Discoveries: Japanese Albums, January-June 2021
Blurbs for ten new-to-me listens from the first half of the year. Plus some honourable mentions!
As mentioned in my last post, I recently had an opportunity to contribute a piece of writing for Ryo Miyauchi’s excellent This Side of Japan. It was a lot of fun to be invited to write for TSOJ, particularly as Ryo has been directly responsible for me discovering a lot of great music! And, as writing that piece was what got me to finally actually start this newsletter, I figured what better way to kick off than to highlight some of my favourite Japanese music I’ve discovered this year. I deliberately limited myself to ten albums (and some honourable mentions), but there is truly so much great music out there -- I could have gone for some time longer.
I need to stress as well that while I listen to quite a lot of music in a decent number of languages (keep an eye out for my proper year-to-date highlights soonish), I am monolingual. I can’t assess any of these albums on lyrical terms -- I can and do look up song translations at times, but that doesn’t give a good grasp of how a line sits in the context of a song or how well-written it is. I’m limited to a purely sonic appreciation, though I’d love one day to change this.
With that disclaimer settled, the music:
Nakayama’s work reminds me a bit of Akiko Yano -- there’s the obvious similarity of their instrumental palette (and they both have truly excellent piano writing), but beyond that they share a very conversational singing style. There’s a looseness to Nakayama’s singing, falling gently off the ends of vocal lines rather than sustaining the note, that I find really appealing. Nakayama meanders casually through the songs of 11, with melodies that flow smoothly while consistently managing to catch me off guard.
Track highlight: Boku Janai
YOASOBI are far from the only artists to pair a rangy, wordy vocal line with a frenetic keyboard part. Ayase works as a Vocaloid producer, and it’s a juxtaposition you see all the time in that space. Lilas Ikuta’s voice has an expressiveness vocaloid performers can’t match, though, and the interplay between her and the keys always feels really well-matched. There’s a gentle fuzziness to the vocal production on most of THE BOOK’s tracks, like she’s singing through a slightly mis-tuned radio, that casts kind of a wistful air over the whole thing even when the composition is at its busiest.
Track Highlight: Halzion
A number of these albums made their way onto the list because they do something striking or unusual, something I haven’t heard before. Chapter I is not one of those, particularly. It earns its place simply by being an incredibly hooky, high-energy pop album. Nakashima shows a lot more vocal flexibility than she gets to use as part of the BanG Dream! franchise, where she only rarely is a featured singer, and the melodies are well written for her voice, as well as being absurdly catchy in general. Sure, it’s not reinventing the wheel, but sometimes you just want to appreciate some damn good pop songs.
Track Highlight: UNCHAIN MY HEART
Mekakushe - Hikari Mitai Ni Susumitai
Honestly for this one I really do recommend Ryo’s feature. He writes about the album in depth and much more effectively than I could hope to do. What I will take a moment to highlight though is the songs’ structure -- they aren’t totally freeform, but there’s a real willingness to break away from standard verse-chorus forms and divert, at least temporarily, down another road. That ability to let a song expand and take the shape that best serves it is something I always admire.
Track Highlight: omou toiu koto
Ringo Sheena - Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana
Ringo Sheena is a legend, but one I am shamefully unfamiliar with. I chose Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana as my starting point after some fairly cursory research, and it turned out to be a great introduction. Her voice, of course, is extraordinarily distinctive -- but if you focus only on that you’re doing everything else a disservice. The production on KSKH is eccentric, but effective as hell; Sheena pairs instruments unexpectedly, abruptly shifts tempo and volume, and just generally plays with sound to an extent that shouldn’t work but somehow always does.
Track Highlight: Ishiki
baobab & haruka nakamura - Kanata
My very first musical love, beginning when I was perhaps six or seven, was Celtic folk music -- specifically that of Scotland and Nova Scotia. In his compositions for Kanata, haruka nakamura pulls from that tradition in a number of ways. It’s most obvious in the violin melodies, which feel indebted to traditional Scottish tunes; a reference I’m sure nakamura would be glad to acknowledge, given the cover of the iconic “Skye Boat Song” featured on the album. The way he combines those influences with his own compositional style, though -- and with baobab’s vocals, which are very well suited to the material -- really feels distinctive, and more than justifies Kanata’s inclusion among my all-time favourite folk albums.
Track Highlight: Kanata
The elevator pitch for Kitri could arguably sound a little gimmicky -- “look at these sisters! They sing while playing four-handed piano!” -- but in practice I really like what comes of it. I’m a sucker for this kind of classically-inflected chamber pop in general, but I enjoy the breadth of influences Kitri pull from in their playing. Their arrangements are really clever, and I’m honestly a fan of people getting to show off their instrumental virtuosity; the piano parts are showy, but in a way that feels compelling and in service of the songs.
Track Highlight: Akai Tsuki
Had you asked me after my first listen whether Lantana would be one of my favourite albums I’ve heard these past six months, I’m not sure I’d have said yes. But it’s stayed with me, steadily rising in my estimation til now, when I ultimately decided that yeah, it’s earned its place on this list. The key factor, in the end, was KEIKO’s voice -- she has a beautifully sonorous deep alto tone, wholly unlike all the other singers I have featured here, and indeed unlike most pop performers. I’ve previously only been familiar with the work she’s done with Yuki Kajiura, which I’ve always enjoyed, but hearing her venture into totally different waters stylistically is a real pleasure, and Lantana is a solid demonstration of what else she might be capable of.
Track Highlight: End Roll
Honestly, I’m not well-versed in contemporary classical music. I have some familiarity with choral stuff, but the instrumental world is more of a mystery to me. I wish I could situate what Takahara has made within that broader context, but I’m not the right critic to do so. What I can say with certainty is that See-Through is beautiful. There’s a spareness to a lot of Takahara’s composition, but it never feels undeveloped, and I adore the way she builds intensity, both within pieces and over the album as a whole. Something about it really captures my imagination, particularly with the way she incorporates sounds from the natural world.
Track Highlight: Tide
Windswept Adan is an album where I am keenly aware that my lack of understanding is an impediment. It’s been described as a concept record, the “soundtrack to an imaginary film”, and being only able to access the barest outline of that story is frustrating. What ends up standing out to me as a listener in the end is Aoba’s (and collaborator Taro Umebayashi’s) grasp of motion. Many tracks set up a shimmering ostinato line in the instrumentation, over which Aoba’s more expansive vocal floats. It’s a sense of constant movement, but not destination-driven -- just the shifting you find in nature (an impression reinforced by the use of ambient natural sound in the production). When she drops out of this style, like on the more stately “Hagupit”, the contrast is really striking and effective! The real trick is how even weaving between these different feelings, the album as a whole feels incredibly cohesive. It’s a difficult-to-describe work, but a very beautiful one.
Track Highlight: Pilgrimage
Honourable mentions: AmamiyaMaako - Wear; chelmico - Maze; YeYe - 30; JYOCHO - The Beautiful Cycle of Terminal, Maika Loubté - Closer
There’s a pretty broad range of styles and genres represented here, though certainly you can trace common elements that reflect pretty clearly on my musical preferences as a whole. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you can find something you like.
Next time I post, it’ll be looking back at the first half of the year and highlighting some favourite books and music! I really haven’t decided what format that will take, as an item by item breakdown like this would either miss a lot of stuff or be far longer than I want to write. So I’ll work on that for a while, and you’ll all see whatever I settle on in the end.