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