Other Japanese Pop & Indie Rock Official Thread

[MischievousMonkey]

@CopiousX

All 4 tracks you posted last were great, especially Kirinji's Koi no Kehai That outro was amazing.


I went into a polkadot stingray rabbithole some weeks ago talented asf.


One group/artist I discovered last month and loved at first listen is Takayan Stumbled upon this on spotify (so I had no lyrics):


Now this, this just felt right and still does

Went on to listen to the full album this track belongs to and I was pleasantly surprised several times. They have contemporary nicely curated hip/hop & RnB , and even XXXtentacion type rap that they sound great on:



Then, intrigued by the slightly disturbing album cover, I went and looked up the lyrics... And yeah, it's the dark subject matters outsiders reference when they joke about how anime songs can sound very positive and have depressing lyrics It's not all gloomy as hope still runs through the core message, but yeah...The title list alone is crazy.

I'm always surprised as how candidly japanese music that I know of espouses dark themes and ideas like that. I don't know any "mainstream" equivalent in American music, even taking a pretty relaxed popularity requirement to define "mainstream". Closest that comes to my mind would be Juiceworld, but even his lyrics can sound tame compared to j-music that gets straight into it

 

[MischievousMonkey]

Also, I'm in a The Mass Missile arc... Their music makes my soul smile and my body vibrate

 

[CopiousX]

Also, I'm in a The Mass Missile arc... Their music makes my soul smile and my body vibrate

Dude is amazing. Did not know about them. It goves me a 90s vibe. Thanks for the suggestion.

@CopiousX

All 4 tracks you posted last were great, especially Kirinji's Koi no Kehai That outro was amazing.


I went into a polkadot stingray rabbithole some weeks ago talented asf.

glad to help. Kirinji has been growing on me. They have a huge amount of content and im slowly sifting through it. I’ll share any gems if find more.



Also, why didnt you tell me Polkadot Stingray dropped an album last year?



Your comment made me look at their full discography. The band is nice, but there is something magical about Shizuku’s vocals. Looks like i got a new album to binge.

reference when they joke about how anime songs can sound very positive and have depressing lyrics It's not all gloomy as hope still runs through the core message, but yeah...The title list alone is crazy.

I'm always surprised as how candidly japanese music that I know of espouses dark themes and ideas like that. I don't know any "mainstream" equivalent in American music, even taking a pretty relaxed popularity requirement to define "mainstream". Closest that comes to my mind would be Juiceworld, but even his lyrics can sound tame compared to j-music that gets straight into it

This has me curious. does the name “Cilvanis” mean anything to you?

 

[CopiousX]

oh damn, i need to make a playlist and find more songs that way...does it still work?

kanji is like pulling teeth for me, wasn't the japanese language initially made of like 3 different kingdoms that merged or something, so that's why they borrowed some characters from chinese and the rest are curvy?...wish it was easier but need to grind out the learning process and do those duolingo/rosetta stone/random language paired chat rooms

I must admit that their classical history is not my strong suit, but from the brief history they taught us in school i beleive they were a illiterate people using pictographs(not kanji) initially. This was due to isolation. As random as it sounds, japanese Monks based kana on indian Sanskrit once they got exposure to buhdist texts. This may explain the funky curvature of kana script. From there, Kanji was the result of soft power influence of the Empire of China who was basically doing to Japan what china is currently doing to Africa.

As for the history of their verbal language, im a bit embarrased to admit i purposely avoided it due to PTSD about having to learn archaic text. you must memorize and additional 1000 kanji in addition to the standard 2000 to use classical texts, so this was off putting to me. So i never investigated its origins. Im vaguely aware Ryukyu (those islands past Okinawa) was its own country with its own language and hokaido had ainu (who spoke Ainugo) , but thats the limit of my classical history.





As for Xiami, i was using it before the chinese web company boom, so i believe the app i was using was swallowed up by a larger conglomerate which tore it apart and eliminated english functionality. To make matters worse, both the EU and US record labels were having a legal field day with the app because they didnt pay foreign labels for using their artists. Believe it or not, during my era you had the exact same functionality on Xiami as spotify premium, but payed zero for the app, so i see why they pivoted away. So i dont think you can still use it for playlist building

 

[CopiousX]

wish it was easier but need to grind out the learning process and do those duolingo/rosetta stone/random language paired chat rooms

I agree, its a grind with much delayed gratification. But you will have a whole new world to yourself once you break the barrier.



The bar to be functional is actually far lower than you would assume.
For example….

• Vocabulary-wise You only need 500 words to be conversational. From my own experience, At this point you can venture into language meetups without tripping over your toungue.

• but You need about 5000 words to be fluent enough to survive solo in japanese society on the same level as a highschool-aged local. At this point, idioms and nuances of the language become evident to you. Its slightly less than the N2-test requirements. But far more than a casual living abroad in the west needs to know

• Similarly, written text it takes a lot of rote memorization to get to the full 2000 kanji. But you could infer most text meaning with only 750 of them. And the 750 figure is more than enought to traverse the country itself without a guide.

Do you currently have a specific program you have started? Any idea how far along you are in words or kanji?

not sure, i just did some layups tbh...this is my playlist so far, give or take a few, accumulated over time...i think the language barrier is what is making me come back to them because when i translate the lyrics, some of them are basic AF if it wasn't for the melody...every other song talks about shiawase and (a couple other phrases not popping in my head atm) almost like crutch filler words to fill in the melody because the language itself doesn't rhyme, plus the haiku structure that the songs are based on makes run ons that sound more complicated than basic dr seuss rhyme schemes...i just comb the oricon charts once in a while but i've been stuck for while coming up with new old songs i haven't discovered


www.reddit.com/r/japanesemusic/comments/pkbpp6/more_songs_that_i_like_and_why_other_similar/
www.reddit.com/r/japanesemusic/comments/pj08bu/looking_for_japanese_songartist_recommendations/

Wow, this is very comprehensive. You have put in a lot of work




Id love to suggest some more tracks for your from that era, if you are still open to it. But itd be a while for me to run throught he track list. Id hate to be the guy that suggested Plastic Love to you for the 80th time

japanese appreciation of music in the creme de la creme tier, at least in the late 70s to early 90s, was at its purest creativity while taking the finest tunes from every culture and transforming it to their language comprehension in the likes of japanese jazz fusion, new jack swing fusion, bossa nova fusion, doo wop/soul fusion, etc and then capitalistic greed happened and they fell backwards into stooping down to the level of other gimmicks and digitizing voices until they are unrecognizable for what melodies they were trying to sing unless they were played live

...like when japanese snacks were the shyt but was expensive AF because of the excessive labor costs and individual packaging for the presentation the snack was a part of the 'opening experience' but ended up as inedible throwaway, but then korean snacks basically just remade the same japanese snacks in bulk size, less cost, and far less individual packaging...this is analogous to k-pop overtaking j-pop....k-pop would never surpass j-pop from the 90s given how surface level k-pop is comparably, but k-pop just copied j-pop's exact formula with way less overhead along with government sponsored funding and got comparably a lot more success copying the japanese formula verbatim. j-pop has yet to find its footing and regain its dominant presence and singing songs for the sheer creative talent and music appreciation of it without any gimmicks if it wasn't for anime OSTs

also, been trying to get an invite to jpopsuki and sugoimusic for the longest

Well said. Modern japanese music is indeed heavily adulterated and has strayed away from pure vocals. A lot of live performances dont hold a flame to studio recordings because of this.



I also see what you mean about the downfall of jpop in the international market. Additionally, i dont think the timing of their music’s demise in the late 90s was a coincidence. It doesnt escape me that their whole economy took a nap after the dot com crash in that era, so part of me thinks the labels themsleves engaged in austerity measures , by stopping expansionary outreach into foreign markets in much the same way our western tech giants stopped growth efforts this year due to our impending recession. Coincidentally, korea took the exact opposite response by seeking more expansion during the same era, because they didnt have a large internal market to fall back on.



in additon to hoping they changing their creative direction, i think jpop may see a resurgence once the overall japanese economy returns to its boom era. And yes , some govt subsidies would help get them there faster.

 

[jensyao]

Do you currently have a specific program you have started? Any idea how far along you are in words or kanji?






Wow, this is very comprehensive. You have put in a lot of work




Id love to suggest some more tracks for your from that era, if you are still open to it. But itd be a while for me to run throught he track list. Id hate to be the guy that suggested Plastic Love to you for the 80th time


Well said. Modern japanese music is indeed heavily adulterated and has strayed away from pure vocals. A lot of live performances dont hold a flame to studio recordings because of this.



I also see what you mean about the downfall of jpop in the international market. Additionally, i dont think the timing of their music’s demise in the late 90s was a coincidence. It doesnt escape me that their whole economy took a nap after the dot com crash in that era, so part of me thinks the labels themsleves engaged in austerity measures , by stopping expansionary outreach into foreign markets in much the same way our western tech giants stopped growth efforts this year due to our impending recession. Coincidentally, korea took the exact opposite response by seeking more expansion during the same era, because they didnt have a large internal market to fall back on.



in additon to hoping they changing their creative direction, i think jpop may see a resurgence once the overall japanese economy returns to its boom era. And yes , some govt subsidies would help get them there faster.

F, I keep on forgetting to check this tab, i just turned on watch notifications for this thread

yeah i need recommendations, any would be appreciated...TBH, a lot of americanized japanese songs have this self fulfilling prophecy to attract hipsters who end up liking it but i never liked japan making music/anime/entertainment catered to the western audience, gimme that bonafide uncut raw shyt that transcend taste and culture where the talent is universal and not pretentious-niche for 'trendy clout value'...currently using the Aaliyah AI to sing Itoshisa To Setsunasa To Kokoro Tsuyosa To but i need more candidates and it needs heavy editing to come out fire because the dude who wrote the song is singing the background vocals that the AI is picking up on and it's hard to isolate and remove his vocals...will link once uploaded...no offense but for every aaliyah in the states, there's 10 of them in japan who are still alive, and the only singer who sang japanese songs who was targeted and died was actually taiwanese (teresa teng) when she didn't pay extortion money to the triads, similar to the bruce lee situation to that hong kong director to whom he owed movies to but ignored to find stardom in hollywood -- they use unknown toxic herbs to kill people....aaliyah, MJ, left eye, static major, etc all died unexpectedly on the 25th of the month and you tell me how that's not a numerology of adding up to 7, ritualistic sacrifice that the people in charge have over outspoken black/minority artists with creative/monetary leverage...shyt's straight evil out here with deaths happening mostly on the 33rd parallel - LA, atlanta, dallas, etc...i'm backlogged on so much shyt to do if i wasn't already just enjoying the music to end up editing AI versions

Which Black Celebrities Died On The 25th Of The Month? - Blurtit

Answer (1 of 5): Desmond Dekker (he died on the 25th).Michael Jackson- June 25,2009 Farrah Fawcett- June 25, 2009 mike tyson's daughter pheonix- may 25th, 2009 James Brown December 25, 2006 Lisa (Left Eye) Lopes-April 25, 2002 Aaliyah Haughton- August 25, 2001 Rodger from Zapp Band April 25,1999...

entertainment.blurtit.com

uhhh, man i wish i had more focused free time to chug it out...i got the rosetta stone and this guy explains to just memorize the top 1000 words and try to make sentences by doing video chat with an instructor until it becomes natural and in word order by forced immersion to use the language to conduct normal life routines, etc https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIveLearned/search?query=language

japan has become americanized, the corolla used to be like 1/2-1/3 the price of an US domestic car back in the 80s and was more dependable/long lasting before the auto industry out of desperation from the oil crisis and asked the japanese to raise their prices and put more bloatware and make the majority of the camry in the states, which eroded the value of japanese engr....most of japanese people are stuck in the rat race and don't have time to have kids and the kids over there are kinda lost having to support the older generation, in addition to so much western influence at odds with their traditional eastern culture that it's reflected in their art to just be zany or have psychological, depressive themes in their entertainment outlets, which then negatively influences western kids that become weebs...i'm off topic, i just say a bunch of nonsense just to test the waters and to trigger people

 

[str8up]

any of y'all fukk with betcover!! ? been my favorite band for the past cpl years

 

[Mastamimd]

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