This Side of Japan: June 2019

Japanese music on YouTube by Sawa Angstrom, KIRINJI and more

One incredible new find for me in June was Ging Nang Boyz’ 2005 album, Kimi To Boku No Daisanji Sekai Taisenteki Renai Kakumei. I was compelled to check the record out after constantly playing Seiko Oomori’s fantastic new single “Re: Re: Love” with Ging Nang Boyz frontman Kazunobu Mineta, and watching the two perform it on Fuji TV’s Love Music. Before the two played together, Mineta shared how a young Oomori used to write (by her approximation) a 3000-word fan letter via e-mail to him every other day. If she loved this guy that much, I thought I should give it a try.

Listening to Kimi To Boku No… gives the feeling of what it must be like to be on the receiving end of Oomori’s obsessive mailing list. Mineta confesses his undying love in the span of 14 intense punk songs, and each track sounds messy as fuck. The band plays so fast and sloppy and crude that the resulting tracks sound like the product of the instruments essentially beating the absolute shit out of each other. The love songs are annoyingly loud, repulsively persistent and overbearingly raw — just like Mineta, who’s out of his mind from love or whatever he wants to call this emotion.

Kimi To Boku No… is driven by such a restless high that it feels physically dangerous. Mineta sounds invincible, fearless of the possible repercussion from his raw confessions that sometimes admits to literal love crimes: “Remember the time when your jacket got stolen at school?/ I can’t tell anyone but the real culprit was me,” he sings in “Skool Kill.” How can someone be so drunk in love? It shook my numb heart especially as I imagined myself feeling even a fraction of the inspiration that got Mineta to write these songs.

Oomori explained on Love Music, as suggested by the title, “Re: Re: Love” is partly a love letter to Mineta. She writes directly about the creative process and the relationship between life and art in the single like a lot of her great songs: “I’ll probably turn it into a song anyway/ even though there’s never a love born to be made into songs,” she sings. And the final lines hit deep considering how Ging Nang Boyz’ music maybe provided Oomori with a language for a sensation she couldn’t quite express with her own words: “Distort my boring youth with fuzz/ Let me rot raw/ Let me love/ Let me love/ with music.” I think I now understand a bit of why she sent those e-mails.

This month’s entry is going to be a short one with only six videos and no round-ups of releases, but I’ll stick a Spotify playlist in the end so you’ll have a bit more to check out.

Below are my six favorite releases of Japanese music on YouTube.

6) Kiki Vivi Lily: “Copenhagen”

For the advance singles from her new album, Vivid, Kiki Vivi Lily drew out a variety of sentimental metaphors from everyday things, whether it’d be black coffee or tights. She aims much bigger with “Copenhagen” by capturing the feeling of blissful paradise offered by the titular Scandinavian city. While the singer/songwriter fixates on the dreaminess of a foreign place, Tomita Lab shakes up the mood a bit with a slightly crooked R&B portrait of the sunny getaway.

5) Sawa Angstrom: “Sweet Impact”

The title of Sawa Angstrom’s “Sweet Impact” writes home the difference in approach for their new OF FOOD EP compared to the zero-gravity lead track from the trio’s previous release. Electronic noises still glitch and pulsate at a microscopic level and the lyrics inform those clustered sounds in an impressionistic manner. The group, though, is far less concerned to keep calm, moving into a busier direction to craft a beat that brings a more extroverted thrill.

4) Seiho: “I Lost Myself in His Car”

Seiho’s second single of the year comes with another glorious title (previously: “I Feel Tired Everyday”) and a good running time to match the suggested introspection. But rather than further stretch the thousand-yard stare of his previous, the producer’s deep house cruises through a prettier, more dynamic vista. While the sleek synths allure, the surging bass line pump a lot of life as the beat twists and turns through the seven-minute journey.

3) Sakanaction: “Wasurerarenai”

The synths glisten and the bass line is one funky lick in “Wasurerarenai.” The music video aims for warm nostalgia for Showa-era TV, if not laughter with those fun dance moves. But let’s not overlook the bummer that Sakanaction try oh so hard to mask with such delights. “A sadness of a new city/ One day, it’ll be a memory,” Ichiro Yamaguchi sings as he wholeheartedly embraces the preciousness of a day spent in solitude no matter how dreamy, disappointing or insignificant in the chorus.

2) KIRINJI: “Killer Tune Kills Me” ft. YonYon

Kirinji dig into the crueler side of the music-listening experience of a once-sentimental record becoming a haunting curse of a relationship past. The paralysis from memories feels even more torturous when the flashbacks are summoned by an irresistibly slick funk beat — a city-pop groove that the band has done so well to revive for almost two decades. The protagonist succumbs to her former flame in the end: “Are you still listening?/ To that song,” Erino Yumiki wonders before the single cuts off, her open-ended sigh summing up the wistful music.

1) Seiko Oomori: “Re: Re: Love” ft. Kazunobu Mineta

Compared to Seiko Oomori’s recent polished productions, like this single’s B-side “JUSTadICE,” “Re: Re: Love” sounds messy as hell. Everything from the intensely strummed guitars, blown-out drums and a shiny organ riff bleed into battered pop-rock. But the noise only helps bring to life the turbulent romance unfolding throughout the song. Lovers fight and make up, enthralled as much as they are disgusted at just how much they love and depend on each other for companionship.

…And here’s that playlist for June! 50 songs!