Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Monday, February 18, 2019

Denki Groove -- Shonen Young(少年ヤング)


Maybe I should have put this on Friday or Saturday, but heck, it's all fine.

From Amazon.jp

Not sure if this cover of Denki Groove's(電気グルーヴ)9th album "J-POP" from April 2008 would be now called an example of Deep Fake, but heck the meshing of the faces of Pierre Taki(ピエール瀧)and Takkyu Ishino(石野卓球)onto these tough guys is amazing and creepy at the same time. What is plain cool, though, is the cruise-worthy track "Shonen Young" (Young Boy Young).

With guest star guitarist Toru Hidaka(ヒダカトオル)from Beat Crusaders (in the single version), Denki Groove provides a soundscape of groove and future-is-kakkoii through "Shonen Young" which was also the band's 12th single from December 2007. Taki and Ishino wrote the weird rhyming lyrics while Ishino got the music together. It would have been nice if "Shonen Young" had been used as the background music for some video game.


The music video for "Shonen Young" is an amazing experience in itself. I had wondered about a Japanese TV show inviting a bunch of the fashionable women in current-day Shibuya or Harajuku and then remaking them into 80s aidoru/teen icons. Well, I no longer have to wonder. Director Hideyuki Tanaka(田中秀幸)did all of the hard work and transformed them into girls with the Seiko-chan cut, Hiroko Yakushimaru's(薬師丸ひろ子)character from "Sailor Fuku to Kikanjuu"(セーラー服と機関銃...Sailor Suit and Machine Gun), and terrifying tsuppari with the frizzy hair.

"J-POP" peaked at No. 9 on Oricon.

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