Faint Star -- Mafuyu no Tropical Night (真冬のTropical Night)

This groove is very, very serious! I can’t listen to “Mafuyu no Tropical Night” without dancing in the chair and nodding the head back and forth. The synthesizer hook, alongside the choppy electronic bass, is amazing. However, even more delicious is the lively chorus that ends in a good note with the girls singing the song’s title.

Released in February 2017 by the Technopop aidoru duo called Faint Star (Faint⋆Star), “Mafuyu no Tropical Night” is a song that could have been released in 2009 or 2010, when many Technopop units were being formed trying to compete with the then-ascending Perfume. The colorful, glossy and robotic aesthetic, both in the song and the video, suits the aforementioned era very well, so it’s nice to see something like that again.

Now, for a little bit of personal trivia, I’m not sure what I feel while listening to it… “Mafuyu no Tropical Night” sounds happy and the video’s lightning is trippy, but I also feel a hint of sadness, or nostalgy: the one that comes out at the end of the summer. This weekend, after coming back from the K-Pop party I attended on Saturday night, I went to my friend’s house to get some sleep. Hours after, when I woke up and finally decided it was time to go back to my home city (two hours and a half distant from Rio de Janeiro), I took a bus to the intercity bus terminal and started playing “Mafuyu no Tropical Night” with my eyes closed, while feeling that strong and hot breath of wind coming from the window (I’m pretty sure it was 40ºC on Sunday). It was a very good moment, even if I was still very tired of the night before, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how summer is already ending, and also that every interesting thing I did during the season is now part of my memories.

Curiously, “Mafuyu no Tropical Night’s” title makes reference to a tropical night in the middle of the winter, but I’m in Brazil, and we’re in the middle of the summer here, so I relate to it in a different way.

“Mafuyu no Tropical Night” was released as a double A-side single with “Wonder Trip”. Lyrics were written by Seira Kariya (仮谷せいら), while music was composed by DAIKI. As for the arrangement, it was done by Kenji Tamai (玉井健二) and Shunsuke Tsuri (釣俊輔).