Issue #57: Guidance
Discussing the new Miyuna album, SMAP's "Lion Heart" and the tangents explored while researching for the new (((sssurrounddd))) album
Hi! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
The previous issue’s Album of the Week, After Hours showcases (((sssurrounddd))) taking on a delightful stylistic departure with the sleek, angular edges of the trio’s vibrant synth-funk dissolving into a vaporous afterimage. The extended remixes compiled in the LP’s counterpart, After Life, emphasize the deep-house influence brought by the members, who each are established house producers on their own. Their new sound also felt peculiarly nostalgic for me, and my attempts to exactly pinpoint why brought me to some unexpected avenues.
I was first introduced to (((sssurrounddd))) as a band part of city pop’s new wave in the 21st century, thanks to their 2012 self-titled LP being included in a list of city pop albums from 2001-2018 compiled by Record Collectors magazine. The glossy funk of (((sssurrounddd)))’s first album hinted at today’s synth-driven city pop as the group interprets the genre’s classics like Tatsuro Yamashita through a modern lens. But the record’s gleaming, bouncy synth-pop also sounded as much in conversation with the retro, sometimes faux-European disco worshipping new wave, funk, and house that populated MP3 blogs around the late 2000s to early 2010s.
The mental connection to the specific corner of internet pop came from revisiting Cut Copy’s 2004 track, “Saturdays.” I first turned to the Australian act’s music while researching for the review in an attempt to locate in other music the sun-kissed synths, the gummy bass lines and the overall twilight-hour mood that fill After Hours. I had a particular fondness for the above-listed textures and vibes as they felt familiar: (((sssurrounddd)))’s “Drive Me Crazy” to me carried a hint of bloghouse—a scene responsible for my early exposure to house music—and its branch of French-touch-inspired nu-disco. It seemed to me Cut Copy’s openly worn influence of ‘80s new wave and funk in the song drew solid comparisons to the early works of (((sssurrounddd))).
Out of all of the albums that I revisited from the blog era, Classixx’s 2013 debut LP, Hanging Gardens, saw the closest to the initial music of (((sssurrounddd))). While the rubbery synth-funk of “I’ll Get You” aligns to the more traditional pop in Japanese trio’s self-titled, the scenic route taken in “Holding On” resemble the tracks in After Hours where Jun Kamoda’s voice melted into the balmy beat like butter. This kind of brash, sticky electro-house maybe could’ve been in the cards for (((sssurrounddd))) had they not taken a break after 2015’s See You Blue. Based on the displayed sensibilities, it’d be easy to imagine this hypothetical house-driven album by the trio going well in the future funk scene, which takes as much from the opulent synth-pop that defines city pop as well as the cut-up sampling of French touch.
The hypnagogic atmosphere of After Hours, meanwhile, echoes bloghouse’s slightly younger sibling of chillwave. Record Collectors heard chillwave in the group’s 2012 self-titled LP too: “With many elements linking to the dream pop of the era like Washed Out, it’s an important album that provided the foundation for 2010s city pop,” goes the blurb for the album. But more accurarely, (((sssurrounddd)))’s debut album resembled closer to Ernest Greene’s descendants like Poolside whose loop-based music represented a life of leisure. The murkiness that characterizes After Hours draw upon the well of records born during the chillwave’s nascent days, like “Feel It All Around” or stuff from Person Pitch—an album made by one of the genre’s godfathers, Panda Bear.
If we’re to continue with microgenre speak, the trajectory of (((sssurrounddd)))’s discography resembles the reverse chronology of the vaporwave to future-funk pipeline with the trio shrouding their once-shiny funk in murky waters. Their new album was nostalgic partly by design: gauzy overlays in otherwise shiny dance-pop tend to evoke the feeling as though you’re searching through a cloudy memory. It’s funny how it got me to essentially reminisce about a reminiscence with the music bringing back rosier dreams of the ‘80s by millennials rather than the artifacts directly from the decade—the Cut Copys and Washed Outs rather than, say, Toto. Maybe it’s apt for me to have what the music recalls be at the tip of my tongue when the an album that constantly feels like it’s trying to remember exactly what it wants to say.
It seems odd to start a newsletter about Japanese music by referencing bunch of non-Japanese bands, but sometimes that’s how the mind works when listening to a song. Talking about all that probably dates me, too, bringing up archaic genres like “bloghouse” and “chillwave.”
I’m also revealing my age probably in this issue’s Oricon flashback—never did I really take in how much a particular Johnny’s group defines a certain generation. This issue’s Album of the Week, meanwhile, is very J-pop in sound. (J-pop is not a genre! Or says me in the previous issue.) You tell me if any of the songs in the Singles Club section reminds you of a non-Japanese band.
Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Guidance by Miyuna [A.S.A.B.]
*Recommended track: “Gyoshi” | Listen to it on Spotify
Distinct as Miyuna’s voice is as a singer, her early work teetered the line between either the cliche or nondescript. Her raspy alto displayed the strongest sense of personality over production that nakedly referenced her roots as a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar in hand. Yet the miserable ways in which she sang about her “over it” attitude towards the future made her mentioned influence from Shiina Ringo feel very on-the-nose. A switch to a sleeker R&B, meanwhile, complemented her stoic demeanor sometimes too well, sanding off her jagged edges in favor of steeliness.
After the 2020 record, reply, Miyuna premiered a new single after single that corrected the issues. The dance-pop-coded tracks like “Choudai” didn’t smooth out her voice but exaggerated them; guitar-flecked songs like “Gyoushi” encouraged the singer to use her voice in new ways. She established herself as a pop chameleon through this campaign, and she puts such a reputation on full display in her latest album, Guidance. Diversely spread as it is, the theme of desire stands consistent throughout the record with any chosen style always serving to best express her subject matter.
New, inspired productions bring out new dimensions to Miyuna as a personality. For one, the same singer couple years back was less willing to appear so foolishly in love as she does in “Choudai.” As if the overarching sweets metaphor didn’t already spike the elegant synth-funk with a sugar high, the warbling vocal effect draws out the love-drunk sensation. The vocal-warping of “Choudai” ironically teases a sense of humor that previously seemed obscured to prioritize a face of seriousness, and that humor plays central when she assumes the miserablist in “Maisou.” “Here comes the ghost ship to take me away / shall we bury ourselves in our graves together,” she sings in the chorus, and the song’s over-the-top theatricality winks at a self-awareness of her melodramatic responses.
She can’t help but indulge in her own suffering even in her more straightforward expressions. The pensive, searing alt-rock guitars in “Kizyutsu” light ablaze a chorus where Miyuna rubs salt on a fresh wound from a recent separation. While the stylishly oblique lyrics play coy about the details, her woeful voice relishes in the drama heightened by the maudlin music: “That dumb face / I loved it but now I might feel sick,” she moans in the chorus about her conflicting feelings. “Kamisama” gets even more direct with the chugging punk riffs carving out space for her to kick and scream about her impossible-to-suppress sadness. The song-as-prayer conceit is hyperbolic as it can get, and Miyuna recognizes it: “I took out the trash! I tended the plants everyday,” she shouts as reasons why she should be lifted from her burdening emotions, the banality forming into its own self-deprecating joke.
Self-indulgence expands as much as it inflates Miyuna’s music particularly in the case of “Gyoushi.” A smoky guitar riff cracks open one chatty verse stuffed with multiple different dialogues happening at once. Miyuna narrates and comments on her predicament simultaneously, interspersing lengthy one-liners between the synopsis unfolding just as breathlessly. The restlessness of the proceedings becomes part of the point as it lets in on her obsession which eventually grows into paranoia. Miyuna deals with the most complex structure found in her catalog yet to weave a thrilling form of storytelling.
A production like “Gyoushi” or “Kizyutsu” reconciles styles that seemed to previously be organized as separate poles of Miyuna’s music. Moody guitars adapt to a hip-hop- or dance-pop-inspired backbone, melding into a sound that blurs the line of navel-gazing rock and R&B. With such types of production filling the album, it seems slight when the exercised genres become more legible: as sharp as Miyuna commits to “KANKU,” its electro-house beat sounds too straightforward in comparison to others down the track list. But if a single genre seems too one-dimensional for Miyuna, it only speaks to how the singer has settled into a sound she can claim as her own, now more free than ever to indulge to her heart’s content.
Singles Club
“tender icecream” by Laura day romance [lforl, 2022]
Based on Laura day romance’s curation of songs for the Seasons EP, the first of their season-themed EP release project, summer for the band represents not so much sun-beaming adventure but the itch to be together with the one. Atop the mellow, jangling guitars of “tender icecream,” frontwoman Kazuki Inoue serves a sweet-toothed metaphor to explain the glaze over her eyes: “It didn’t make conversation or an impression / like melted ice cream / but rather bittersweet,” she sighs in the chorus about her failed attempts at an ice breaker. Despite her restlessly running through the what-ifs in her mind, Inoue sounds as if she’s stuck in a trance, feeling perhaps content to just be in the influence of infatuation.
Seasons EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “melancholy summer” by Milet No Makurako Band; “Futsuu No Rock” by peanut butters
“Kawaki” by Petit Brabancon [MAVERICK]
OK, let us review the musicians involved in the might-as-well-be supergroup Petit Brabancon: DIR EN GREY’s Kyo on vocals; L’arc~en~Ciel’s yukihiro on drums; and MUCC’s Miya on guitars and songwriting duty, who also invites Tokyo Shoegazer’s antz on guitars and THE NOVEMBER’s Hirofumi Takamatsu on bass to help realize the vision. How can I resist listening to an album produced by this spectacular line-up of heavy metal?
Petit Brabancon recently dropped a single in advance of their latest LP, Fetish, but I’m more struck by “Kawaki,” which dropped last December as the band’s debut single. The thick, muddy bass line emphasizes the nu-metal blood that runs through Fetish but also bands like DIR EN GREY and MUCC at least during their early eras. The dirty thrashing inspires Kyo to indulge in a series of raw, unhinged voices newly explored through this specific group. After a spew of demented hisses and guttural throat-clearings, though, emerges that sharp, impassioned shriek that can be made by none other than the famed vocalist fronting DIR EN GREY.
Fetish is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Inside Name Is God” by GANDR; “Disguised in ‘Righteousness’” by ROCCON
“Voyage” by STUTS ft. JJJ & BIM [Atik / SPACE SHOWER NETWORKS]
Listening to JJJ rap over a boom-bap beat is like watching an escape artist do his work. His loose rhyme schemes make for a series of slippery verses that sound as though he’s wiggling out of the quantized thump and snap—a kind of classic hip-hop beat that’s the bread and butter of producer STUTS. The stream-of-consciousness-like delivery especially works for a solemn track of meta self-reflection like “Voyage,” a single from STUTS’s upcoming new album, Orbits: “Concentrate, don’t forget the sound,” he interjects at one point as he marvels about the process of music creation seemingly in real time. The song’s chorus then appears in a similar manner as JJJ’s verses, fading in and out as an extension of his unreeling mind than anything resembling a pop refrain.
Orbits is out October 12. Listen to “Voyage” on Spotify.
See also: “New Cloud” by Neibiss; “Scrum” by Oll Korrect ft. NF Zessho, Mid-S, CK the Shake & DJ LICK
This Week in 2000…
”Lion Heart” by SMAP [Victor, 2000]
No. 1 during the week of Sept. 11 & 25, 2000
An image of the members in SMAP as an heartthrob kind of idols plays central for “Lion Heart” as the song takes on a loverman archetype. The tender acoustic-guitar riff and a wincing G-funk synth-whistle make obvious the stylistic aim with the production pulling on the same kind of heart-on-sleeve slow jam that lives on in late ‘90s R&B acts like, say, K-Ci and Jojo. While the five refrain from the vocal rhapsodizing of gospel, they sing of a devotion familiar to the genre through naked metaphors and endearingly corny turns of phrase: “If we ever have a child / I’m going to tell them you’re the second best thing to me,” Gorou Inagaki sings.
For people of a certain generation, this image of SMAP can seem quaint. Take my friend, a dear contributor to the newsletter, who once got lectured (to put it nicely) by Johnny’s fans on Twitter after tweeting about how they didn’t see the appeal of SMAP as idols based on the group’s appearance during the mid to late ‘90s. I can’t fault them, though, for struggling to see what it is that made the group so popular from the vantage point of now, especially coming at it as a part of a generation who instead grew up on Arashi, a Johnny’s group about a decade junior to SMAP.
Even for me, it can be easy to forget that the five in SMAP are talents who once sang and danced in a boy band. The appeal of SMAP wasn’t something to question because their presence was ubiquitous in the media landscape of Japan as I always knew it. Their identity as talents eclipsed their roots as idols, whose music performances netted them placements on TV; variety programs and drama shows seemed more of their domain than stages and arenas. Their reputation as stars seemed self-evident until it wasn’t as they grew more into an elder status in Johnny’s as well as the TV industry at large.
To be fair, performing the identity of protectors of love was rather new for SMAP themselves. The group had dedicated songs to the well-being of a second person before. While they usually took on rambunctious funk records with the music boasting their youthful energy, they also slowed it down closer to a ballad’s pace for a song or two. “Simply, I love you,” they sighed in the mellow funk of “Celery”; the five dimmed the lights to set the mood, gaze into the night sky and ponder about their place in life in their previous number-one, “Yozoranomukou.” But their gestures to care and tend to another weren’t as explicit as “Lion Heart”—the title already hits it pretty on the nose.
The pivot by the group couldn’t have come at a more right time in retrospect. The production of “Lion Heart” brought SMAP up to speed from their adoration of classic ‘70s funk to a modern R&B sound emerging more in the forefront of J-pop by the turn of the century. A year before the release of “Lion Heart,” Hikaru Utada debuted with “Automatic” while Avex Trax signed m-flo and J Soul Brothers, which later evolved to EXILE, to start its hip-hop-focused subsidary rhythm zone. The coming years would introduce the vocal duo CHEMISTRY, whose producer Kiyoshi Matsuo also had a big hand in moving Ken Hirai to a hip-hop-influenced direction heading into the new decade. The remnants of New Jack Swing transitioned into the futurism brought forth by the likes of Timbaland and Darkchild, and “Lion Heart” smoothly rode on the wave.
The savviness displayed in “Lion Heart” ended up being short-lived. SMAP put out another R&B track in a similar vein with “freebird.” But if their rising status as A-list talents didn’t widen the gap between them and the listeners, the grand, one-size-fits-all sentiments of their massive 2003 hit “Sekai Ni Hitotsu Dake No Hana” guaranteed they were too big an entity to embody the persona of an idol as assumed in a song like “Lion Heart”—the one who speaks to you and only you. Their outsized status now depersonalizes a key lyric such as “I was born in this world to protect you” as it may have resonated then: with them appealing to everybody, it speaks to no one in particular. Two decades removed and considering their current place in culture, the tender solace brought by SMAP in “Lion Heart” sounds and feels so small, rare even.
This Side of Japan has a Ko-Fi as a tip jar if you want to show appreciation. A subscription to This Side of Japan is free, and you don’t have to pay money to access any published content. I appreciate any form of support, but if you want to, you can buy a Coffee to show thanks.
Next issue of This Side of Japan is out September 28. You can check out previous issues of the newsletter here.
Need to contact? You can find me on Twitter or reach me at thissideofjapan@gmail.com