Shibuya-kei Is
Dead
By Momus
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/relay/cafe/original/?fname=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.dreamwiz.com%2Fgethappy%2Fimages%2Fstarfruits.gif)
Of course, the Japanese
will tell you that the '90s pop movement known as Shibuya-kei is over.
It's triumphed, restructured the Japanese music industry, brought fame
to eclectic artists like Cornelius, Kahimi Karie and Pizzicato 5 and
is now going international.
Already groups on American labels like March, Matador, Emperor Norton,
Minty Fresh, or European labels like Berlin's Bungalow, are beginning
to sound like Shibuya-kei bands. The mirror the Japanese have held up
to the west, a distorting mirror, a selective and filtering vision of
our pop culture, is apparently one which can help us to redefine in
new and interesting ways what pop is.
We western pop-makers are like the Brothers Grimm. We scribbled a few
fairy stories a long time ago. And now they're there, transmuted,
misunderstood and built in stone at Tokyo Disneyland, and we're
wandering around the theme park in our frock coats murmuring aloud in
wonder 'Did we really start this?'
Arkists At The End Of The World
Apres moi le deluge. The flood has come, and it's the end of
the world. In the era of global retro we are being engulfed by a
plethora of products and styles. Some of us can swim and others are
drowining.
The epicenter of global retro culture is Shibuya, the trendy shopping
district of west Tokyo which gave Shibuya-kei (literally 'Shibuya
style') its name. Here the record shops are the best stocked in the
world. Fashions change every five minutes, and the moment a style is
invented it's also revived and parodied. Shops and museums are the
same thing, and shopping and curating are creative activities on a par
with making art.
Pizzicato 5, the groovy sampladelic grandfathers of Shibuya-kei,
called their last album 'Happy End Of The World'.
Looking around recently for a name to call the new sort of artists at
work in Shibuya-kei pop, I asked pop writer Simon Reynolds what he
would call this new type of 'shopping' artist who curates, collects,
samples and synthesizes, collates, edits and archives the pop of the
west and the pop of the past.
Simon said 'Well, it's a combination of the role of an artist and an
archivist, so why not call him an 'archist'?'
I misheard it as 'arkist' and thought of Noah herding his personal
selection of animals aboard the ark so that they can escape the flood.
'Yes!' I shouted, 'it's the perfect metaphor! It's got the idea of
selection, it's got plethora, it's got apocalypse!'
Japanese Pop Explosion
Think of Coke cans being turned into intricate model steam engines in
Africa. Cultural objects are often so much more interesting when taken
out of context, misunderstood, or fetishised.
When Ennio Morricone combined his interpretation of American cowboy
whistling and guitar playing with memories of the folk arrangements of
Sicily and Calabria he came up with a new genre, Spaghetti Western
music. When the boys in Daft Punk listened to the thudding 70s dance
sounds playing in their parents' bedroom, the mix going clear then
muddy again as dad opened and shut the door, they chose deliberately
to misunderstand the dynamics of disco, and broke through to the
original sound which made their names.
The Japanese music industry is the world's second largest. It is
dominated 75% by Japanese groups who sing in Japanese. Despite the
best efforts of Japanese record labels, these groups (the kabuki glam
of Glay, the bland bossa pop of Dreams Come True) have failed to make
the slightest impact on the west.
That's all changed with Shibuya-kei. Pizzicato 5, Cornelius, Kahimi
Karie, Takako Minekawa, Cibo Matto, Buffalo Daughter, Yukari Fresh and
others now either live in the west or have begun touring Europe and
the States intensively, getting rave reviews wherever they go.
Articles have appeared recently in all the style mags and newspapers
about Japanese pop, and Steve Lamacq's producer, asking me for an
interview for a BBC Radio 1 documentary about it, tells me that 'Steve
is very excited about the Japanese pop explosion.'
Whereas Britpop was a movement based on the premise that bands signed
in Camden had relevance worldwide, and was marketed by an export drive
marked by copious use of the union jack, Shibuya-kei (taking place in
the same time period in Japan) was all about import. The young Keigo
Oyamada of Cornelius, the young Kenji Takimi of Crue-L Records, were
CD and vinyl junkies. With no weekly music press exerting the
straightjacket pressure of peer group conformity, Keigo and Kenji
simply bought whatever records they could afford, disregarding
category, period, country of origin and critical endorsement. They
bought records with cool sleeves, in languages they couldn't
understand.
It wasn't the snobbism of the record collector, it was quite the
opposite: the open curiosity of people with absolutely no
preconceptions, but a huge appetite for music and the vision and
imagination it carries.
Trustafarians From Pluto
Of course, they were helped by two things: the best-stocked record
shops in the world, and the kindest parents in the world.
Japanese are a bit like Trustafarians, those trust-funded dreadlocked
slummers who 'find themselves' as soap dodgers and road protesters
until Daddy is satisfied they're mature enough to inherit the family
business.
The older generation of Japanese are the world's biggest savers, with
small fortunes in their bank accounts, accumulated through a lifetime
of conformity and caution. As if to make up for the freedom and
individuality they never had themselves, they give their kids a five
year window of freedom between the draconian discipline of high school
and the equally draconian discipline of office work and marriage.
And through this precious window the young Japanese fly, travelling
the world, getting laid, buying huge quantities of pop records and
adopting some of the most outrageous combinations of clothes seen this
side of Pluto.
The current youth style in Harajuku, the Camden Town of Tokyo, is
called Decora-Chan. Its idol and exemplar is the gap-toothed, candy
pink singer and actress Tomoe Shinohara (for whom I wrote a song
earlier this year, rejected as being 'too delicate'). The Decora-chan
girls wear layers of petticoats they mix with hilariously expensive
Vivienne Westwood shoes, absurdly sexy little silk socks, accessories
reminiscent of early Madonna or Cyndi Lauper, coloured contact lenses,
ludicrous baroque headgear, and transparent bags sporting cute cartoon
characters. Their habitual greeting is to raise their right hands in
the paw-fist shape of the Shinto cat. They are supercute and listen to
groups like Puffy and Smap. You can see photos of them in Japteen
magazines like Cutie and Fruits.
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/relay/cafe/original/?fname=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.dreamwiz.com%2Fgethappy%2Fimages%2Fdecorachan.gif)
They aren't Shibuya-kei, which is better summed up by model and singer
Hinano. But they show just how delightfully spoiled and fascinatingly
creative Japanese youth still is, even in this time of recession and
economic dread.
The Decora-chan girls also hint at the strange collusion which exists
in Japanese culture between the hentai (pervert) and the kawai
(cute), and point up an interesting parallel between the international
indie-zine movement's obsession with innocence and childhood, and the
Japanese fascination with the blossomlike transience of youth, which
is referred to in its sexual mode as Lolicon (short for Lolita
Complex) and in its musical mode as Lolitapop
Making the transition from the provocatively demure sailor-suits of
their school uniforms to the baroque mix'n'match of their Decora-chan
gear (Marie Antoinette as a cyberpunk milkmaid), Japanese teenage
girls go from one highly fetishised image to another. The crucial
difference is that one is passive, the other active; one submissive,
the other creative. When they get to Shibuya, the schoolgirls speak
their own slang, embrace their own fetish status, and shop deliriously
in celebration of their new-found freedom to choose its cutest
expression.
Shopping Is Only Stupid When You
Shop Stupidly
When I produced The Poison Girlfriend, a Japanese artist who named
herself after one of my early Creation albums, in 1993, I was
surprised to hear her say that her favourite artist was a leftfield
french avant garde singer from the early '70s called Brigitte
Fontaine. I was even more surprised to find that Fontaine's records,
all totally out of print in her native France, were on the current
catalogue of the Japanese label we were recording the Poison
Girlfriend album for, Nippon Columbia.
Flip through a Japanese magazine like H, the fashion, music and people
supplement of Rockin' On Japan, and you'll find articles about Rodney
Greenblatt, Rita Ackerman, Harmony Korine, Wong Kar Wai... artists who
are often obscure or reviled at home, yet are some of the most
interesting and risk-taking creative talents around.
It might stem from their huge respect for the craftsmen, the
calligraphers and lacquer makers of Japanese history, but it's also
partly a reaction to the conformity expected daily of Japanese
workers, who have to click their heels and bow to their colleagues all
day long, and are only able to escape furtively into apocalyptic
mangas on the tube home, or exquisitely perverse S&M pornography.
Conformity forces people into a rich underworld of imagination and
fantasy.
Maybe my affinity with the Japanese pop scene is based on the fact
that I too experienced the discipline of a Prussian military academy
at my Scottish boarding school.
Introducing The Bands
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/relay/cafe/original/?fname=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.dreamwiz.com%2Fgethappy%2Fimages%2Fkkkkk.gif)
In 1994 Crue-L Records asked me to make an EP for Kahimi Karie.
It was called 'I Am A Kitten: Kahimi Karie sings Momus in Paris', and
was the first of a series of records we continue making to this day.
In them I get to be a sort of geographic and gender transvestite,
imagining what it must be like to be a beautiful Japanese girl.
Kahimi, the ultimate exemplar of the concept of intelligent shopping
as art, has also bought in the services of France's Philippe Katerine
and Czerkinsky, Germany's Stereo Total, and Japanese groups like Neil
and Eraiza, Cornelius, and Pizzicato 5. It's a bit like flying round
the world and coming home with a bag full of Prada and Jeremy Scott.
Takako Minekawa is the Yoko Ono of the scene. Her albums, 'Roomic
Cube' and 'Cloudy Cloud Calculator', produced by Buffalo Daughter,
set the most retro-futuristic analog synth sounds against weird
ruminations on colour theory, personal space, and the secret
significance of numbers like 47. Takako also obsesses about cats,
owls, Kraftwerk and ping pong. The first of two appealing remix
albums, 'Recubed', is due later this year.
Kenji Takimi, the long-toothed eccentric behind the influential
Crue-L label, is one of Cornelius's oldest friends. His group, the
Crue-L Grand Orchestra, makes 70s cocktail disco records. He portrays
himself on the sleeves as a sort of chintzy Andre Previn, baton held
aloft, pot belly courtesy of Photoshop (in fact he's as skinny as a
paper-panelled sliding door). Shibuya-kei, and groups like The Love
Tambourines, have made Takimi a rich man in the last five years.
Kahimi Karie's contract, like Beck's, allows her to continue to make
records for Crue-L even when she's signed to a major like Polydor.
Neil and Eraiza is the group belonging to Cornelius's live
guitarist, Hirohisa Horie. They're attempting to spearhead a
tongue-in-cheek Soft Rock revival, somewhere between Todd Haynes' take
on The Carpenters and The Ben Folds Five. Yukari Fresh make
perky indie electro-disco records. Pizzicato 5 make exemplary
futuristic francophile sampladelic bossa pop, each album a fabulous
widescreen stereo extravaganza.
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/relay/cafe/original/?fname=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.dreamwiz.com%2Fgethappy%2Fimages%2Fcdcornelius.gif)
The Chief Monkey In Tokyo
It's a digipak gatefold single the shape of an elongated box of
matches containing two tiny CDs. On the sleeve there's a photo of
Keigo Oyamada playing a theremin which emits waves towards a bust of
Beethoven, who is sitting in a field of goofy pink cartoon rabbits
looking very serious and very deaf.
The sleevenotes tell you that in order to enjoy the 'byneural' stereo
effects of this single, which is called 'Star Fruits Surf Rider', you
should play both CDs at the same time in two different CD systems,
each with stereo speakers attached. Is the world ready for the return
of quad?
Put one of the tiny CDs on and it's a gentle Beach Boys lullaby,
decorated with the clipped home organ sounds of the Maestro rhythm
unit raved about by the Beastie Boys in a recent edition of Grand
Royal, with an intense chorus that gets loud before the soothing soft
surf pop returns.
This is the sound and these are the concepts of Cornelius, king
monkey of the Shibuya-kei scene. Instead of releasing videos, he
curates reels of vector graphics TV commercials from the early 80s,
and the high point of his live shows is a theremin rendition of 'Love
Me Tender' while Elvis, projected on screens behind, sings the same
song in sync.
Keigo Oyamada started the 90s in teen indie band The Flipper's Guitar,
who got increasingly psychedelic with each album. He formed Cornelius,
named after one of the monkeys in Planet Of The Apes in 1993.
Initially an acid jazz group, Cornelius suddenly got gimmicky,
postmodern and a lot more interesting on their 1996 album '69/96' and
accompanying remix record, '96/69'. (He showed that you could rock
hard with irony, too: some of the record sounds like AC/DC).
Cornelius began getting noticed internationally with the excellent
follow-up, released last year, 'Fantasma'. His ambition is to produce
Michael Jackson. I doubt it will happen, but we can dream...
You can read an interview with him on the web at http://207.51.134.2/~donk/cornelius/interview.html.
Ton-Chi
Cornelius not only 'edits' his music in a way quite different from
western bands, chopping it up much more aggressively so that it sounds
like a radio being tuned on Short Wave and FM simultaneously, or a
film soundtrack, he also 'edits' the west's received ideas about what
constitutes pop and rock, what's serious and what's trash.
Cornelius himself calls it ton-chi.
'If there was one thing I wanted Americans to take home it's the
Japanese concept of ton-chi, which is derived from Zen Buddhism. It's
looking at something and garnering a different answer. It's looking at
something from an entirely different perspective.'
Fresh perspectives have often powered new beat booms. Just as the
Beatles listened to and synthesised black and white American music,
Little Richard and Elvis, while in the US those markets were still
segregated by race, so the Japanese have had a unique curatorial take
when it comes to the western pop they rate.
If you were to draw a pop map of the west from a Japanese perspective,
you'd have to make France a huge girlpop grid (the '60s lolitapop of
Hardy and Dutronc, the '70s soft rock schmaltz of Polnareff and lounge
pervery of Gainsbourg figure big in the Shibuya-kei blueprint), Brazil
a big Bossaland, Sweden wet with lakes and wrapped in a cardigan,
America edited down to its east and west coast extremes: Beck, the
Beach Boys and the Beastie Boys...
England on our pop map is an elegant sliver of an island, a splash in
the silvery North Sea populated by St Etienne, Shampoo, and slim,
style-mad visionary eccentrics like Paul Weller, and Mike Alway, who
earned a Kahimi Karie tribute single ('Mike Alway's Diary') by posing
on the sleeve of one of his el Records compilations in the
trans-sexual guise of Edith Sitwell as photographed by Cecil Beaton.
It's Important To Be Trendy
In Britain, when we say someone's trendy, we're usually just a breath
away from calling them a fashion victim or implying some moral failing
in their dandyism. Look at the verbal and physical abuse heaped on
style geniuses like Malcolm McLaren and Leigh Bowery.
The Japanese word for trendy is 'kokoi', and it has an
implication of 'cool, fashionable, smart'. The opposite word in
Japanese, the word for uncool, 'dasai', has a negative charge
of shame. It is simply shameful not to know where it's at.
And so the Japanese keep themselves very well informed. When they
travel to the west, they know where to go. They consume culture in a
way we, its progenitors and original makers, are too complacent to.
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/relay/cafe/original/?fname=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.dreamwiz.com%2Fgethappy%2Fimages%2Fescalator.gif)
This applies to record labels too. Unlike British record companies,
who very rarely sign non-British talent, Japenese labels have been
keen to collect the western talent they discover, often neglected, on
their trips to the west. The youngest Shibuya-kei label, Escalator,
releases compilations like New One 1 & 2 which mix young Japanese
groups with older European artists like Czerkinsky, whose '80s group
Mikado was an export-only Japanese hit, but who's better known in his
native France as the man with the thick loungecore spectacles in
certain famous photos by Pierre et Gilles.
Another aspect of Shibuya-kei is the care they take over sleeves,
video releases, clothes, websites. One of the best design companies in
the world, Contemporary Productions, does a lot of the sleeves.
Cornelius has started his own clothing company, Bathing Ape. Pizzicato
5 are also now moving into the area of product design, branding their
own range of stationary and furniture.
Shibuya Is Portable
There are all sorts of Shibuya-kei offshoot labels now which aren't
even in Japan. Like Bungalow in Berlin, who are internationalising
Shibuya-kei by mixing on their roster Japanese groups like Yukari
Fresh with German and French acts, like Stereo Total or the
Momus-produced Laila France, who have been 'Japonified'. Bungalow's
compilations of Japanese pop, 'Sushi 3003' and 'Sushi 4004', curated
by Le Hammond Inferno, make an excellent job of packaging J-Pop for
the west, and when these records arrive back in Japan even the
Japanese look at their own scene differently.
My own work as Momus has been hugely influenced by Shibuya-kei, and
especially its resident genius Cornelius. You can read on the Momus
website (http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/onshopping.html)
about my attempts to ape the Shibuya-kei 'arkists', shopping in London
and Tokyo for key ingredients for my new album, the 'analog baroque'
'Little Red Songbook'.
Cornelius and Momus: two great apes aping each other.
An Underground Airport
When I met Cornelius after his recent London gig (press only, which
didn't stop a queue of 300 Japanese fans stretching half way down
Regent Street) he handed me a copy of Denki Groove mainman Yoshinori
Sunahara's solo project 'Take Off And Landing', a lush musical fantasy
about an imaginary new airport deep under Tokyo.
A key element for the post-Shibuya-kei artists is their conceptual
ambition: it isn't just about chasing dreams of 'classic perfect pop'.
It's got to be bigger and stranger than that, a whole vision, a
worldview like the one that comes over in the Planet of the Apes
films.
This isn't just an artistic strategy, it also has commercial
applications, like the clothing line Cornelius has started, Bathing
Ape. There's a parallel with powerful New York cultural curators The
Beastie Boys, who set their imprimatur on J-Pop through their links
with Buffalo Daughter and Cibo Matto. (And now that Sean Lennon is
dating Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda, Shibuya-kei has its own Royal Family,
with a pedigree going back to the 60s Beat Boom.)
Michael's Wonderland
I believe that certain districts of West Tokyo - Shibuya, Harajuku,
Ebisu, Roppongi - are the laboratories of the style of the future,
places where curatorial companies like the 3D Corporation, which
manages Cornelius and Kahimi Karie, spring up like mushrooms to
support dreamers like Cornelius and devise financial structures for
bold new styles which one day will spill over to the west.
One of Cornelius's heroes, Michael Jackson, was in Tokyo at the same
time I was last week. He told the press that Tokyo was Michael's
Wonderland then announced that he would be opening a new theme park
and leisure complex there. Several Japanese friends of ours saw him
shopping with a couple of bodyguards in Tower Records, Shibuya.
He needn't really have bothered with the bodyguards. Japan is very
safe (the greatest menace is getting laden down with tiny,
intricately-wrapped gifts).
Jackson is right to be buying into Tokyo: I really think that it's in
the accelerated dreamland of Japan, where the 21st century started a
good ten years ago, that we're going to discover the freshest new
combinations of the games with sound and vision we've been playing in
the west in the 20th century.
In Tokyo, it's Disneyland everywhere. And, back in the west, we're the
Brothers Grimm.
Read an interview with Cornelius' Keigo Oyamada here.
첫댓글 누구 영어 잘하시는 분 없나요...?;;;;
대충..momus는 이렇게 말합니다. 시부야는 .. 일본인의 국민성에서 비롯된 '따라쟁이' 신드롬의 부산물이라는 거죠. 대충 따라하기의 수준을 넘어선 멋진 시부야계 라고 인정하고 있지만 비젼은 썩 밝지않다 라는 내용입니다... 짧게 설명이 어렵네요 아무래도 읽어보셔야--;