Awesome City Club -- Vampire

 

From what I've heard and seen through NHK and the YouTube live camera footage, the annual Shibuya Halloween mayhem was somewhat washed out due to the heavy rains over the Tokyo area which probably relieved the shop owners and restaurant managers there and disappointed cosplayers and October 31st revelers. But according to the Video Street View Japan channel, folks did try to lighten the mood up as best as they could.

Usually Fridays are set for the urban contemporary stuff of Japanese music but because today is indeed Halloween, I've decided to mix in a couple of Halloween-themed songs here tonight with the usual City Pop and AOR tunes. First off, we've got a synthpop entry by the band Awesome City Club titled "Vampire" which was released as their 2nd limited digital download single in March 2016. 

I don't think it sounds particularly Halloween-y but it's nice and sparkly as AWC member PORIN and former Chatmonchy drummer Kumiko Takahashi（高橋久美子）created the lyrics about a young lady falling for the titular Halloween character. Meanwhile, atagi took care of the melody. I would probably say that it was ideal as a theme song for a vampire anime which is a subgenre but it was actually used as the campaign song for HIS Travel...to Macao, of all places.

Mondo Grosso feat. PORIN from Awesome City Club -- Crypt

from Yiannis Theologos Michellis
via Wikimedia Commons

 

I've been in plenty of Japanese taxis since I was a kid, but I don't think I've ever encountered a cabbie who looked like and acted like Rinko Kikuchi's（菊地凛子）driver in the above music video. The lass may be hallucinating out of sheer boredom with her job, but I wouldn't mind being a customer bearing witness.😁

But the song this video is centering around is Mondo Grosso's August 2022 digital single "Crypt" with the star vocal this time being PORIN from the band Awesome City Club. Written and composed by Shinichi Osawa（大沢伸一）with Kei Owada（大和田慧）also writing the lyrics, it's a pretty groovy tune of the 2020s with some funk here and technopop there...and of course, Kikuchi's interpretive dancing. Although the video has her going off on some sort of dream-like tangent, the words for the song create a world out on the town in real space and also cyberspace with the titular crypt being the container for those troublesome emotions. 

Well, if "Neuromancer" ever gets its debut on the big screen, I wouldn't mind having this one as part of the soundtrack. How about having Kikuchi appearing in that one, too?👍

Awesome City Club -- Matataki（またたき）/Natsu no Gogo wa Cobalt（夏の午後はコバルト）

 

The last time that I wrote about the multi-genre band Awesome City Club was a little over a year ago with their earlier single "Seishun no Munasawagi"（青春の胸騒ぎ）. Since then, the band got its first invitation to perform on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen. Their contribution to the New Year's Eve special was "Wasurena"（勿忘...Forget-Me-Nots） which didn't particularly hit me in the feels, but I'm willing to give it another chance.

I'm doing a 2-in-1 for this ACC entry since when I wrote the article on "Seishun no Munasawagi" back in June 2021, I did mention that the band had released their 12th digital download single in April of that year, "Matataki". At the same time, I have had their 14th single "Natsu no Gogo wa Cobalt" from July on the backlog for a while, so why not take care of both of them at the same time? After all, both of them are on their 4th studio album "Get Set" which was just released earlier this year in March with a ranking of No. 39 on Oricon.

On that other article, I translated "Matataki", which is treated as a slightly obsolete expression on Jisho.org, as "Blink", but perhaps that wasn't quite an adequate rendering. Maybe "Blink of an Eye" is better since the song talks to listeners about any current tough times giving way to a potentially better future including all of the romances. The hint is that all of those valuable opportunities and experiences can escape from one very rapidly if one isn't careful and open. Certainly, the music video above illustrates some added poignancy. Co-vocalists Miho "PORIN" Doshida（土志田美帆）and atagi were responsible for the lyrics while the latter and Ryo Nagano（永野亮）came up with the melody.

Meanwhile, PORIN and atagi were responsible for the creation of "Natsu no Gogo wa Cobalt" (A Summer Afternoon is Cobalt), a summer breezy and lightly funky tune that's about enjoying the best of the hot season. The song was used as the opening theme for a Fuji-TV drama last year titled "Kanojo wa Kirei Datta"（彼女はキレイだった...She Was Pretty） based on the original 2015 South Korean rom-com. Apparently, the show was so popular that remakes were done all over Asia.

Awesome City Club -- Seishun no Munasawagi（青春の胸騒ぎ）

 

It's been a while since I've put up an Awesome City Club song so I think tonight's a good night to do so.

This group of Tokyo-based musicians and singers exploring the various facets of rock, R&B and Neo-City Pop has been around since 2013 and I've contributed a couple of articles on Awesome City Club so far: "Don't Think, Feel" and "Outsider"（アウトサイダー）. A good friend of mine has been a convert to their cause for a while and I got to find out about ACC through from him some years ago. Since writing about "Outsider" in 2018 though, there have been a couple of departures from the group. Vocalist and rapper Takumi Matsuzaka（マツザカタクミ）left in 2019 while drummer Yukie（ユキエ）said goodbye in 2020. 

But let's go back to January 2017, shall we? ACC released their fourth and final album in the "Awesome City Tracks" series titled logically enough "Awesome City Tracks 4", and one of the tracks is "Seishun no Munasawagi" (Apprehensions of Youth). Listening to this one song and the other two that I've come across, I think ACC has been about looking at the positivity in life, and even with Matsuzaka and vocalist/keyboardist Miho "PORIN" Doshida's（土志田美帆）lyrics about what seems to be efforts in bringing life to a relationship that has fallen on hard times on the first snow in Tokyo (specifically Shibuya), the impression is that things are very likely to be salvaged and brought back to a healthier state. Vocalist/guitarist atagi was responsible for the lightly funky music.

"Awesome City Tracks 4" was their best of the four albums in terms of Oricon rankings as it hit No. 30. Incidentally, I always wondered how the band came up with their name. Well, according to J-Wiki, it was Matsuzaka who came up with the term City Club that he thought better described themselves than as a regular band since he felt that the group had more of a looser project-type feeling. Then, the Awesome was placed as the first word because it felt really good reading it.

Hope ACC is continuing to do well. They actually released their latest digital download single a few months ago "Matataki"（またたき...Blink）.

Awesome City Club -- Outsider（アウトサイダー）

I mentioned that I saw my good friends for dinner a few nights ago and we shared some information on the contemporary pop music scene in Japan since we share that aspect in common along with our love of food. He tipped me off about a group that he considered to be in the indie pop vein called Awesome City Club. I said that I hadn't heard about them so he gave me the link to their website and their videos on YouTube.

A few hours later, I had to go "Oops!". No, nothing to do with the toilet although the Mexican was wonderfully spicy. My acknowledgement of error was actually due to the fact that I actually wrote about an Awesome City Club song back in 2016 titled "Don't Think, Feel" but had forgotten about them. Apologies to ACC!

"Don't Think, Feel" was their second single so I've checked out their first one, "Outsider" from July 2015. Pretty slick and there is a bit of that retro-pop feeling that I've always liked. To specify, the retro-pop kinda takes me back to times such as the disco of the late 1970s and the early 2000s of poppy Japanese soul. Plus, the music video with all of the band members sporting some snazzy fashion also had me thinking into the past. In a way, the music seemed to connect me with Bruno Mars for some reason.

Bassist Takumi Matsuzaka（マツザカタクミ）and vocalist/guitarist atagi created "Outsider". I was intrigued by how the group came up with the name Awesome City Club so looking at the J-Wiki page for the band, I found out that they had wanted to come up with its own overarching theme of "a soundtrack for an awesome city" to bring the City Pop of the 2010s from Risokyo (which seems to be a merging of "ideal" and "capital city" to mean "utopia") to Tokyo. Matsuzaka had also felt that because all of the 5 members had come in from other bands, the group shouldn't be considered a band per se but a collaborative club of sorts. Then, in an interview on Cinra.com, the bassist also wanted to separate ACC from other bands by avoiding the use of the ordinary word "band" since groups seem to rely on "The" and "-s" to identify themselves.

Hmmm....perhaps Awesome City Club could get itself invited to the Opening Ceremonies in 2020? Anyways, now that my memories are back and the egg has been wiped off my face, I can also add one of this group's albums to my wish list.

Awesome City Club -- Don't Think, Feel

I had just picked up on Sing Like Talking's latest lovely single "Kaze ga Fuita Hi"（風が吹いた日）from YouTube when I saw this video to the side called "Don't Think, Feel" by a band called Awesome City Club. So, I decided to give that a spin. No regrets whatsoever.

"Don't Think, Feel" is the 2nd single by Awesome City Club released in April 2016, and true to the title and the music video starring the band looking like a bunch of happy college kids in GAP wear with a touch of United Colours of Bennetton, it's all about having the fun in the big city. I'm not sure but I think the video was at least partially filmed in tony Aoyama in Tokyo. There's some good ol' disco, some funk and a bit of technopop in there which kinda fits what City Pop has been about. At first, I had assumed that the genre was a direct Japanese translation of AOR but I think it's actually a melange of different genres that can be mixed in various combinations, as long as the finished product has that feeling of life in the metropolis. Encountering Awesome City Club, I'm reminded of Marcos V's article from March 2014 which spoke about some of those hidden urban contemporary gems. It just goes to show that City Pop has continued to survive from the 70s and 80s through folks like this band and other artists such as Junk Fujiyama and Hitomitoi.

Awesome City Club started its journey in 2013 with a major debut in 2015. Its members are atagi (guitar/vocals), Porin (synthesizer/vocals), Morishi (guitar/synthesizer/vocals), Takumi Matsuzaka (bass/synthesizer/rap) and Yukie (drums). All of them came from different bands in the past. "Don't Think, Feel" is also on their 3rd album "Awesome City Tracks 3" which came out within the last couple of weeks in June.