Shibuya-kei is b-b-back?
Sep. 29th, 2004 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
I don't know if I've caught some kind of cold -- which would be odd, since I haven't had one for years -- or if all this sento bathing has made me feverish, but I spent my last day in Tokyo walking round in some kind of weird dream state. My throat and nasal membranes were lightly inflamed, a heady musk of mutton fat rose in my throat, and I felt the pleasantly hallucinatory sense of nostalgic unreality that often precedes a cold. In this kind of state I often get flashbacks to scenes from years ago. I'll see a recurring image of the East End of Princes Street, Edinburgh, for instance (upstairs from what's now Burger King, but used to be... the dingy cafe of Patrick Thomson's department store, didn't it?), and then, the next moment, a room in Finland.
The really odd thing about today, though, was that the city of Tokyo seemed to be conspiring with my fever. The whole place transformed itself into one gigantic psychedelic flashback. Suddenly the excitement of the 90s was back. Was it because I've been in Osaka so long, and saw Tokyo -- its zippy consumer spectacle, its stylish supercool youth -- afresh? Was it just sento fever? Or was something afoot, something fresh stirring in the autumnal air?
Taking my cue from Jean Snow's blog I went to Shibuya to see the Braniff International exhibition up on the seventh floor of the Parco Museum. Now, my ties with Parco run deep. It was at Parco's chain of Quattro Clubs that I played the gigs that first brought me to Japan, in 1992 and 1993. Later, I released albums on the Parco Quattro label. My first address in Tokyo was the Tobu Hotel, just a few steps away from the Parco department store. Shibuya-kei, the movement organised around 'jet set' lounge culture, 60s optimism, cosmopolitanism, and so on, was also, for me, organised around Parco department stores. And so it shouldn't have been so surprising that the Parco Braniff show turned out to be recycling exactly this sort of 60s- and-70s-in-the-90s imagery: Alexander Calder-designed jets, Pucci-styled stewardesses in space helmets. To evoke this imagery at its peak in the prime of the Shibuya-kei period I just have to recall Yoshinori Sunahara's 'Sounds of the 70s' album, the Bungalow label, and a Pizzicato 5 show I saw in London in about 1997 (it was, to sum everything up, a Wallpaper magazine party) in which Maki Nomiya was dressed in a dainty sci-fi air stewardess' uniform all in white.
Now, my first reference to Shibuya-kei on my website came in September 1998, when I declared Shibuya-kei dead. Well, I may have been a bit premature. I come today to tell you that Shibuya-kei is no longer dead. Perhaps it never was, or perhaps it's walking undead. It's back, like a Pucci Lolita, like a snapshot in a cherished copy of FRUiTS magazine. For five years the spirit of Gap and Uniqlo has banished all but beige, grey, cream, black and white from Japanese streets. But pinks, yellows, oranges and reds are back, synthetic fabrics are back, a bold sort of sensuality is evident again. Not only in this Braniff exhibition, but in the second show I saw today, an impressive display, designed by Groovisions, of Guy Peellaert's Pravda action girl comics (last seen in a book published by Shoichi Kajino, my A&R man at Nippon Columbia at the height of Shibuya-kei and now designer of fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin -- a true dandy of vintage Shibuya-kei).
Down in the basement bookshop of Parco -- recently revamped in orange -- Kahimi Karie is once again on magazine covers (sporting with Swedish children in travel magazine Lingkaran), 'frenchy pops' records are displayed prominently in the record store alongside the obligatory bossa nova, and the new film at Cinema Rise (with its classic post-modern 80s dome, a trompe l'oeil rumpled and flipped toga in concrete) is 'Doorway To Love', a comedy about cool otakus by Matsuo Suzuki with the most cluttered, pinkest poster you ever saw.
Playing old Kahimi numbers at my Tokyo concert recently I joked 'this is retro-Shibuya-kei... welcome to the Shibuya-kei Museum!' What I didn't find out until later (when I listened to the clutch of CD-Rs people thrust into my hands after the show) was that half the audience were in neo-Shibuya bands like McDonald Duck Eclair, Dahlia and Migu (who sound exactly like prime-period Buffalo Daughter and comprise ex-members of the Cornelius touring band). The trend is confirmed by the success of new bands like Plus Tech Squeeze Box, whose flirty, squirty J-pop parody records recall classic Escalator / Trattoria groups like Yukari Fresh and Citrus.
It all strikes me as very odd that this stuff should be back so soon. Then again, I did once say that Shibuya was the place where all trends would one day be invented and revived simultaneously (mathematicians have calculated that that day will arrive in 2013). And perhaps I shouldn't declare things dead quite so early. Often, they're only sleeping. Something that summed up as many key Japanese concerns as Shibuya-kei did -- cuteness, positivity, the image of a non-toxic and ludic consumerism, sex appeal, futurism, the exotic appeal of Brazil and France, sex, sensuality and generosity -- doesn't simply disappear. It goes underground, lets people wear denim and black and Gap for a while, then pops up suddenly like a pink and white Takashi Murakami mushroom.
In my tiny way I helped create this particular fever. I understand and appreciate its values. Nostalgia for its optimism makes perfect sense to me. If something from the 90s has to come back, I'd rather see this stuff popping back through the damp topsoil than Madchester, Britpop or Grunge. So welcome back, Shibuya-kei! We missed you.
One more thing on the Current State of "Shibuya-kei"
Date: 2004-09-29 07:35 pm (UTC)There used to be a direct line of ascension in the Japanese "indie" or underground music world. Pizzicato Five made their debut on Hosono's Nonstandard label; Salon Music were produced by YMO's Takahashi, and then Salon Music's Yoshida Zin went on to discover and produce Flipper's Guitar.
The "Shibuya-kei" generation, however, has absolutely no interest in this so-called "Neo-Shibuya-kei" group of young artists and instead only support those in their inner circles (like Konishi producing Nomoto Karia or releasing Ikeda Masanori). The indie world in Japan used to be very small, and new artists probably had social connections to the older ones through going to the same parties and events. The Shibuya-kei boom in the mid-90s popularized o-share underground culture, and a lot of nobodies went out and started making interesting things without being in the direct social network of the older generation, which created an automatic antagonism and broke the unbroken chain.
I bet Konishi would have liked Capsule had he discovered them, instead of Yamaha putting them out using the same formula that Konishi invented. Also, the original Shibuya-kei crew is not selling so well these days, and I doubt they want younger competition. You can sense the frustration of Escalator's Naka Masashi - his label was supposed to be the next Trattoria, and then the whole scene imploded.
And if we define shibuya-kei as the love of jet-set culture, bossa nova, French pop, 60s graphic design, etc, these elements have been so internalized within Japanese culture that they are no longer edgy enough to warrant countercultural interest. Every Excelsior Cafe coffee chain store plays only bossa nova. If you go to a Escalator party or Ikeda Masanori or Tanaka (FPM) event, you are not going to hear 60s music or easytune-type stuff anymore, but pure pop-inflected house. Everyone is all house, all the time. Last year, you were guaranteed to hear "House of Jealous Lovers" or "Move Your Feet" at a "shibuya-kei" event, and not some weird Japanese cover of a Monkees song or Hugo Montenegro records. "Point" and "Montage" are calculated attempts to get away from that Continental-obsessed sound of the early 90s. The ultra-snobby Bonjour Records won't even sell Beikoku Ongaku, because it's "too shibuya-kei" - even though Beikoku is distancing itself from the same 90s sound. In 2003, all of the Escalator artists did a 180 from European-sounding sample-pop to New York/Berlin electro-influenced dance rock.
When Flipper's Guitar gets back together for a reunion tour, we can say "shibuya-kei" is back.
Marxy
Re: One more thing on the Current State of "Shibuya-kei"
Date: 2004-09-29 11:01 pm (UTC)Antonin
Re: One more thing on the Current State of "Shibuya-kei"
Date: 2004-10-01 06:55 pm (UTC)Marxy
Re: One more thing on the Current State of "Shibuya-kei"
Date: 2004-09-29 11:11 pm (UTC)i just wanted to chime in, or name drop? a bunch of the young guns, doing the hard work of trying to create original music under the shadow of "shibuya-kei" [witch death, appears to have left the tape on loop]. if one is able to peel back the extremely strong dead-weight of shibuya-kei, and re-examine music in tokyo. you'd find a small flock, of lightly connect people trying to produce the new sound of life in tokyo. you find usagi-chang records, trying their best to force hyper beeped out crazy pop at you. with groups like sonic coaster pop, the aprils, macdonald duck eclair, ymck, pine*am, and micro mach machine. you also find people like plus-tech squeeze box, petset, sylvia 55, eel, and strawberry machine. trying to walk the line of j-pop and pure madness. playing small shows, using famicon's for background visuals. [though the aprils now sport styling by mori chax]
then groups like tokyo fun party. supporting new deconstructive music, new enough i can't even figure out what it is, or should be called.. with groups like mondo coffee, switch boy, and kawatory. sampling and rearraging pop culture as they see it. sorta dance, sorta disjointed. with a blatant disregard for copyright, that will forever limit their distribution to hand made CDr's. [famous for 15 people?]
people trying to do this neo-shibuya-kei thing, [capsule, yamaha, marquee
(the buy your own cover story, and positive review mag) !!] are just using it as a marketing ploy.
safty is in the unoriginal.
[plug: www.musicrelated.net]
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-29 11:45 pm (UTC)It's great to get all this information on new Japanese bands, even if they're working in the Pucci-tinted shadow of 90s acts. I think all I'm signalling with this 'Shibuya kei is back' stance is that I now feel a 'tipping point' has been reached, and that this must be treated as a fully-fledged and 'official' Shibuya-kei revival, rather than a bunch of sadly deluded and atavistic artists / curators who are simply failing to get with the 21st century program. In other words, my attitude has softened and become more indulgent, because I realise that by continuing to dismiss bands / shows in this style, I may be throwing out the baby of The New with the bathwater of The Old.
Re: One more thing on the Current State of "Shibuya-kei"
Date: 2004-09-30 05:05 am (UTC)From another direction I'm hearing many including Cornelius seemingly drawing inspiration from the Childisc-like crowd (child-like sense of experimentalism without much referencing past styles other than maybe children's songs), an already been around and probably passing alternative alternative of sorts with mostly Kansai based artists.
n.d.kent