Release date: Feb. 7, 2020
Recommended track: “A Faint New World” | Listen on Spotify/Bandcamp
The lyrics in “Statement of Freedom” about being led astray echoes like a direct product of Envy’s own experiences since 2015’s Athiest’s Cornea. “I lost my way,” screams vocalist Tetsuya Fukagawa, who briefly left the group in 2016. The post-hardcore band nearly faced its end after sticking together for more than two decades due to conflict within the members—“temporarily, we chose different roads,” guitarist Nobukata Kawai told Bandcamp—but they reemerged with a new album, The Fallen Crimson, with their relationship “stronger… than ever.”
Envy’s music remains resilient as the band. Their long-standing mix of raw hardcore, melancholic shoegaze and glacial post-rock remains intact without any sign of change within the musicians who give it life. More than a few tracks prefer to let in some light, leading into more uplifting passages. “Rhythm” invites an outside voice to record an angelic hymn, and “Hikari” is literal as they get with Fukagawa reciting lyrics about a moment of clarity and a world filled with more color.
As much as their recent life events elevate the album, the emotional drama of the music isn’t dependent on it. Envy have recorded similar songs about loss and reconstruction throughout their long career without a specific experience guiding them. The lack of novelty despite the unique background context speaks more truth to their songs about conflict as a natural and kind of mundane part of a grand cycle: “When you play in a band for 25 years, there are moments of conflict and disagreement,” Kawai told Bandcamp. The Fallen Crimson stands as an awe-inspiring response to a crisis by acknowledging they are inevitable in the course of life. Devastating as it seemed, it turns out Envy have been prepared to respond all this time.
Singles Club
“Ending” by Rowbai [Low High Who?]
The blown-out organ riff of “Ending”—a bruised yet shiny sound that reminds me of Bjork’s “History of Touches”—and a vicious bass line shift the mood of Rowbai’s low-key beat music from pensive to disturbed. While quiet sighs made up her spare vocal takes in last year’s Charcoal, she takes on rapping for her new track, ad libs and all. She repeats a few lyrics without offering much context, though with a line like “depression takes away physical strength,” the point should be pretty clear.
Listen on Spotify.
“No. 13 Ghost” by (sic)boy & KM [add.some.labels]
Rapper (sic)boy and producer KM together create the kind of “emo rap” popularized by the likes of Lil Peep, and “No. 13 Ghost” leans the most in the emo category out of their collaborative (sic)’s sense EP. KM loops a maudlin guitar riff over crunchy trap drums while (sic)boy howls the chorus that falls upon deaf ears. While the latter initially seems to keep his cool as he begins rapping about his one-sided love, he’s quickly overtaken by his emotions with his verse treading the line between singing and rapping. He might as well go full-on screamo, but his want to rap holds him back just enough for him to not cross the line.
(sic)’s sense EP is out now. Listen on Spotify.
“Anfang Town" by Week Dudus & Merry Delo [self-released]
While every other Japanese rapper seems to adopt quirks from Travis Scott, Young Thug or Playboi Carti, this collaboration between Week Dudus and Merry Delo suggests the two are tuned into a more current trap-rap playlist to get inspired. The lone piano riff that tiptoes across the bare-bones production recalls the Southern beats that sprung up all last year in the wake of NLE Choppa’s “Shotta Flow.” Merry Delo takes advantage of the spacious beat as a springboard to launch screamed bars, triple-time flows, and high-pitched ad libs. Week Dudus goes the complete opposite, slowing down his flow to the point his gravelly voice deepens into an abstract croak.
Listen on Spotify.
“Hiji No Biribiri” by Xiangyu [Kujaku Club]
The video isn’t recommended if you’re sensitive to strobing images.
If you thought Hidefumi Kenmochi can get a 100 times weirder than what’s featured on his solo album, Footwork, the ridiculousness behind “Hiji No Biribiri” should redeem expectations. Footwork once again provides inspiration, though the producer delivers a track that’s more Foodman than DJ Rashad with a parade of odd percussion and goofy synth noises. Xiangyu, meanwhile, has a blast rapping on the busy beat while chanting the fun, nonsensical hook.
Listen on Spotify.
This Week in 1991…
“Love Story Wa Totsuzenni” by Kazumasa Oda [Little Tokyo/Funhouse, 1991]
No. 1 during the weeks of Feb. 18 - April 1, 1991 | Listen on Spotify
“That day/ That time/ That place/ If I didn’t meet you then,” Kazumasa Oda sings in the chorus of “Love Story Wa Totsuzenni,” or “A Sudden Love Story.” The singer/songwriter wonders about the peculiarity of fate and how easily he and his lover could’ve forever remained strangers. He sings about his life-changing experience to glossy pop-funk that sounds like a sweet hangover carried over from ‘80s city pop.
“Love Story” was commissioned as the theme song for Fuji TV drama series Tokyo Love Story. The show became a massive hit, cementing a reputation for the station’s Monday, 9 p.m. block as the place for premiere drama. (Some later hit shows from the block: Long Vacation, Hero, Code Blue.) Oda’s wistful pop single has now become inseparable from the drama as well as its depiction of Tokyo during the Bubble era—a period already on its way to burst by the time of the single’s release.
The chorus of “Love Story” could also easily be singing about how this single almost didn’t get made. Oda initially turned in the track that’s now known as “Far East Club Band Song” for the drama show. Though it touches on a similar sound and premise, it’s a less immediate pop song filled with wordier verses. The producer of Tokyo Love Story asked for a rewrite, which brought “Love Story with tighter writing and a more streamlined build-up to the iconic chorus.
While the success of Tokyo Love Story perhaps would’ve catapulted any song attached to its opening title high up the charts, it also had to fit as perfectly with the series as “Love Story” for a single to leave the same amount of cultural impact. The song served a specific purpose in the episodes to emphasize important scenes—a cue that has been adopted more and more by other shows. The record’s success also pointed to the potential of drama shows as a platform to generate pop hits, priming tie-up singles as the standard practice of J-pop. So many factors were aligned at the right place and right time, just like the fateful encounter at the center of the song.
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