Issue #67: Fine Line
Exploring the new Pasocom Music Club album, Momoe Yamaguchi's "Playback Part 2" and drill bubbling up in Japan's hip-hop scene
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The New York rap scene in summer 2021 seemed flooded with artists hopping on the coast’s own drill beats that flipped some of the most gimmicky samples — “sample drill,” the emergent style later had been tagged. Producers laid a snippet from a record like Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know” over skittering drums and sputtering bass wobbles, some partly engaging in the irony that such a record had no business mingling with this kind of music.
While the style’s initial buzz has waned almost two years later in New York, Japan’s MEZZ picks up sample drill for a track in her newly released MEZZ BUNNY EP. The gothic organ riff from Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Heads Will Roll” gets thrown in the mix of Jersey-club-esque drum knocks and whizzing synths for “ROYAL MILK TEA.” It might seem gimmicky, if not off color for her to use drill as a backdrop to boast about sipping on boba tea while hanging out with her girls, especially as the track sticks out rather as a one-off in the accompanying EP. But it’s also an on-brand move from a singer who put out a song last year titled “Gyal Drill” adapting a street gyaru persona over drill-inspired R&B.
“ROYAL MILK TEA” by MEZZ ft. Nakamura Minami
MEZZ’s adoption of sample drill might be outdated in a global context, but it appears fairly novel within Japan’s rap scene. These last few years, Japan’s rap has slowly started to look at styles outside of trap for inspiration behind its production. Drill has become more prominent as a new influence with producers adopting its drum patterns and signature bass wobbles, and the style observed some visibility in particular last year through PUNPEE and JJJ’s “Step into the Arena”—a tie-in single for the Magic: The Gathering Arena PC game. The development feels too early to pin it as a proper movement with rappers still feeling out the style, figuring out how it fits with the rest of their ouevre, but as the scene is experiencing its early-adopter phase, it helps explain how sample drill might barely be emerging now.
With some time dilation at play with this arrival of sample drill via “ROYAL MILK TEA,” it might take even longer for New York drill’s recent turn to club rap to impact Japan’s rap on a big scale. But the guest rapper in “ROYAL MILK TEA” suggests that club rap can likely be on the horizon. Nakamura Minami has arguably already dabbled in the style albeit in the general sense: as a rapper, she’s more known for laying vocals down on tracks by dance producers like Anna Lunoe as well as Trekkie Trax heads andrew and Masayoshi Iimori. She sounds natural on the Jersey-club-esque drums in MEZZ’s song, bringing what’s already happening on the EDM side of things more into the rap sphere.
And who knows! Drill might spill more into the pop side of things in due time. MEZZ turns in her own drill twist to J-pop in her EP’s “NEO Girl Who Leapt Through Time.” This past month in particular saw great entries from LANA within the styles in discussion here, with the club-driven R&B track “L7 Blues” as well as the drill-inspired posse cut “Makuhari.” Ice Spice is hopping on Taylor Swift songs now—with the production style bubbling up in the country, it wouldn’t surprise me if hip hop and pop in Japan soon looks to her for some kind of inspiration.
Maybe one day I’ll put together a playlist of recent drill music not just from Japan but all across Asia. Thailand, for one, have been ahead of it, with a boom of rappers straightly adopting not just the beats but the gruff demeanor as it first sprouted from Chicago. And there’s been some interesting Mandopop that has adopted tropes of drill beats into its fold. It’s been a fun thing to watch for these past few years, to say the least.
There’s a bit more hip-hop below in the singles section. And more dance music, with our Album of the Week just enamored with it in particular. We also look at an idol classic for our Oricon flashback section.
Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Fine Line by Pasocom Music Club
*Recommended track: “Day After Day” ft. Mei Takahashi | Listen to it on Spotify
From the sound of their fourth album, Fine Line, Pasocom Music Club must have been eager to get out and simply live as the world slowly began to open up. The tranquil arrangements of synth-pop duo’s previous record, 2021’s See-Voice, matched the still pace of life during those years, though it also sounded nostalgic for the natural world while its guests yearned for connection. Fine Line doesn’t hold back its excitement to finally indulge in activity in the slightest. The sugar high kicks in immediately, like a puppy ready to lick your face for a warm welcome. And Pasocom Music Club refuse to settle down until the end as if to make up for lost time, cycling through a myriad of dance-pop styles in the process.
Pasocom Music Club’s overflowing sense of glee and curiosity extends to their collaborators. Whereas the duo’s past glories felt voyeuristic in their sensuality with vocalists admiring the magic from a distance, the new tracks place their guests in the throes of an all-consuming synth swirl. MICO in “It’s (Not) Ordinary” calls attention to the sheer surrealist wonder on display from the duo’s production, transformed from her past stint as a melancholy, city-pop vocalist into a quirky, whispery Shibuya-kei singer. Rap duo chelmico fare best in Pasocom Music Club’s new world as they bob and weave through the zany production of “Pump!” like a platformer videogame, dishing out their most dynamic performance in years.
No one in Fine Line of course expresses a deeper enthusiasm to dive into each and every pocket of their musical curiosity than Pasocom Music Club themselves. A little reminiscent to big-brother tofubeats’s 2018 album, RUN, more than a half of Fine Line is dedicated to a channel-surfing instrumental mix where the duo flip through multiple different dance genres. The TV bumper-like “Dog Fight” segues into the breakneck electro of “Omitnak”; the sweaty techno of “Sport Cut” transitions into the high-speed hip-house cut “Ufo-Mie.” Each can potentially dole out a mini album of its own: “Omitnak” alone gestures toward the duo’s two club-centric Depot EPs from earlier this year.
If this instrumental portion of Fine Line seems haphazard in its sequence with different styles bumping into each other, the slapdash feel draws out a sense of self-abandon that comes from a night of self-indulgence: Pasocom Music decide to seize the opportunity because why stress about choice when they can have it all? The section further taps into the infectious glee behind Fine Line, like a friend ready to share with you all the musical discoveries made during the years apart. But it also sets the stage for the inevitable melancholy that seeps out after a marathon of techno, when the sun finally comes up, the high starts to dissipate, and the end becomes near.
Temptation to indulge remain at an arm’s length in “Terminal”: “Music, music, music magic keeps on calling you,” a robotic voice hums the refrain in the album’s penultimate track. But Pasocom Music Club decide to simmer down and attempt to take stock of what’s important from the noise: “After we find what we were looking for / let’s say goodbye to our endless dreams,” they gently sing. They quietly lament the loss of the experience from the night before, but it’s the very stillness afforded from the hangover hours that lead to the most valuable epiphany found in Fine Line: “A secret reality, even a contact from the unknown / are farther from the truth,” sighs Mei Takahashi from LAUSBUB in “Day After Day.” “But I realized / those small, boring moments / can also shine / so bright that it melts my heart.”
“Day After Day” initially appears to sum up the humdrum felt from a comedown, where life appears more dull than how it looked from the night before, especially with its exhausted synths arriving after an extended partaking of dance-floor thrills. But it captures the ephemeral nature of life not as something to eulogize but instead cherish like a souvenir to hold onto as one navigates another mundane day, with remnants of those treasured moments reappearing when least expected. Fine Line satisfies from witnessing Pasocom Music Club lose themselves in the music, but what inspires more is the duo’s renewed perspective towards life that they take with them into the day after.
Singles Club
“All Night” by Ogasawara / “Call Me By Your Name” by White Label Lover [ARKUDA LABEL]
The new joint ARK011 EP between Ogasawara and White Label Lover sweetly captures the high of a night out and its subsequent comedown. The former’s “All Night” showcases the producer’s hand at crafting dreamy UK garage, the glazed, deep-house chords casting the suave track with a sense of wide-eyed wonder. The after-hours atmosphere of “Call Me By Your Name,” meanwhile, mellows out the EP as the latter producer builds a low-key techno that reminds me of some of the jazzy long-players I love from Detroit. That said, the track still got some dancing left in it, with an acid bass line that bashfully wiggles around, like it’s quietly getting down to its own bedroom disco.
ARK011 is out now. Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
See also: “Lost” by Fetus & Oyubi
“Pink Blue” by Ryokuoushoku Shakai [Sony]
What I hoped to hear in the new Ryokuoushoku Shakai album, pink blue, were more tracks in line with its title track. The band’s ornate pop-rock often exerted a theater-kid glee that comfortably fits next to Mrs. Green Apple in a J-pop Now! playlist. The spiky Sakanaction-esque new wave of “Pink Blue” meanwhile showcases an alternate and, frankly, more stylistically edgy display of their kitchen-sink sensibilities. “It’s not exactly blue / that’s an exaggeration,” frontwoman Haruko Nagaya tries to clarify in the chorus after failing to properly describe her melancholy, and the antsy rock helps express the frustration she lacks the exact words for. Ryokuoushoku Shakai shoot for transcendence via pop-rock maximalism as usual, but this one seems unafraid to get messy in the process.
pink blue is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Ibara” by Ado; “Hirune No Kuni” by chilldspot
“LOWKEY LIKE” by Sound’s Deli [SPACE SHOWER]
Sound’s Deli sounded refreshingly current rapping over the more synth-charged beats of Puckafall last year in their collaborative Puckadeli EP. Yet the rap crew feels right at home in “LOWKEY LIKE” and the jingling boom-bap produced by MET, the beat-maker behind “DAWG LIFE FREESTYLE,” the group’s strongest single so far. Like at their best, Sound’s Deli bring an inspired, modernized take at a throwback sound in “LOWKEY LIKE.” While hardened traditionalists might prioritize smoothness to the point their cadences turn rigid, the group isn’t afraid to get rowdy and mischievous as they maintain the hydraulic bounce behind their beat—they remain the party-crashers of rap in B-boy clothing.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “ATHENS” by Daichi Yamamoto; “Kokoro” by JJJ ft. OMSB
This Week in 1978…
This section is usually dedicated to the Oricon number ones throughout the chart’s history, but for this issue, I’ll write about a hit that did not make it to the very top.
“Playback Part 2” by Momoe Yamaguchi [CBS Sony, 1978]
Highest position at #2 during the week of May 29, 1978 | Listen to it on YouTube
“Don’t play dumb with me, it’s your fault.” As the story in the narrative of “Playback Part 2” goes, that piece of dialogue is what another driver shouts to Momoe Yamaguchi as he blames her for a supposed scratch on his Porsche. But it’s also the same line spoken by the teen idol during an argument she had with her lover from the night before. The deja vu pauses the heated blues-rock like it’s a transition in a film—“wait, those words, playback playback,” goes the hook—and Yamaguchi returns to put her no-good lover on trial.
“Playback Part 2” joins a series of Momoe Yamaguchi singles which feature the teen idol singing lyrics with sentiments that seem beyond her years to express. “Sleeping around as much as you feel like / and saying women will always wait / boy, what have you been learning,” the then-19-year-old snaps immediately after the flashback-triggering lyric in the chorus. For what she may lack in actual life experience, she sells the history through her vocal performance. While the smoky deep tone suggests the voice of a woman twice her age, her ferocity behind the comeback of a lyric gives the impression that the idol has been keeping foolish men in check many times over.
If the gap between age and content in the lyrics of the idol’s early singles seemed too deliberate in its male gaze—“I will give up the most important thing to a girl for you,” the then-15-year-old suggestively sang in “Hitonatsu No Keiken” (“On One Summer Day”)—the introduction of lyricist Yoko Aki brought on narratives that Yamaguchi herself felt inspired by. “I was able to take things seriously only when I sang Aki’s lyrics over [Ryudo Uzaki]’s melodies, or more like the songs felt alive and so close to me,” she said in the lyricist’s 1985 collection Playback Part III. “My relationship began around the same time I started singing her songs, but I think the words in Aki’s lyrics taught me so many different things about love.”
Yamaguchi and Aki had been already working together for a couple years when they put out “Playback Part 2,” so the drama in the single felt like another episode based around this new, adult persona of the idol. But while she dealt with another playboy ignorant of her emotions in their first collaboration, 1976’s “Yokusuka Story,” she had not lashed out on him with this much conviction. The type of experience that unfolds in the song certainly brings an edge in “Playback Part 2”: a year shy of growing out of her teens, she’s already navigating the mess of infidelity and idiots who paricipate in them. But it’s the steeliness that Yamaguchi exudes as she lives out the narrative that truly presents her as someone beyong her years. While her lash-out of “don’t play dumb with me” certainly stings, it’s the relentlessness behind the scolding of “boy, what have you been learning” for me that lasts in memory.
All that said, the character behind “Playback Part 2” seems consistent with the forlorn girl in “Yokusuka Story.” For all the strength Yamaguchi boasts on record, she folds her hand to admit the truth: “I feigned to be so tough / but really, I’m always sad,” she sighs before crawling back to him1: playback, playback, the refrain twists into a sorrowed hook. It’s not the desired ending, but Aki’s refusal to neatly wrap up the story only adds more reality to it all. For how contrary it seems to the persona, it’s Yamaguchi’s character flaw in “Playback Part 2” that allows her steeliness to feel real and human, a quality she truly possesses off record.
You can listen to all of the songs covered so far in this section in this playlist here.
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An intriguing trick comes in the second verse. While Yamaguchi is listening to the radio, a lyric from a song gives her another flashback to the same argument with that no-good guy. “Katte ni shiyagare (Do as you want),” goes the lyric, framed in the following chorus as the piece of dialogue that her lover said the night prior. It’s widely interpreted that the song in question is Kenji Sawada’s big 1977 hit “Katte Ni Shiyagare,” which finds its narrator lamenting about their lover ready to leave him for good and apologizing for being a careless lover: “If you feel like coming back, you’re welcome any time,” he sings at one point. So many layers of reference!