Issue #6: !magination
Highlighting the new Lucki Kilimanjaro album, three new pop singles and a modern nursery rhyme
Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter about Japanese music, new and old! You can check out previous issues here.
On his Instagram, Nariaki Obukuro posted a picture of an interview with Aiko from a recent issue of Ongaku No Hito. He shared it because Aiko mentioned him by name, but it’s also a good anecdote about why J-pop artists might decide to finally put their music up on streaming services:
“I thought creating more opportunities for people to hear my music would be better than worrying about people not buying my CDs. I didn’t really care about streaming. I thought it wouldn’t matter if I did it or not. But one day, I was searching up my name, and someone wrote about how Obukuro-san [Nariyaki Obukuro] said on the radio, ‘a friend of mine who liked blues music asked me to play some Japanese music. I thought about playing Aiko’s music, but there’s not one song on Apple Music. It’s not that I was sad, but I felt like I missed a chance.’”
Japan’s music industry has been notorious for its aversion to the internet. And like what Aiko said, the lack of accessibility is a big hurdle when it comes to promoting the music to an international audience. For instance, it’s a struggle for me to cover older Japanese music for this very newsletter. Only one out of the six entries of our Oricon exploration had a Spotify link, and I’ve had to rely on fan uploads on YouTube to listen to the songs so I can write about them. I assume it’s a similar fate for fan blogs dedicated to posting older Japanese music with YouTube as their main, if not sole platform to access a song, if it’s available at all.
And when I mean “older,” it can be a release as recent as five years ago. Aiko’s discography, which just hit streaming services the past month, is a fairly recent body of work with her first single released in 1998. Her music videos weren’t officially available on YouTube either until her music hit places like Spotify.
Now that Aiko’s music is streaming, I’ve already seen a couple people creating intro guides for others to get into her catalog. I can use a guide myself after enjoying her famous singles like “Hanabi” and “Andromeda.” I know it would’ve been more handy had Chara and Yuki’s catalogs were both available when I explored their newest album for the previous issue of my newsletter. The move to streaming is admittedly complicated. There’s definitely a loss in profit especially for labels in Japan, where CDs still move relatively well. But talking strictly access, a lot more artists, even the commercially successful, can use a boost.
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This issue is filled with pop. Big names make it into our singles round-up. Our Album of the Week is a bouncy pop delight. Our Oricon revisit covers one of the biggest sellers of all time, and it’s also a children’s song. Here’s this month’s playlist with a lot more music that didn’t make the cut for the past two issues. Enjoy!
Album of the Week
!magination by Lucky Kilimanjaro [Dreamusic]
Release date: March 4, 2020
Recommended track: “Torokeru” | Listen on Spotify
It comes almost too easy for Lucky Kilimanjaro to use their vibrant electro-pop to evoke upbeat feelings of daydreams and first love. The six-piece spent the past year figuring out what other kinds of stories they can tell, but even if they sang about bluer moods, the lyrics still worked in contrast to a bubbly backdrop as if in disguise. Joy turns out to be an emotion they just excel better than any other, and their second album, !magination, proves the band sound best when they indulge on their true strengths.
As if the exclamation in the title didn’t make it clear, !magination operates in a singular exuberant mood. The band’s house-inspired pop remains bouncy at all times with its four-on-the-floor pulse constantly emphasized, like a sonic metaphor for frontman Yukimaru Kumaki’s rising heartbeat. His world view brightens from the candy glow of the glossy synths. While the music sometimes sounds frazzled, as it does on the frantic “Drawing!,” it’s mostly soft to the touch even when the band decides to turn up the speed like they do in “Run.”
!magination sounds best when the six-piece leans into that tenderness. “Torokeru,” or “Dissolving,” is everything as advertised. Lucky Kilimanjaro slow down the tempo and dim the lights with the shy, fuzzy glow of the main synth line providing the song’s sole illumination. Kumaki sings as if he’s still half-asleep, and he surrenders to the music in the chorus: “Faced by your powerful, powerful magic, I don’t stand a chance,” he sighs as his voice threatens to slip into the dreamy, bottomless music.
Kumaki’s mind stays active as he flips any ordinary thing as a subject of a thrilling song. “350ml Galaxy” alludes to a can of alcohol after a hard day at work; “Drawing!” is about, well, drawing but also the world-expanding power of creativity. These topics all get a jolt of life through the band’s electro-pop music that either doubles down on his enthusiasm or stretches the fantasy aspects of the narrative.
Letting his mind wander also helps Kumaki cope with the stress from a scary world. “I don’t want to get bored, so I’m going to dive into the darkness,” the frontman sings in the chorus of “Tokei No Hari Wo Kowashite” while dancing with his eyes closed. Disappointment is what he hopes to escape from in “Glider” by imagining himself flying in the sky. Lucky Kilimanjaro’s !magination shines with a lovable wholesomeness from its party-ready music to its subject matter, but their imagination is also a necessity for the band to keep moving forward.
Singles Club
“Tokei No Hari ~ Aishitemo Anataga Tookunaruno ~” by Kaela Kimura [Jvckenwood]
Kaela Kimura’s Zig Zag mini album follows her brief nostalgia trip in Ichigo, last year’s full-length that doubled as a celebration of her 15-year anniversary in J-pop. While she gets straight back into the pop music of today, putting her own twist on hip-hop with the help of rapper BIM, the record’s highlight comes from an alt-rock detour more reminiscent of her mid-’00s output. “Even if I love you, you grow more distant/ Even if I call out your name, it doesn’t get to you,” she sings in the chorus, and the blown-out guitar riff equally sounds like a big, fat sigh, bummed out from this significant other who remains out of reach.
Zig Zag is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
“Tell Me Tell Me” by M-Flo loves Sik-K, Eill and Taichi Mukai [Avex Trax]
M-Flo recruit Sik-K, Eill and Taichi Mukai for the first round of the “M-Flo loves…” reboot. South Korean rapper Sik-K may be the most unexpected name—though the trio did also call up J Balvin for their album last year—but Eill and Taichi Mukai are both no-brainer choices to represent today’s Japanese R&B scene.
The “M-Flo loves…” collaborations originally functioned as a way for Verbal and Taku Takahashi to partner with outside singers after Lisa left the group. But after more than a decade since its hiatus, the “loves…” project has also become a neat snapshot of Japanese R&B during the late ‘00s with names like Crystal Kay and Kumi Koda featured on the credits of 2007’s Cosmicolor.
“Tell Me Tell Me” follow this spirit of curation behind the project by not only showing M-flo’s familiarity with the scene but also confirming Eill and Taichi Mukai’s place as lead names in the scene. The fizzy, future-bass-inspired music doesn’t sound too far from the production in Eill’s latest album, Spotlight. The two also represent the style of today with their nimble hip-hop cadence, switching from a tight, percussive delivery to a wide dive into melody. Eill in particular captures the ‘10s vocals with trills inspired by late ‘90s R&B from Mariah Carey or, who knows, M-Flo’s own Lisa—closing the circle of pop influence.
“WWW” by Moe Shop ft. Edoga-Sullivan [self-released]
Moe Shop’s new one immediately bursts with color as the producer throws together spliced rave-piano riffs and hiccups of slap-bass into a drunken pop-house scramble. As if that wasn’t enough on the canvas, an electric guitar screeches a solo while turntable scratches occasionally make their way in. For Moe Sasaki of pop-rock duo Edoga-Sullivan, the busy sounds provide distraction more than it does bedazzlement as she searches for real love in the Smartphone age. “Even if I can find a smart kind of romance, I still want a feeling that’s actually original,” she sings as she scrolls through a sea of messages during her sleepless nights.
Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
This Week in 1999…
“Dango Sankyodai” by Kentaro Hayami and Ayumi Shigemori [Pony Canyon]
Release date: March 3, 1999
No. 1 during the weeks of March 15 - 29, 1999 | Listen on YouTube
Question: who recorded the best-selling J-pop single of the 1990s by the end of the decade? Namie Amuro? Mr. Children? Utada Hikaru? Though all of these names rank among the top, none of them matched the massive popularity behind “Dango Sankyodai” (The Three Dango Brothers), a children’s single that sold almost three million units during the year of its release.
The nursery rhyme was premiered on NHK’s morning educational music program, Okaasan To Issho. The two hosts at the time, Kentaro Hayami and Ayumi Shigemori, sang a song set to a tango tune about the three dango brothers depicted on the album cover. After introducing the titular characters—“the middle brother, who thinks he’s always number-one”—the rest follows a series of jokes about their bond as well as innocent dango-themed humor.
The song became instantly popular among children, and the demand for playback from parents was high enough for Pony Canyon to press physical singles of “Dango Sankyodai.” The initial run of 800,000 copies immediately sold out. Countless parody versions soon started to surface. Plush dolls of the brothers were made. Many dango businesses changed their amount of dango balls to three instead of four per skewer. At the end of the 1999, it was the best-selling single of the year.
Observers of its time watched the charts to see if “Dango Sankyodai” would surpass the success of “Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun”—a clear precedent to the dango-themed nursery rhyme. Also first introduced via a children’s program, “Oyoge” is a novelty pop hit from 1975 about a traditional snack like “Dango,” and it then held the record as the best-selling Japanese single of all time. Though the 1999 single climbed high, it did not end up taking its place.
I’m a 90s kid, so I’ve known “Dango Sankyodai” all my life. The song’s melody is as unforgettable as the titular character. So it shocked me when I discovered not that long ago that the song was a relatively recent release. Nursery rhymes in general feel like folk art handed down from past generations, and “Dango” retains that kind of feel precisely through its tango arrangements. Its grandfathered presence also makes it difficult to imagine the song becoming a new pop phenomenon. It’s like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” being crowned a platinum hit—the idea feels anachronistic.
Next issue is April 1. You can check out previous issues here.
This is my favorite issue of your newsletter yet! I love how exhaustive and diverse you make each of these, and I agree that the Lucky Kilimanjaro album shows their strengths come out the clearest when they embrace the sweeter, warmer side of their band identity. A great read as usual!