Shibuya-kei leaves a warm afterglow
Japan Times
Although the artists once grouped under the Shibuya-kei umbrella -- Cornelius, Kahimi Karie and Fantastic Plastic Machine, to name a few -- have moved away from their old musical styles and want distance from the genre, Shibuya-kei remains a convenient expression to identify that loose assembly of 1990s musicians who rebelled against J-pop hegemony and transformed the international image of Japanese culture.
The Japanese media invented the term more than a decade ago to describe the hodge-podge of young musicians ignored by the mainstream, but who sold anomalously well at Shibuya's import record stores HMV and Tower Records. Sonically, the artists did not share a specific style, but more of a guiding philosophy. They worked almost exclusively in pastiche and bricolage -- mixing, matching, rearranging, deconstructing and straightup stealing from California '60s soft rock, French Ye-Ye, Chicago house, East Coast hip-hop sampling (Pizzicato Five), German Krautrock (Buffalo Daughter, Takako Minekawa), Scottish anorak pop, Madchester club beats (Flipper's Guitar), Brazilian bossa nova, Italian film soundtracks (Fantastic Plastic Machine) and any and all other internationalist, retro-futurist genres. Labels often referred to the result as "Japanese yogaku" -- Western music created by Japanese artists.
The music itself, however, has not aged particularly well -- especially since most of the output featured artists rewriting their favorite '60s songs with the minor addition of some then-contemporary but now-outdated production. With the key Shibuya-kei references better known and cataloged now, it is hard to imagine someone wanting to hear a quirky reinterpretation of songs by Roger Nichols & The Small Circle of Friends when the original tracks are easy to find....more...
This story mentions the popularity this stuff achieved overseas and the relative obscurity it holds in Japan. I always sort of linked the popularity to hipsters in the US simply liking something because it was Japanese. I can kind of see liking something for novelty's sake but Pizzicato 5 were pretty hopeless. Cornelius had his place but when he decided to release no less than two remix albums of stuff from his debut Fantasia (which was already a mish mash of things) I really thought he was pushing it. Cibo Matto were in NY when they were making music. Do they count? I saw them once. Again, I would say their popularity was mainly based in them being Japanese.
When people point out how lameness of foreigners in Japan achieving something simply because they are foreigners I think it goes both ways as well. And I think of Shibuya-kei music as an example. Certainly the artist Takashi Murakami and all the nonsense he's pushed all over Roppongi Hills would qualify. NYers got this guy started and I just don't get it.
This story mentions Zest in Shibuya as being one of the great places to pick up Shibuya-kei material. But I thought it was much, much more into foreign labels and foreign bands. I just noticed it closed a few weeks ago.
