A pocket-sized guide to J Pop, from a distinctly UK-based perspective. From the UK and want to know when new stuff is out, if it's any good and how you can find out more? Hopefully we can help shed a little light.
If the recent Scandal gig at Islington Academy got you itching for you next fix of live Japanese music in the capital, then fear not as The Pipeline plays host to both moumoon and PASSEPIED on the 13th May in an exclusive warm-up show that precedes the bands' appearance at this year's Japan Rising show as part of Brighton's Great Escape festival.
With moumoon's latest single currently featuring in anime-of-the-moment Assassination Classroom, there's never been a better time to check the act out. Headed up by vocalist YUKA, the band's style is dizzyingly eclectic, blending dance, pop and rock influences alongside a heady mix of English and Japanese lyrics.
PASSEPIED, meanwhile, offer up an arguably more clean-cut blend of styles, tracks like Matatabistep pairing a whirling electro riff to a sprightly pop-rock melody. It makes for an energetic combination, and with the show touted as PASSEPIED's first performance outside Japan, it should be make for quite the event. The band were previously featured as part of CMU's regular 'Approved' feature and we were intrigued to hear about the band's policy of only revealing their faces at live shows - something somehow wonderfully quaint in an age of social networks and widespread media saturation.
We attended the pre-Japan Rising event at the Pipeline last year, and it makes for a thrillingly electric night - the basement venue dashed in neon graffiti, whilst the bar upstairs serves good food and drink. With this year's event arguably upping the ante with more prominent acts, it makes for a bit of a gotta-be-there show for fans of Japanese music, especially if you can't make it down to Brighton for the Japan Rising event-proper.
Following on from fantastic gigs from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Perfume last year, when pop rock girl-group Scandal announced they'd be hitting London this April, I knew I had to be there.
Best known for their anime OP themes to the likes of Bleach and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the four-piece turn out perky, delightfully catchy tunes that probably find their closest English comparison in the likes of pop-punk outfits like Paramore. In short - big on the choruses, rockin' guitar riffs and girl-power.
As with Kyary and Perfume's shows - the venue was completely packed. People often talk about Japanese music in the UK as a relative niche (the Islington Academy being an apt venue perhaps, then, considering it often caters to that equally fanatical niche - up-and-coming metal acts) - but the fervour from the fanbase throughout the show was palpable. A little restrained at times, perhaps - but part of me kind of expected that, considering the audience seemed to mainly comprise a mix of otaku and rock types.
The band's big singles aside, a personal highlight has to be Oyasumi, from the band's current studio album Hello World. Here, drummer Rina Suzuki takes over on lead vocal duties, working her way through a characteristically sweet vocal as the band trade their usual feisty guitar anthems for a slower, more synth-focused mid-tempo number.
The set was kept short and sweet, the band keeping chat largely English-centric and to a minimum (this in comparison to Perfume's 10+ minute chat at their Hammersmith Apollo show!) - the focus, as it should be, on the tunes. And as is so wonderfully often the case with Japanese acts - all done and dusted before 10pm. If only every gig could be like that!
The last few years have seen something of a renaissance for Japanese acts playing on UK shores - and hopefully Scandal, as their Hello World album might imply, are merely the next in a long line opening the doors for more to follow. With the likes of Babymetal and Crossfaith becoming regulars in the pages of Kerrang - for me at least, the hard rock press have acted as a kind of gateway for a lot of this stuff to gain a kind of semi-mainstream legitimacy over here, separate and apart from the otaku appetite that equally fuels a lot of Japanese musical fandom. Scandal fall somewhere inbetween - and perhaps in this sense, they hold the potential to be a fantastic gateway drug for the more casually inclined - with songs as catchy as theirs, the Islington Academy show certainly won't be the last we hear of them...
[A quick aside on general comfort issues; I've attended some pretty iffy gigs at Islington Academy before and am always a little hesitant about shows there. I've always found it to be stiflingly hot, and too small for the kind of crowds anyone but the most unknown of acts would draw - never pleasant, especially as the downstairs section is standing only and fills out pretty much right to the doors in (people are constantly moving back and forth between these doors and deeper into the venue - always a nightmare when the room is packed to breaking point).]
I stumbled across this megamix bringing together some of ClariS biggest and best hits the other day, and fell in love with it straight away (largely spurred on by the fact it's almost impossible to find legit streams of ClariS' music in the UK)
When the only ClariS material properly available in the UK is limited to the duo's 2014 studio album Party Time, you lap up what you can when you find it. The best bit in the below mix is clearly Oreimo OP theme Reunion - in my opinion still ClariS finest moment to date. There's something about its rolling melodies and Genki Girl enthusiasm that captures the charm of Oreimo lead Kirino perfectly; all the wonder and wide-eyed 'Life Really Can Be This Amazing If You Want It To Be' chutzpah that anime so often seems to want to project on its viewers.
That said, Click comes a close second - and a good thing too, considering it's one of the few ClariS singles you can actually obtain legally in the UK.
The long and short of it is that Penguindrum is absolutely mental. Perhaps even more so than the likes of the Monogatari series, it - as an animated composition - represents an absolute head-screw of a show. And that's what makes it so incredible. It's like a psychology text-book on crack dosed down on a handful of poppers and Pop Party compilations.
And Rock Over Japan is the cherry on its conveniently penguin-shaped cake. It's rare that an anime contains an insert song that completely outshines both the OP and ED theme, but with Penguindrum and Rock Over Japan, it is absolutely, resolutely the case.
Accompanying as it does female lead Himari's transformation sequence, it seems to epitomize the very best excesses of J-Pop. If you grabbed someone off the street and asked them to imagine what J-Pop sounded like, it'd probably be a bit like this. It's game-show theme tune cum pop-punk kiddy-disco. It's cruise-ship lemonade skating on a silver lining of sparkly, pink nu-electro.
It's worth remembering that the UK actually has its very own Japanese pop-star in the form of Neon Jungle's Asami Zdrenka. When I interviewed the band late last year, she told me her family back in Japan would regularly chat about the band's successes in the UK to their friends, and that their track London Rain seemed to be particularly popular amongst their Japanese fans.
The song has always been one of my favourites from their album, and I certainly like to think it has more than a touch of J-Pop to it - twinkling as it does with delicate, twinkling synth lines and beautiful, lingering melancholy that suggests the neon-tinged afterglow of Tokyo twilight. Hats off to co-writers Cocknbullkid and MNEK for penning the tune!
So, you fancy going to see some awesome acts this year and are wondering what's on the schedule so far for 2015? With the likes of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Perfume playing sold-out shows in the UK last year, it's never been a better time to see Japanese acts live in ol' Blighty.
Personally, we'd recommend going to see the excellent SCANDAL - while it's also worth keeping your eyes peeled for the Great Escape line-up, as they usually secure a handful of Japanese acts.
Short answer? Not a lot. Seriously, the amount of J-Pop available on UK streaming services like Spotify makes UK iTunes look like a veritable paradise.
That's the bad news out of the way. The good news? A few key releases and artists are actually available:
A bit of a how-to here. It's what I've come to rely on anyway to tell me what (reasonably) new stuff is doing the rounds on UK iTunes.
Firstly, there's the frustration that within iTunes main store, it's very difficult to actually access the J-Pop chart - it's lumped in with the 'World' chart and can typically only be seen when searching for 'related' content to albums actually flagged specifically as 'J-Pop'.
Thank God for iTop Chart then, who provide the data in a stripped-out, easy to access format.
Far from ideal, but better than nothing, right? I'm not sure why iTunes deems fit to separate J-Pop and Anime as two separate genres (and what determines whether a release is one or the other), but by sticking to these four charts, you can glean a reasonable insight into what's new - as these releases typically filter to the top.
Sadly, the 'Anime' charts are flooded with what I deem 'unofficial' tribute versions - to which the only answer can be 'Release the proper versions in the UK please!'
If I had to pick a current 'tune of the week', it'd definitely be this one. When I first heard it in the season finale to Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works' first cour, it blew me away - it just captured the gravitas and gloss of the series perfectly. I've been a fan of LiSa's music for a while now, with her Sword Art Online theme Crossing Field continuing to rank as one of the highest-selling J-Pop tracks on UK iTunes - and This Illusion sees her continuing to impress, albeit with a far darker tone than before.
Ariola Japan played an absolute winner getting the first FSN:UBW OP theme (Mashiro Ayano's Ideal White) out on iTunes pretty much day-and-date with the first cour airing on Crunchyroll - let's hope whoever's pulling the string on This Illusion can do likewise with this one.
As it stands, this piece is the top-ranking article when you search for 'j pop uk' on Google. When I first read it, I found it tackled the subject pretty well, and certainly seemed more invested in the aesthetic of just why people like J-Pop than many similar pieces. But that said - and as some people mention in the comments of the piece itself - it also falls a little far from the mark in terms of addressing the wider genre and giving it the respect it deserves.
As is so often the case with Western pieces on J-Pop, there remains a fine line between being genuinely 'into' the scene/culture/whatever you want to call it, and dismissing it as part of the whole 'Weird Japan' rhetoric. This piece felt like it fell somewhere in-between, and as someone who attended the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu gig in question and thoroughly enjoyed it, I continue to maintain that it's too easy to get caught up in the whole 'THE COSTUMES' angle - despite it being the easiest, most story-worth angle to take with it.
I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with VICE/Noisey - for years I disliked the brand and the culture/aesthetic it tried to capture (although I'm a lot fonder of the Noisey content as for the most part, it skews more away from some of the Gonzo/'hipstser' excesses of the wider brand). But at the end of the day, I kind of feel like even if it misses the mark in some areas, pieces like this are to be applauded regardless as, after all - don't they saw all publicity is good publicity? In the case of J-Pop coverage in the UK, I'm inclined to think so.
