It has been a busy Saturday for the final day of February 2015. I had to take care of a couple of clients' translation requests and then a third request came in this morning. So I was tied to my chair and the computer throughout the late morning and all of the afternoon, and happy to say, I got it all done by dinner.
And now I can indulge in my hobby of continuing to fill in the spaces in this blog. Going into YouTube, I saw this video titled "Architecture in Tokyo", and apparently this is a name of either a single musician or a collective that has brought together mixes of some of the old 80s City Pop. In any case, I tried out MIX 4, and the first song was Toshiki Kadomatsu's（角松敏生）"Sea Line 'Rie'".
This is an instrumental piece by the guitarist that was his 12th single from June 1987, and boy, does it pack a wallop. Kadomatsu lets his guitar do the talking, and his guitar is screaming, "I AM HEADING FOR THE BEACH AND I AM GONNA HAVE THE BEST TIME IN RECORDED HISTORY!!!" Yup, tons of Corona Beer with lemon wedges in the neck, white sand, plenty of surf and beautiful people dressed in less as possible. This is the theme song for Genre: City Pop Sub-genre: Resort Pop.
I wondered where City Poppy contemporary aidoru group Especia and British duo Greeen Linez got their inspiration. I may have stumbled across one of their touchstones with this song. I was lucky enough to find out that there are a few recordings of "Sea Line 'Rie'" on YouTube.
The song was used as the campaign tune for an ancient cigarette commercial (yep, they used to advertise ciggys on TV), and it also became a track on his 10th album (his first instrumental album) from July 1987, "Sea Is A Lady" that peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.
Watch the man in action here.
You can also have a listen to Architecture in Tokyo as well.
Architecture in Tokyo is part of a loose genre of music called "vaporwave", which aims to recreate the audio and visual aesthetic of the 80's and 90's. Other similar acts include musicians like Saint Pepsi, Yung Bae, マクロスMACROSS 82-99 and MACINTOSH PLUS. Many of them borrow heavily from Japanese media and music. You can find many facinsating videos and music from these acts and many others. Here's one of my favorites, also from Architecture in Tokyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbQN0JnzWkA
ReplyDeleteHi, Ryan.
DeleteThat is fascinating. I had never heard of this genre of Vaporwave before. I'm glad someone is still carrying the torch for my old decades of music. Would Greeen Linez be included as a Vaporwave unit, I wonder?
Thanks very much for the comment and I will check out your YouTube link.
while i'm not sure how the artist would define themselves, Greeen Linez is definitely respected amongst the vaporwave community, and was producing a lot of this music before a couple of these other artists appeared. there's alot of blurred lines between vaporwave and many other genres, but the generous sampling and inspiration of tracks from that era are a heavy influence throughout all of them.
DeleteYeah, I checked out that YouTube link that you'd sent me. Ah, the good ol' 80s...and the fellow who created the video tried quite hard to synch up the music with some of the actions. A lot of love there.
DeleteA lot of blurred lines is right. I saw other genre names such as seapunk and chillwave in there.
haha.. yeah, there's way too many subgenres to keep track of. generally though, i find they all fall under the same umbrella. chillwave and vaporwave are two of the more common ones. seapunk by itself reminds me of something entirely different..
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