Kumi sweeps the chimney

[imomus]

One of the pleasures of being in Paris last week was catching up with musician Kumi Okamoto, and being given a copy of her long-delayed, excellent debut Kumisolo album, My Love For You Is A Cheap Pop Song, which features a song we co-wrote, Confiance Absolue (hear it on LastFM via that link).

Kumi was looking fresh and well; after a period with long hair, she's reverted to the bobbed hairstyle she had when I first met her on a beach in Kamakura in 2001. After more than five years in a tiny studio apartment in the 13th arrondissement, she's moved up to Pigalle, and on the day I met her she was dealing, in her somewhat Amelie-like way, with some crooks who'd convinced her she needed her chimney swept and that her landlord would re-imburse her (neither was in fact the case).

But Kumi will be the last Japanese to be hospitalised with a case of Paris Syndrome. She may project naivete and cuteness, but she's tough, determined and realistic too, the kind of person who gets what she wants. After living there for several years, she knows what Paris is like, just as she knows what boys like.

The Kumisolo album (released officially on October 15th, but already available in digital form) has a sleeve by Medhi "Shobo Shobo" Hercberg (a member of extraordinary hasidim house supergroup Moishe Moishe Moishele) and begins -- in retro-Trattoria style -- with a Disneyesque fanfare, and an American voice saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is Jonah from Yacht proudly presenting the first album from Kumisolo, a festival pageant of good time magic and imagination in thousands of sparkling lights..."

That's a direct allusion, of course, to Shibuya-Kei, to Cornelius and Kahimi Karie and the mid-90s Japanese pop scene (Cornelius' 69/96 album, for instance, has Kahimi singing "Welcome to this new tape, it's gonna blow you away..." at the start). Kumi's delayed record -- it took so long to come out that her label, Active Suspension, almost disappeared in the interim, and there almost wasn't any music industry left to deliver it -- is like the last and best Shibuya-kei album (the clearest, lightest, and most purely pop), but also feels like one of the last releases of what became my own personal favourite music scene immediately after it, the Paris noughties electronic pop scene centred on Active Suspension and Clapping Music and featuring talents like o.lamm, Domotic, Shinsei, Davide Ballula and Hypo.

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I was chatting with Olivier Lamm last week about my sense of disappointment that this scene hadn't crossed over and become as mainstream as it deserved to be; I remember upbraiding the manager of Other Music in New York, for instance, for stocking Phoenix and Air records but not Hypo and o.lamm records. But whereas Phoenix and Air are now huge -- the Jean-Michel Jarres of our time -- these much more interesting musicians are still forced to operate almost completely under the radar, putting out records when they can, and working day jobs on the side (Kumi works in the fashion industry now, after serving for several years in a bakery). It's enough to give you a bad case of Paris Syndrome, seeing how things like that play out. But these artists will have their day; the indefatigable Hypo is preparing a new record.



My Brussels friend Pascalino recently asked me for a text for a Kawai Pop fanzine he was putting together, a sort of Festschrift for Kumi. I wrote:

"Somewhere I have photos of a young Kumi Okamoto playing trumpet on the beach at Kamakura. I'd trekked out to the Pacific resort, with its temples and surfers and mysterious hills, to see her band Crazy Curl playing in a temporary marquee erected on the beach. She'd sent me her debut EP, and I'd really liked the breezy acoustic pop music with its explicit references to él Records and Shibuya-kei. My girlfriend at the time came along grumpily; I think Kumi's short skirts and ingenue manner made her "dangerous".

"The next time I saw Kumi she was in Europe, in Paris, hanging out with a totally different crowd. She'd shaken off the retro-90s references and was now making experimental music with a group of musicians around the labels Clapping Music and Active Suspension. If the él and Trattoria labels had inspired her to make backward-looking pastiche music in Japan, this new crowd was edging Kumi towards something experimental and futuristic, some intriguing mixture of girlpop, microsound and glitch folk. She moved into the old Chinatown apartment of one of my best friends, Florence Manlik, and financed herself by working in a bakery and various clothes shops.

"Kumi's music evolved through the decade, and the experiments led her (and collaborators like o.lamm) back full circle to a pure pop sound. Kumi may have become more daring and more fashionable in her Paris years, but she's still adorable, still an ingenue, and still highly dangerous."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, who in her grand jury testimony stated that Polanski had anally raped her. I can't really see why he shouldn't face the legal consequences.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, morally it's all fairly cut and dried, not to mention pickled, salted and suspiciously well-preserved. We can only hope that Polanski soon finds himself in a cell with Charles Manson, the Nazis who killed his parents, and the CEO of UBS.

[(Anonymous)]

Come now, Momus, you can do better than that! I wasn't suggesting moral equivalence between Polanski, Manson and Eichmann. I was suggesting that he admitted to a crime - perhaps not quite up to Nazi standards but none too pretty nonetheless - and should face up to the legal consequences, like anyone else would have to.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think Momus was suggesting moral equivalence. He was suggesting that, although it's true that Polanski anally raped a child, he too has had a hell of a lot of suffering in his life. His mother & his wife were both murdered in horrific circumstances. The anal rape was a long time ago, the raped girl has moved on, and I think the law should take her lead and let Polanski move on as well. What is the point of jailing him now?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We could be here all day, arguing with tedious pedanticism and increasing mutual vituperation (as people are currently doing all over the internet) the details of this case. My understanding is that he confessed in 1978 and was all set to face a plea-bargained punishment when the judge reneged on his promise and suddenly the prospect of 50 years in prison loomed, or at least long enough to deprive the world of several great films. And my understanding is that this has come up now, and in Switzerland, because of the UBS affair, not because of what happened in 1978. Because it's a highly emotive issue, the Swiss seem to have chosen their "bone" cannily, knowing that UBS will work up far fewer people. Yet it's also a very blunt instrument to use against a distinguished 76 year-old man.

In the end, I must side with the french culture minister, Woody Allen, Bernard-Henry Levy (there's a first!), Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and all the others who are protesting this arrest. Which is clearly not the same thing as approving child abuse. We must keep our eye on the ball, which in this case may not be the big red emotive one, successfully distracting though that is.

[(Anonymous)]

the prospect of 50 years in prison loomed, or at least long enough to deprive the world of several great films.

And Momus pulls the it's-different-for-artists move. (Incidentally, what great movies would we have been deprived of? Polanski's post-flight career has been a little like Bowie's post-Scary Monsters career.)

Which is clearly not the same thing as approving child abuse.

But letting Polanski get away with child abuse is, effectively, saying that it is of less importance than its perpetrator's freedom, career, etc.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Swiss have won, you see.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(And to think they could just have frozen a few Bin Laden bank accounts instead!)

[(Anonymous)]

That's it Momus. All it required, to be on the side of right-thinking people everywhere, was for you to say that Polanski should be punished, that the law is the law and crime is crime. Was that such a very hard thing for you to do? And yet you had to talk about complexity, about spin, about bones and blunt instruments, UBS and the Bin Ladens. I only started reading this blog yesterday, but that's it for me. I'm going to stop reading you on February 10th 2010. Forever.

[(Anonymous)]

You might be right. It might all be a dastardly plot by the Swiss to take the heat off their money laundering services. That makes no difference to the moral questions revolving around Polanski, his sexual abuse of a child, his confession of it, and his flight to avoid the legal consequences.

Feminists vs Aging cinephiles: this is why the avant garde hated Hollywood

[(Anonymous)]

Child rape is a really complicated matter (when you’re a over-indulged male millionaire).

Hands up who is happy to boycott the has-beens:

Whoopi Goldberg
Fanny Ardant
Woody Allen
David Lynch
Martin Scorsese
Michael Mann
Wim Wenders
Pedro Almodóvar
Darren Aronofsky
Terry Gilliam
Julian Schnabel
the Dardenne brothers
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Wong Kar-Wai
Walter Salles
Jonathan Demme
Tilda Swinton
Monica Bellucci
Asia Argento
Harvey Weinstein

Re: Feminists vs Aging cinephiles: this is why the avant garde hated Hollywood

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Three questions:

1. Did anyone ask fellow sex-hero Gary Glitter to sign?

2. Do you suppose the sun-crushing irony is lost on Woody?

3. Do you suppose Fatty Arbuckle's grave has hit 300 rpms yet?

Re: Feminists vs Aging cinephiles: this is why the avant garde hated Hollywood

[(Anonymous)]

yes, support from such moral heavyweights as woody "i married mine and mia's adopted daugther" allen. i love it.

Re: Feminists vs Aging cinephiles: this is why the avant garde hated Hollywood

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Poor Fatty Arbuckle. We've come a long way. In his era a career could be ruined for something one didn't do, now there are legions in support of someone despite what they did do! Ah, progress...

Consequences & Repercussions

[jdcasten.livejournal.com]

At best, I think, these folks (Whoopi – Weinstein) are:

a) Friends/fans supporting Polanski
b) Offended like Nick about the politics involved
c) Concerned about some sort of “Statute of Limitations”

a)—this helps explain why they are throwing their star-power around… (+ Polanski’s a fellow Star).

b)—is Polanski getting exceptionally bad treatment due to his high profile status? Was this the only time his celebrity caused him to be an exception… how many people would have been able to avoid the law in the first place?

c)—Polanski is now in his 70s: His sentence would be shorter than 50 years by default.