Issue #66: Angles
Discussing some of the artists behind the new Motto Music compilation, Spitz, and my recent trip to Akihabara
Hi! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
As some of you may know, I recently visited Japan to see family but also to do some sightseeing. (It’s why This Side of Japan saw a month-long break during March.) Here’s a journal entry of my time going to Akihabara during the trip.
Akihabara immediately welcomes fans of anime as one steps out of the train station’s Electric Town Gate exit, but it’s a rather peculiar place to be in for a person like me who’s drawn to the area instead by the music adjacent to anime. Though the popular franchises being advertised on building fronts weren't completely foreign to me, I had a cursory relationship at best with most of what I encountered that day. There would of course be things from a show like Bocchi the Rock, a hit currently so popular you can find its merchandise at a Fashion Center Shimamura in Saitama. But I recognized most on display thanks to their respective opening theme songs, if at that.
I chose to go to Akihabara almost on a whim. When thinking of a place in Tokyo to meet up with a friend, fellow Japanese music-writer extraordinaire Patrick St. Michel, it was the only other place of interest other than Shibuya or Harajuku, parts that he already showed me around the last time we hung out. Like I mentioned, I’m more of a casual anime-liker, but it seemed nice to take the sights of an area once connected to the idol scene. And hey, I could get some shopping done at the Hello! Project shop and the CD section at Animate while I was there.
From the eyes of an idol historian such as myself, Akihabara sits in Tokyo as more a historical site than a center experiencing any sort of idol-related boom. It’s easy to lump idol together nowadays with other parts of otaku culture like video games and anime, but idol was initially seen as a fully separate niche during the area’s heyday in the 2000s. Around that same time, the area boomed in maid cafes, where their in-house shows would influence idol culture to come. The cafes gave inspiration to similar business models like Sotokanda Icchome's Akihabara Backstage Pass cafe, or the launch of a group like, famously, Dempagumi.inc, originally comprised of workers at the Dear Stage bar.
As if to be reminded of those very roots, a billboard promoted the 18-year anniversary of At Home Cafe, one of the most famous of its kind. On the music front, At Home still pumps out records from its main group Maidin!, and it observed a particularly productive year last year with the mini album, unusual, collecting songs by all the subunits such as At Seventeen and Doll x Doll. The cafes overall displayed a bigger presence when I was there, either through advertisements or their maids actually handing out flyers for their establishment. The AKB theater and the Dear Stage bar in comparison were another floor in Don Quixote and a side-street establishment, respectively.
If you must know, no, I did not enter a maid cafe. I had enough anxiety trying to order food with my broken Japanese at a regular restaurant, so a maid cafe seemed way too overwhelming an idea.
It didn't take long for me to realize that Akihabara wasn't a great place to get my ideal music-shopping done, and taking a train to hit up a Disk Union in Ikebukuro or the Tower Records in Shibuya would've been a better move. Still, there was at least the music section of anime retailer Animate available to check out, and what stole my attention most from the shop was the spot dedicated to releases by BanG Dream!—the multimedia franchise centered on its conceptual bands formed by the voice actresses, who not only voice the characters but perform the music live as well.
BanG Dream! has been the one anime-adjacent franchise that I’ve been invested in these past few years, but I realized I hadn’t fully grasped the size of their commercial presence. Even before I met up with Patrick, I caught BanG Dream! ads in the train riding the Yamanote line, and one of the first massive images I took notice plastered on the buildings in Akihabara was for a 6th-anniversary update of the BanG Dream! Girls Band Party mobile game. I’ve watched multiple live clips of acts like Poppin’Party and Roselia commanding arenas, so I knew the size of the crowd that they drew. Though, it was something else to witness the actual size of the commercial real estate they took up.
Entire sections in the music floor of Animate were dedicated to similar 2D and 2.5D franchises. Umamusume had their own booth. Idolmaster and Love Live occupied a full aisle, and the other side of it featured all of the male idol groups like the ones from Uta No Prince-sama. The Vtuber section caught me by surprise with Nijisanji and Hololive staking out their own parts of an aisle. The walls shelved the voice actors’ releases, but what drew the eyes were how specific franchises alone called for such amount of space.
Even though I didn’t know much about these popular franchises, just seeing them dominate a physical space felt so exciting to me. It’s amazing to witness things that I interact with solely online flourish IRL, and I wished I knew more about a lot of the other franchises, music related or not, from seeing how much footprint they left. But it was thrilling to just be so engulfed in pop culture, a side of which I don’t even consider myself to be as invested in. Sometimes it pays off in fun, rewarding ways to get swept away by what’s hugely popular.
From my time in Akihabara, I ended up buying Midnight Grand Orchestra’s Overture and Roselia’s Rozen Horizon single on CD as well as a limited edition issue of Aimi’s Aimi Sound album. I also got some key chains of Morning Musume members and an Angerme calendar from the Hello! Project shop—I’ll spare you words on my time there. It was overall a fun time! And thank you, Patrick, for hanging out with me! It was very nice to see you again!
This issue gets different in format again to cover our Album of the Week. Regular programming resumes for the singles as well as the Oricon flashback. Soundcloud pop, gritty hip hop, big-bang emo—the issue’s got it for you.
Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Angle. by Various artists [Motto Music]
Listen to it on Bandcamp/Spotify
Since launching its first release in 2021, Motto Music compilations have served as a fine look into the vast yet tight-knit universe of internet-based producers and singers working today. While the project isn’t bound to a specific concept, each release presents a constant of wholesome pop backed by busy electro-pop production. The consistency is partially inevitable as more than a few past contributors—names like KOTONOHOUSE, kamome sano, TEMPLIME to list a few—operate in relatively close orbit within each other, seeing another in different compilations or working together for their own projects. The appeal behind the project’s latest drop Angle., then, is how the contributing producers bring their own take to what’s subtly becoming a sort of house style.
Rather than review Angle. as a whole, I decided to highlight some of the individual producers invited for this 9-track compilation. Some are returning names to the project, and it’s easy to connect many with others who’ve contributed to Motto Music in the past through them sharing space in other compilations. While looking at the bigger picture through other collections and collaboration records can make this producer circle of the internet appear smaller than it seems, zooming on the fine details at the individual level reveal the differences that set each of the players apart.
Empty Old City
Angle. kicks open with a cosmic EDM cut by Empty Old City that serves surging beat drops built to reverberate through the space of an arena. The scale of the production towers over the rest of the compiled tracks as well as the rest of their recent output. What defines the producer’s touch in “Black Dilemma” from the rest of the crowd, however, is the intricate arrangement of its main beat. The fine details are more visible in their other tracks like the sleek, garage-esque funk of “Lake of Millennia” or the jazzy future-bass of “Enigma,” with snatches of vocal hiccups and sound clips woven into dazzling instrumentals. In “Black Dilemma,” Empty Old City dreams of higher highs without sacrificing their attention to detail.
gaburyu
While twinkling synths serve as a through-line for the productions found in Angle, the screeching noises in gaburyu’s contribution gives it an almost punk edge out of the rest. The blown-out bass deployed in the chorus of “magella magellan” might make it tempting to align the producer in the orbit of hyperpop, their Peeling Vol. 1 EP with past collaborator iboibo covers a lot more ground. The fuzzy, ringing beat drop of “Kabi” sees the music of other hyperpop peers like hirihiri. Though, much of the EP consists of giddy breakcore, plus a sleek, straight-up house track in “Total.” In just 13 minutes, gaburyu manages to showcase in the EP that they’re capable of more.
nyankobrq
After the limitless synth-pop highs brought by the first few tracks, the laid-back hip-hop of “I Can’t Be Honest” reels Angle back down to earth. The chillness of the track stands as a rather alternative personality for both nyankobrq and featured vocalist Yosumi: while hip-hop informs the former’s recent pop work, the production of their recent EP looks more to the sugary, neon-lit electro-pop that covers past Motto Music compilations. And if the latter sounds bashful from not being used to the DAOKO-esque whisper-rap that they try out here, it only draws out the necessary personality to properly bring the song to life: “Be honest and tell me you love me,” Yosumi sighs in the sheepish chorus like they immediately regret vocalizing their true feelings, capturing exactly the kind of shyness at the center of “I Can’t Be Honest.”
Nyarons
The very straightforward approach to genre in the production of Nyaron’s “Save It Here” distinguishes itself out of the pack in “Angle.” The neon-lit, “Take on Me”-esque synth-pop can be bunched in the family of today’s nu-disco re-imagining city pop for the post-future-funk age. Though, it represents only a sliver of the modes that Nyarons operates in for their solo work, which already has covered sweet power pop, bedroom hip-hop, and summer-dazed indie rock this year. Their 2021 album Re: What Is Monday remains expansive, too, as they unpack the everyday through an assortment of styles from Kyary-like synth-pop, indie Casio funk, and anison approximations to list a few.
Singles Club
“Reflections of You” by Japanese Football [Ungulates]
Japanese Football’s latest self-titled EP begins with a spiky, Super Mario-quoting power-popper and closes out with this solemn vow to put the past far behind. The band keep it brief and sparse with lyrics to allow good room to let the music flow, indulging in an extended guitar solo. “Let’s turn the page / or tear it out / let these memories be memories,” they sing as the emo rock reaches its climax. As the music comes to a close, all the weight seems off their shoulders.
Japanese Football is out now. Listen to it on Bandcamp/Spotify.
See also: “ZeroGravity” by Sedai; “Unfit” by What Goes Up
“Day After Day” by Pasocom Music Club ft. Mei Takahashi [HATIHATI PRO]
Mei Takahashi of pop duo LAUSBUB gently sighs in “Day After Day” over a dazed synth loop, the drum breaks skittering bashfully underneath: “there’s no romance like in the movies or a future I expected,” she begins the closing track to Pasocom Music Club’s new full-length Fine Line, jaded about her dull life as the deflated synths. If “Day After Day” all feels sized down in scale and energy compared to the off-the-wall indulgences from the rest of the album, it’s all done to slow down the pace and see the beauty in what often go unnoticed. “But I realized / it’s the small, boring things / that sometimes shine so bright / it can melt my heart,” Takahashi soon takes note before she recollects in her epiphany of a chorus about holding on to the most sentimental memories to get through another monotonous day.
Fine Line is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Matane” by Lucky Kilimanjaro; “Take That!” by Tomita Lab ft. TENDRE
“C’mon!!” by rirugiliyangugili [CNG Squad]
“C’mon!!” is admittedly the least representative of rirugiliyangugili’s usual antics. For a sample of the rapper’s hijinks, I recommend his new SHITTY EP (yes, I know) in collaboration with Lil Ash Zange, where the bass of the gnashing beats bleed into the red and hoarsely-screamed hooks serve as mosh-pit starters. He keeps his demonic growl of a vocal style, but “C’mon!!” instead channels a lot more of ‘90s boom-bap than anything post-XXXtentacion: I honestly found myself reaching for Onyx for comparison. It’s definitely a different brand of cool and recklessness to come from him, but it provides a refreshing alternative without completely cleaning out his style.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Kininal” by rirugiliyangugili & Lil Ash Zange; “FTP” by Won & LIFELESS
This Week in 1996…
“Cherry” by Spitz [Polydor, 1996]
No. 1 during the week of May 13, 1996 | Listen to it on YouTube/Spotify
Spitz may have been relatively new hit-makers in the eyes of the public in 1996, but the band’s frontman and chief songwriter Masamune Kusano already sang from the perspective of an old soul in their second number-one, “Cherry.” “I won’t forget you, going down this winding road,” the frontman begins the song as he softly strums his acoustic, like he’s about to leave behind his golden years and soon get ready for a whole new chapter: “Probably a future is waiting for me that’s busier than I can imagine,” he later concludes, the lyrics asking to be layered in context with his rising stardom.
Kusano’s insistence to sit back and reminisce seems well-earned after taking into account how “Cherry” was his band’s 13th single since their major-label debut in 1991. After years of grinding, Spitz finally got on the hit-making path in 1995’s “Robinson,” their first top-10 record. While it remains one of the band’s most well-known single, even Kusano himself once described the song as generic, stereotypical Spitz. If any of the band’s later singles catch criticism as yet another rewrite of the same song, it’s easy to think the supposed template in the mind of those critics being “Robinson”—a wistful, bluesy acoustic rock, sung by a vocalist with a slightly weathered rasp.
Spitz is aware of the matter of the supposed sameness of their hits. “The members themselves have also said, ‘everyone says we never change, but we actually put in what’s popular to our arrangements yet they don’t get noticed,’” Enon Kawatani wrote about Spitz, “an artist I admire,” for an Entame! column in 2019. Though “Cherry” is far from a radical step away from the classic-rock format sound of “Robinson,” its guitars sound much sunnier as it feel light as air, and the high-pitched synth whistle emphasizes a nostalgic, heart-fluttering sensation like the butterflies in Masamune’s chest.
“I bought a bike in the fall before we started our tour, and this melody came to my head while I was riding it around,” Kusano once said about the origins of “Cherry.” “It’s been a while since I rode a bike, so I started thinking my school days. It’s like the bike pulled out those memories of when I was younger.”
In the mood to remember a simpler time in the past, Kusano recalls a memory of a significant other throughout the song, the details beaming with a wholesome innocence as though they’re also about his first love. He delivers in the chorus an adorable line: “I got this feeling that I can be better just from the sound of ‘I love you.’” It’s easy to see Spitz as almost too-formal of a band from Kusano’s stately personality as a songwriter as well as his music that’s equally earnest and unwavering. Yet “Cherry” displays a rather unexpected show of humor, revealing a side of him that’s playful as he is sentimental: “I wrote about these spilling feelings with these dirty hands / I told you to throw away that letter as soon as you can,” he sings with slight embarrassment.
Kusane’s look back with rose-tinted glasses can distract from the reality behind all reminiscences, including the nostalgia of “Cherry,” that those days are ones “we can never go back to”: “I want to cross paths with you here again,” he signs off on the chorus, after he’s feeling the warmth from the sound of “I love you.” The relative sameness between “Cherry” and other Spitz hits makes it easy to assume it as a compliment to a song like “Sora Mo Toberuhazu”: “My heart is overflowing / from the miracle I felt meeting you,” he reminsices in the chorus of their previous number-one. The slight change in tense, though, lets on a subtle pang of loss from the otherwise tender-sounding song.
“Of course Spitz is changing, but they keep on releasing songs that don’t lose the band’s essence, and they keep us feeling comfortable with each new song,” Kawatani wrote in his 2019 column. “On the other side of that reliable comfort, there is a sadness that sticks out, and we start to feel it without even noticing.” And “Cherry” stands as a great example of what the Gesu No Kiwami Otome frontman mentions as the appeal behind Spitz: their songs feel cozy and relieving in its straightness until it slowly reveals itself to be anything but emotionally still.
You can listen to all of the songs covered so far in this section in this playlist here.
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