Current J-Pop Girls Chart

[Striker]

These guys make 80s throwback City Pop stuff & started off re-editing classic anime clips for the videos, not my usual bag but I like them.

Satellite Young - "Break! Break! Tic! Tac!"

they recently graduated to making a proper video.

Satellite Young - "Dividual Heart"

Shinsei Kamattechan have landed the auspicious job of providing the closing song of anime juggernaut Attack On Titan, I'm not a big anime fan to be honest but AOT was pretty great & I'm looking forward to series 2 even more now (it's on Netflix & has unnerving giant cannibals if you fancy it), music wise they seem to have reverted to Noko's heavily processed vocal sound which is a little odd, maybe it's something about not diluting their weirdness for something that's a pretty big mainstream gig which I appreciate

Shinsei Kamattechan - "Yuugure No Tori"

TWO new videos from Wednesday Campanella, first one's a stunning production filmed in Mongolia I think, and the second one is a super low budget video of her running around miming & charmingly dicking about with the traders in some market, they're both great.

Wednesday Campanella - "Melos"

Wednesday Campanella - "Unico"

Some awful day this rich creative vein that her & the rest of the WC team is mining is going to come to an end.

Dots are another idol unit getting their teeth into noise, this is one of their live performances, takes a couple of minutes before anything happens in this video but if noise is your thing, this lot are making it

Dots - "Noise"

Yurumerumo! You'll Melt More! have got a new release coming later this month following up their ESG/Suicide/Shoegaze etc inspired releases. It's called Disco Psychedelica, here's the artwork, no prizes for guessing where the inspiration for this one's coming from.



I'll report back when I get any more info.

[Striker]

My friend's in Tokyo for a few days, she asked if I had any recommendations, I said she should check out You'll Melt More! as they were performing live at The Loft on Sunday. She said it was the best gig she'd been to since Turbonegro. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also at the moment BIS (I've lost track of which incarnation of the band this is) are very active, I'm not mad on the current music but one of the members Kika has the best goth makeup going on that I think I've ever seen, I'm not a big fan of the theatrical/goth look especially the try-hard Visual-Kei stuff but this look is so simple & badass, I love it.

[Striker]

I forgot to post this Tentenko single on here it's a great digital steppers thing with a Tim & Eric style video, there's airhorns in it. Nearly the first minute of this is just her talking to a perplexed cat.

Tentenko - "Jiro"

And Zombe Chang's got a new one out, killer Korg techno pop with fidget spinners. It's got a kind of early Sheffield thing about it that I appreciate, she's even wearing a flat cap.

Zombie Chang - "We Should Kiss"

[Tsundoku]

I love this thread.

Striker, do you speak any Japanese? I wonder if an understanding of the language would transform your relationship with this stuff.

[Tsundoku]

And yeah, that Zombie Chang does sound like early Human League.

[Striker]

Thanks Tsundoku, I've picked up bits of the language but I mostly heavily rely on google translate which is ok for single words but struggles with the structure so it's poetic but doesn't make much sense.

I really like the "loan words" they use which is a kind of phonetic copy of foreign words for things that were introduced to Japan from other cultures. Like furaido poteto is fried potato & pāsonaru konpyūtā is personal computer, i always make a mental note when one of these pops up.

I'm probably dodging a bullet not understanding some of the lyrics though to be honest

[Striker]

Great new single from Chai, they've recently appeared at Negicco's hometown festival in Niigata which is great exposure for them "N.E.O." will hopefully be a hit & then they can come and do some shows in the UK.

Maika Loubté update, she's played a couple of gigs in France recently, I love her DIY electro pop thing & she's developing into a really interesting artist, here's recent single "Candy Haus" & a track from a live show.

Maika had better watch out as there's another half French J-Pop contender coming up, fifteen year old model & musician Manon recently signed up by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's management is in the early stages of her pop career, I'm not sold on every release but this b-side of the first single (they did release it on a 7") "Beat The Bad Luck" is an absolute killer.

There's also a concept album put out recently called "Sweets Wonderland" to celebrate a pastry shop with different artists performing songs dedicated to the different cakes they sell. Someone does a cover of "Strawberry Letter 23" and the excellent Nanba Shiho has written a song for the Tablette Chocolat with the incredible name of "Hyper 90s Chocolate Boyfriend". I can't find any youtube links but who cares, this is a 100% guaranteed purchase.

[Shere Khan]

Great new single from Chai, they've recently appeared at Negicco's hometown festival in Niigata which is great exposure for them "N.E.O." will hopefully be a hit & then they can come and do some shows in the UK.

Yes that's pretty good and the video is an absolute hoot. I don't know how you keep up with all this stuff. Has it taken over your life?

[Striker]

Yes that's pretty good and the video is an absolute hoot. I don't know how you keep up with all this stuff. Has it taken over your life?

It's weird, it has kind of taken over my musical life. I live just round the corner from Piccadilly Records & Vinyl Exchange in Manchester, It'd be easy to spend all my record budget on great music of all kinds, I've got a sprawling record collection with no real focus other than it being music I love (or loved at a particular time of my life, I could stand to get rid of 1/3 of it though to be honest). When I DJ'ed regularly I felt that this lack of focus & my forever limited budget made what I played seem, I guess, cheap, unremarkable & dilettantish compared to other super heavy people playing records in similar genres in my local area.

One night I had an almost overwhelming urge to throw my record box into the canal on the way home from playing some tunes at a friend's night, who would care or notice? I do enjoy playing records out & inflicting my taste on people so I thought it'd be good to concentrate on something fun & interesting, if I ever got behind decks again I'd be playing stuff nobody else in the city was even close to crossing over with and at the very least it'd be something different. Needless to say I'm still looking for the right place for this to happen.

I also liked the idea of getting into something new as I imagined I'd avoid the whole rare record prices cos everything's new, which isn't really working out as I'd hoped.

So I find myself actively avoiding stuff that is easily available to me that I'd probably love, because I just paid 50 quid for 2 brand new 45s & a CD single to be shipped over from the other side of the world, I could probably get downloads for a fraction of the price but there's no fun in that & such is the lot of the object fetishist.

But with music being generally too easy to consume nowadays, I enjoy it being a bit of an effort & a pain in the arse to get hold of.

[Shere Khan]

It's weird, it has kind of taken over my musical life. I live just round the corner from Piccadilly Records & Vinyl Exchange in Manchester, It'd be easy to spend all my record budget on great music of all kinds, I've got a sprawling record collection with no real focus other than it being music I love (or loved at a particular time of my life, I could stand to get rid of 1/3 of it though to be honest). When I DJ'ed regularly I felt that this lack of focus & my forever limited budget made what I played seem, I guess, cheap, unremarkable & dilettantish compared to other super heavy people playing records in similar genres in my local area.

One night I had an almost overwhelming urge to throw my record box into the canal on the way home from playing some tunes at a friend's night, who would care or notice? I do enjoy playing records out & inflicting my taste on people so I thought it'd be good to concentrate on something fun & interesting, if I ever got behind decks again I'd be playing stuff nobody else in the city was even close to crossing over with and at the very least it'd be something different. Needless to say I'm still looking for the right place for this to happen.

I also liked the idea of getting into something new as I imagined I'd avoid the whole rare record prices cos everything's new, which isn't really working out as I'd hoped.

So I find myself actively avoiding stuff that is easily available to me that I'd probably love, because I just paid 50 quid for 2 brand new 45s & a CD single to be shipped over from the other side of the world, I could probably get downloads for a fraction of the price but there's no fun in that & such is the lot of the object fetishist.

But with music being generally too easy to consume nowadays, I enjoy it being a bit of an effort & a pain in the arse to get hold of.

I think you really need the kind of familiarity you obviously have with this stuff to be able to get to grips with it. I check this thread all the time, and there's always great stuff on it, but looking it up makes my head spin. I thought I might blow a bit of money on the Chai 45, having discovered there was such a thing so I ordered it from CDjapan. Within an hour they'd refunded me saying it was unavailable- so even when I do manage to wade through the Japanese mire I'm thwarted. As you say, you'd probably save money buying 'Rare' records. Like you my record buying has no focus whatsoever, which is a kind of pain because there are always about a million things you'd like to buy, but I don't think I could narrow it; it would be hard to put all that other stuff out of mind.

[Striker]

Ah it can be so frustrating, I can add an extra Chai 45 to my next order & send it on when it get here if you want.