Issue #87: Liberation
Exploring the new JUBEE album, Elephant Kashimashi's breakthrough hit and the film Let's Go Karaoke!
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Once you’ve finished watching Let’s Go Karaoke!, see if you can listen to X Japan’s “Kurenai” without hearing Go Ayano scream “‘Kurenai’ daaaaa!!!” before the guitars erupt into its thrash-metal fury. As yakuza member Kyoji in the manga-turned-film, Ayano can’t help but announce the song’s launch as if he’s frontman Toshi himself. But for all the arena-show hype he gathers with that intro scream, he proceeds to let out the worst falsetto as the actual verses start.
A later scene reveals the yakuza member does the kurenai da!!! routine every single time he sings it on karaoke, loud and proud, no matter how many times he has already queued up the song in a row. After all, “Kurenai” is Kyoji's fight song, his anthem as he readies for war. What’s approaching is his mob’s annual karaoke contest, where the worst singer will earn a tattoo from the mob leader himself. (One of his poor mates got what was intended as Hello Kitty but instead resembles a toddler’s scribble of a kitten.) To avoid such a fate and get his skills up any bit that he can, he recruits Satomi, a junior-high student and leader of his school’s choral club, as his singing coach.
The “Kurenai” karaoke scene, from Let’s Go Karaoke! (2024)
I cracked up from hearing Kyoji's falsetto, but I had already been dying from laughter the moment the song title appeared on the screen. What does this fourty-something man who lives by some criminal version of a fraternity code swears by as his choice karaoke anthem? Of course, a pseudo-ballad by Japan’s most famous heavy-metal band from the late '80s, singing about the loss of a dear friend. The song selection was so cliche, it was practically a joke in itself.
Go karaoke with other people enough, and the songs start to reveal the personality behind the singers who queued them. Let’s Go Karaoke! gives a glimpse into this as it shares what other members in Kyoji’s mob has chosen as to sing at the upcoming contest. Some attempt classic records built to show off vocal prowess, like Yoko Takahashi’s “Cruel Angel’s Thesis” or King Gnu’s “Hakujitsu,” only to fail miserably. Others have picked from basically the Japanese dad-rock canon, like Kishidan’s “One Night Carnival” and Masahiro Kuwana’s “Tsuki No Akari,” their selections predictable as they are personal.
As a karaoke song, “Kurenai” fulfills both as vocal showcase as well as a taste signifier. There’s bound to be someone like Kyoji queuing up the X Japan classic like it’s their Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” only for their voice to shrill come the chorus. Only, they can embrace the sentimental without the schmaltz, backed instead by violent metal music that also evokes cool and danger.
But it seems a bit outdated for someone like Kyoji to find "Kurenai" cool from its sense of danger. Now, X Japan still look ferocious in their old live footage. Have you seen Toshi perform “X”? But I often liken the band’s reputation of danger to the music by a band like Guns ‘N’ Roses, whose records like “Welcome to the Jungle” I do believe seemed genuinely dangerous to their generation upon arrival, but due to the changing tides of time, it no longer translates as being vulgar. And so Kyoji putting on a X Japan song as a record to inspire punk chaos seems to gesture to a perspective that's stuck in a certain time.
X Japan performs “Kurenai,” from the Blue Blood tour, 1989
Let’s Go Karaoke could have left it there with a thesis made of “Kurenai” as this record flattened over time into a cliche. But the film proceeds to break down the song deeper to tap into its treasured emotional core. Satomi suggests to Kyoji to get a better grasp at what the song is exactly trying to say through its lyrics in an effort for him to sing it better, and he translates the English intro to Japanese for his yakuza friend, getting emotionally touched by the lyrics in the process. “I didn’t know it was that kind of song,” he says. “When an important person disappears and your heart turns to crimson...”
It’s funny that the lyrics of “Kurenai” did not get through to a listener like Satomi upon first listen. How could someone not hear Toshi out, especially with him screaming the lyrics at the top of his lungs? But in an ironic way, the message being washed out by the commotion illustrates justly the emotions that the frontman bears on record: “These feelings won’t ever get to you again,” Toshi desperately pleads, “I keep on shouting towards a love shut out from me.”
You can layer countless situations, personal and autobiographical, into such a refrain. Hearing the song after X Japan’s dissolution in 1997, it’s hard not to think in retrospect about the unfortunate falling-out between the band’s own Yoshiki and Toshi, or the deaths of its beloved members since. For Satomi, maybe the lyrics echoed his current situation with him slowly distancing himself from his choral club. As his peers grow frustrated at his increased absence during competition season, he can’t open up to them about his own insecurities toward singing, partly from his voice starting to change.
A pissed-off Satomi
Hanging out with Kyoji at the local karaoke box, then, provides Satomi an escape from his school life. Though, the two eventually drift apart with Satomi throwing all his teen angst to Kyoji. He reluctantly returns to his club, but on the morning of the big chorale competition, he sees Kyoji’s car, demolished, expecting the worst. Convinced his yakuza friend is dead, he runs instead to the karaoke box where the mob is holding their annual contest. There, Satomi sings “Kurenai” in the honor of his late friend, screaming kurenai da!!! after the intro as he would have too.
He has wholly understood the song and its grief and heartbreak, and this is when “Kurenai” comes full circle as a song, completing an arc from being dad-rock meme to a heartfelt elegy. There, Let’s Go Karaoke! finishes its secret job as an act of quality music criticism in the guise of a comedy film, tying up its argument to explain why “Kurenai” is the enduring record that it is. If one needs to grieve the death of a relationship through music and singing, here’s a record to provide them with one cathartic form of release. Be it the loss of a friend, a lover, X Japan itself, “Kurenai” fits to speak of the pain left by its void.
But perhaps Let’s Go Karaoke! buried the lede in an earlier part of its story. Kyoji refused to sing any other song despite Satomi suggesting easier ones more suited for his voice. He would say that it was a special song that reminded him of Kazuko, and from his wistful tone, anyone would be convinced, Satomi included, “Kurenai” might represent the memories of his late mother. “What, no! She’s alive and well at home,” Kyoji quips upon hearing his friend’s theory about his love for “Kurenai,” laughing about the ridiculousness of it. “When I say, ‘oh... it reminds me of Kazuko,’ people always feel sorry and think I’m carrying a wound that shouldn’t be touched. Remember that, and you can get through most things.” A song is what you make of it and how you want it to sound.
Welcome to another issue of This Side of Japan! We got 3 more issues until the big year-end special—time flies! Apart from a not-so-little film blog, we got something a little different for our Album of the Week, where we pick apart its associated scenes as well as the music inside. We also got a rock number for the Oricon section of the newsletter, a genre I feel I don’t write about as often for it. And yes, 3 singles.
Happy listening!
Beyond Liberation: A Gazetteer to JUBEE, The Rapper’s New Album and His Extended Circle of Collaborators
Liberation by JUBEE [Rave Racers / CreativeDrugStore]
Listen to it on Spotify
Since 2019’s Mass Infection EP, JUBEE has not been shy about which era of music remains the most personally influential to him. For his brand of rap, he has liberally incorporated parts from a particular corner of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, sometimes inspiring whole pastiches of U.K. garage-indebted hip-house or nu-metal-tinged rap-rock in between backpacker raps. But over the years, what initially seemed like genre exercises eventually spawned legit side projects made with established peers. Looking at it from a bigger perspective, time also seems to be catching up with JUBEE as the needle of cultural nostalgia moves ever closer to his fond time in music, with Y2K revival growing the cachet of his favored subgenres like drum ‘n’ bass, gabber, and nu-metal.
JUBEE’s latest album, Liberation, still sounds more as an alternative to Japan’s main hip-hop scene with one foot firmly in the rapper’s dance roots as much as rap. Yet the production choices are the most keyed in to today’s subculture cool, especially those very tracks aligned to his dance-music connections. If you’ve listened to his previous record, Explode, the stylistic growth here shouldn’t be out of pocket. Maybe just the rise in aggression when it comes to his preferred strain of dance, though going from drum ‘n’ bass to gabber and hardcore shouldn’t too far a jump either. He’s been dabbling in this corner of music from the jump. What’s change are the interests of his peers and the pop environment he’s been hanging in.
The biggest strength of Liberation lies in its sharp sense of curation. The album builds a home to fit speed-metal breakcore and punk-rap, 2-step slink and dancehall-flavored boom-bap, all under one roof. Wide spread as the styles are, the producers responsible for each also share a mutual connection with JUBEE stemming from one collaborative project or another. And so instead of a traditional review of this record, where I’d probably spend most of the body rattling off each styles JUBEE attempts, I decided it would be more worth it to dig deep into the connections between him and his chosen collaborators. This covers maybe half of the artists involved in the project—sorry in advance to AWSM, TSUBASE and Submerse. But these five already tells a lot of the particular way that Liberation sounds as well as JUBEE’s own interests that extends far beyond his own music.
Here are 5 featured collaborators for Liberation all representing a satellite scene in Japan’s hip hop, rock and dance:
CreativeDrugStore (Track #6, ft. in-d)
“Anagachi,” live at LIQUID ROOM [Wisteria, 2023]
From his earliest EPs, JUBEE mined from this aesthetic zone of J-pop subculture circa late ‘90s and early ‘00s, consisting of rap-rock and U.K. electronica, a couple years before Y2K revival came in full swing. But before getting into those adjacent points of interest, let’s first discuss his stylistic core of hip hop. Fittingly, the track from Liberation featuring his peer in the rap/producer collective CreativeDrugStore is one of the more traditionally hip-hop in sound. While the skanking reggae riff might still place the song in the lineage of mixture bands like, say, ORANGE RANGE, the boom-bap drum beat pulls it closer to the orbit of backpackers than any of the drum ‘n’ bass or big beat production we’ll hear soon from the album.
Within CreativeDrugStore, JUBEE scans as a jock hanging out among a club of geeks. The collective’s recent album, Wisteria, is driven a lot by the pop sensibility of the group’s BIM and VaVa, with JUBEE more as the rap traditionalist that calls back to his 2019 debut, TIME GOES BY, rooted fully in boom-bap. His creative presence is best felt in the rougher tracks, like “Anagachi,” where the rapper puts on his best dancehall toast as if to respond to the snapping drums and the needling G-funk-y bass line. Alongside the smooth, R&B-indebted MCs, he puts on some needed gruff and grit to the group’s sound.
TAKESHI UEDA (=AA) [Track #2, #10]
“PICK UP THE PIECES (Mass Infection Mix)” [Liberation, 2024]
Speaking of dancehall, one of my favorites from Liberation features JUBEE doing his thing over a breakbeat with this squawking loop, which makes for an early ‘90s combo that I always complement with the Hip Hop remix of Super Cat’s classic “Ghetto Red Hot.”1 The producer behind it is Takeshi Ueda under his =AA moniker, whose band THE MAD CAPSULE MARKETS inspires a lot of the rock side of JUBEE’s musical direction. And “PICK UP THE PIECES” from Liberation puts the =AA sound in full display. Just sit with the arena-rock guitars for a minute; soon it’ll launch into an Atari Teenage Riot-esque beat, full of clobbering gabber drums. And when the beat is fully unleashed, the rapper transforms into a hardcore-punk frontman, twisting a classic rap chant into a mosh-pit starter.
Age Factory / AFJB (Track #6)
“DENGEKI” ft. kZM [AFJB, 2022]
JUBEE was good at playing hardcore frontman in “PICK UP THE PIECES” partly because he had already fronted a punk band before. In 2022, he formed AFJB with previous collaborator Age Factory2—who also produced Liberation’s reggae-rap “Slowsurf” mentioned above—and the project provided a space for the rapper to really indulge in his rock-music impulses3. When they meet halfway, it results in rap-rock in the vein of summertime Warped Tour punk; they even throw some DJ scratches like they’re Dragon Ash in the late ‘90s. As Age Factory get pulled more into JUBEE’s orbit, the pop-punk outfit turn full-on nu-metal in a song like “DENGEKI,” the guitars dropping in tune to a sludgy riff while the band’s Eisuke Shimizu weaponizes his voice into a hardcore yowl. If you craved the rock ends of Liberation to be as tough and aggressive as the electro side rather than its dips into emo, there’s more not that far away.
Yohji Igarashi (Track #1)
“SWAG” ft. Mori of Dongurizu [Electrohigh EP, 2023]
More than the rapper’s taste for rock, Liberation showcases JUBEE’s affinity for dance music. Most of the production in the album carries some influence from house, like the 2-step glide of “Playground” or the drum ‘n’ bass wobble of “Impala.” After all, it’s the first impression set in the album’s titular intro through its raw d’n’b production courtesy of Yohji Igarashi, who returns to a JUBEE record after their collaborative EP, Electrohigh. There, the two hosted more a loose hip-house party than the hardcore rave happening in some corners of Liberation yet Igarashi still supplies speedy, off-the-cuff beats for JUBEE and his friends to rap to. The project also serves as a neat convening point for other acts playing in this intersection of house and hip-hop, like Mori from rap duo Dongurizu, who gets to dabble in a more brash bassline track in “SWAG.”
Rave Racers (Track #9)
“SP!N” w/ CYBERHACKSYSTEM [Liberation, 2024]
On top of his dance-adjacent music, JUBEE mans the collective Rave Racers, home to producers and DJs delivering raging, high-speed club tracks—all collected in their consistently great compilations4 from over the years since 2020. The rapper gives a spot to CYBERHACKSYSTEM, a mainstay from the crew, in Liberation. Rather than going for another of their usual electro-bass freakouts, however, the producer approaches “SP!N” as more a pop showcase, handing in a slinky yet still maximal electro-funk track. And spruced up with an Auto-Tuned croon of a chorus, the result ends up sounding not too far from a tofubeats song. While Liberation acts as a record for JUBEE to put his peers on, it also serves as a place to break out of their shell.
Singles Club
“emotion+” by aryy ft. kegon & lilbesh ramko [self-released]
“Tell me what I do with this emotion.” aryy turned this inconsolable urge into digitized pop-punk in the original “emotion.” But while he remained productive, letting out his listlessness without being aimless, there was a looming feeling that he had to wrestle with these emerging frustrations alone—hence, the title of last year’s album, Me and the World. So it’s a joy to see him in an album with his peers to rework some tracks from that record together for his bite-sized companion EP, M&TW+.
For “emotion+,” aryy no longer has to confront that titular question by himself as he surrounds himself with kegon and lilbesh ramko for the new version. With such buzzing company, the refreshed song now stands more as a response to its following lyric—“My head, overflowing with boredom”—as the camaraderie informs this posse-cut vibe of just doing stupid shit with my friends. As if to honor their presence, the pop-punk production re-fashions itself in the style of the respective guests: some bit-crushed synths gets speckled in when kegon starts to rap, and the track warps into a screeching electro drop when lilbesh ramko enters the scene. The three all search for the answer to the initial question in their own way while feeding off the other’s energy.
M&TW+ EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “oyasumi” by Lilniina & EAERAN; “Avalance” by Lisa lil vinci
“Kill the Patriot” / “Myotonic Congenita” by Mea Culpa [self-released]
Mea Culpa had tons of nice things to say about those who are supposedly of influence in their full-length, Is It Punk?, from this April. Here are some choice words from the hardcore band: dicktator, brownnoser, and “(M)otherfucking / (R)acist scum / brainless / bureaucratic / slave (off of “Rottenbite”). In the A-side to their latest demo, they once again gets straight to the point, with their targets but also course of action, and the slashing punk follows suit to their blitzing attitude. Meanwhile, the flip side, “Myotonic Congenita,” places vital reason to their aggression as they play with equal ferocity: “We’re nurtured / and we’re getting used to it,” they sing about being numb to the violence and manipulation. Mea Culpa’s thrashing, then, is a means for sheer survival as it is to be heard.
Listen to the demo on Spotify/Bandcamp
See also: “Brave It Out” by Brave Out; “118” by Serotonin Mist
“Kira Kira” by sidenerds [self-released]
A deflated emo riff sets in the ambivalence in “Kira Kira” that permeates sidenerds’s latest Imitation Diamonds EP. And though vocalist Miniamaru lets an airy, weightless sigh, she unpacks such heavy thoughts over guitars that play on just as deceptively breezy. “If I had turned into bubbles and faded away / I wouldn’t be remembered in your heart,” she sings the morbid chorus. “But my heart would finally be calm.” Her true feelings eventually spill over in the form of a post-rock-esque breakdown, the crashing music trembling along her fantasizing out loud of sinking into the sea. But as the song clocks out, she sighs the refrain one last time as if she didn’t just call upon one brutal storm.
Imitation Diamonds EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Misukashite” by Limre; “Crack!” by Summer Whales
This Week in 1997…
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.
“Koyoi No Tsuki No Yoni” by Elephant Kashimashi [Pony Canyon, 1997]
Highest position at #8 during the weeks of Sept. 22-29, 1997 | Listen to it on Spotify/YouTube
To get the gist of Hiroji Miyamoto as a singer, Shiina Ringo has provided some clues. He sounded on their collaboration “Kemonoyuku Hosomichi” like a drunkard crashing a black-tie party, his shaggy vocals writhing all across the big-band jazz music. Ringo encouraged him to get as wild as he wanted throughout the song precisely to let its climactic lyric ring as life-affirming as it convincingly could: “We only got one meaningless life / so let’s use it all up.” And when the singer appeared alongside his collaborator on Music Station to perform their song together for TV in 2018, he lived up the lyric’s nihilistic spirit to its fullest with a performance so off the cuff, its unruliness made him the viral Topic of the Week.
With his band Elephant Kashimashi, Miyamoto has been invited to run amok like that time on Music Station for other public TV spots, namely Kohaku Utagassen, twice. He’s been a spokesperson as much as a rock’n’roller about the meaninglessness of it all, delivering the message with as much abandon. Yet the single responsible for first exposing him to a greater audience has him settled down, solemnly strumming an acoustic guitar. He starts off 1997’s “Koyoi No Tsuki No Yoni” walking in the night by his lonesome, trying to look put together, as he mutters under his breath about how everything is just pathetic. “And I’ll shine again one day / like the evening moon,” he sings the titular refrain, crooning out its last syllable like he’s wringing out every last bit of the tears within.
Elephant Kashimashi’s own history can frame the underdog lyrics as being partially self-referential. While earning a status of a cult favorite from their seven-album run, they’ve had to recoup after being dropped by their label. Miyamoto’s songs about dead ends rang with acute familiarity with that detail in mind, even after they soon signed to Pony Canyon in 1996 to start again. “What do I know / about what lies beyond sadness / never even seen it before,” he bellows in the band’s comeback single, 1996’s “Kanashimi No Hate,” his lyrics about a lack of faith in the future resonating with an added personal authority.
Doomed as Elephant Kashimashi’s songs continued to sound, their music with Pony Canyon kicked off the band’s momentum as a commercial act. Their start with their new label also saw a shift in Miyamoto’s songwriting with the frontman displaying a stronger grasp of melody. His voice was still rough as gravel, the guitars often as loud and buzzing. But his emotionally raw verses went down light and smooth, far easier to hum along than the strident bluesy screams into the void. The tunefulness eased his songs into something less hostile than the pre-Pony Canyon records, and more welcoming for others to gather around his sorrows.
Because as dominating as Miyamoto can be as a personality, “Koyoi No Tsuki No Yoni” proves to be lasting through the song and its core subject matter transcending its central songwriter. Miyamoto openly shares him at rock bottom not to pin himself as the subject of pity or self-deprecation, but to invite others see their own failures through him. “We keep running through / the days we won’t ever get back again,” he howls in the run-up before the last refrain, the royal “we” confirming who this song is a dedication to.
For how upfront Miyamoto can be about the sheer meaninglessness of life, the best Elephant Kashimashi songs embrace it as life’s very beauty. “Koyoi No Tsuki No Yoni” similarly remains unclear about when exactly things will get better or where exactly we should head to next. But the frontman sings the main refrain — “and I’ll shine some day / like the evening moon” — with the certainty of a man who has hit so low, he’s sure he’s got nowhere to go but up. It doesn’t hurt to believe, he implies. What’s there to really lose?
It sure makes for an easier pill to swallow, and it showed in the public’s embrace of the record. The single’s performance on the Oricon was proof for certain, their highest charting until last year’s “yes, I do,” but its impact was also felt in what the public wanted from Elephant Kashimashi after “Koyoi No Tsuki No Yoni” cemented the band’s place in the mainstream. When Kohaku brought back the band last year, it got them to bring back an 17-year-old single embodying a similar underdog spirit as their ‘90s hit, with the frontman eagerly displaying his devil-may-care on stage. “Alright, let’s do this,” he sang. “You’re also probably out there somewhere / a mess, fighting the day to day.” If this guy can make it out, their best music reminds, you can get through it too.
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An alternative choice for this mood would be “Red Hot Skull,” the instrumental theme for the Red Mountain level in the videogame Sonic Adventure. It loops the same sample and drum breaks!
Age Factory provide mutual connection with a few other features and collaborators on Liberation. nerdwitchkomugichan—who worked on album track #11, “Kids Were Alright”—remixed the band’s 2020 song “CLOSE EYE.” Arisa Ushimaru, from the indie-rock duo yonige, featured on track #7 “Droptown,” also guested on AF’s “ALICE,” a highlight off of this year’s Songs.
Arisa Ushimaru’s band yonige has also contributed a track to one of their compilations, last year’s Overtake, one of my favorites from the Rave Racers crew.