capsule -- Music Controller

With all of the Perfume and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu songs in the blog now (courtesy of Marcos V.), I thought it would be nice taking a look at their maestro's (Yasutaka Nakata...田中ヤスタカ) old (and still current) unit, capsule, back in its early days. I kinda relate it to writing about Sharam Q （シャランＱ）after putting out all those Hello Project articles.

I was just drowsily browsing around the local TV stations back in Ichikawa one night when one channel highlighted this new pair's videos. The one capsule video that especially caught my eye was the one for "Music Controller". The video definitely had that Shibuya-kei/Pizzicato Five sheen and the main vocalist, Toshiko Koshijima（こしじまとしこ）, was channeling P5's Maki Nomiya's glacially funky looks. The song itself also contained some of the flightier elements of Shibuya-kei, but there was also more technopop and a hint of exotica that got me remembering the earlier songs of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

"Music Controller" came out in August 2002 as the band's 4th maxi-single. It was written and composed by Nakata as a playful instruction manual on how to use the medicinal Music Controller as a remedy for all things of the heart. I haven't followed capsule too closely but knew that the band headed into a more techno direction later on judging by some of the excerpts of later songs and their album covers, so it's a bit nostalgic (if one can deem 2002 nostalgic) to see this more multi-genre video with Koshijima's eyes in full view (a lot of their later albums had her eyes covered up in those blast shield glasses for some reason, but it looks like her pretty peepers are getting seen again).

The single also became a track on capsule's 2nd album from March 2003, "Cutie Cinema Replay", although it wasn't the original version but the Piconova remix as shown above. The Wikipedia article on the album has it classified as Shibuya-kei and Picopop, the latter genre being something that I hadn't heard before but the link brought me to the article on chiptune. As for information on the band itself, I can refer you to the original Wiki article here.