Computer Tunes

Wikimedia Commons
via Adam Schuster

Hello there! Some of you faithful viewers of KKP may have noticed that I was absent yesterday from any new articles. That is because Monday was saved for a computer parts shopping spree downtown with my good friend who is also someone very blessed with computer-creating and computer-repairing skills. We brought back everything to my place and he used a few hours to give some fine upgrades to my two computers and they're now humming with increased speed and capacity now. My great gratitude to him. There's still one more part to come in but basically we're done.

As such, I thought I would put up another Author's Picks with the theme here being songs which have something to do with computers. One entry might seem a bit odd but in that case, you can take a look at its original article to find out why I chose it.

(1978) Yellow Magic Orchestra -- COMPUTER GAME ~ Theme From The Circus

(1981) NHK Jido Gassho Dan -- Computer Obaachan （コンピューターおばあちゃん）

(1982) Donald Fagen -- I.G.Y.  (What A Beautiful World)

(2015) Natsume Mito -- 8-Bit Boy (8ビットボーイ)

Natsume Mito -- Maegami Kiri Sugita（前髪切りすぎた）

For the song of this article, I keep getting reminded of that one segment on last summer's hilarious anime, "Asobi Asobase"（あそびあそばせ）, in which Olivia REALLY needed to cut her hair due to the heat and ended up banging up her bangs big time.

Happily, I still have my hair since it looks like I have inherited my maternal grandfather's ability to keep his hair well into his nineties. Nowadays, though, when it's time to have it cut every three months, I just instruct the barber to go into hacking mode so that my pate ends up resembling something close to the do of a new Marine recruit. You can imagine that bangs don't really exist near my forehead.

Anyways, to the song at hand. A little over three years ago, Marcos V. introduced impish technopop singer Natsume Mito（三戸なつめ）to "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with "8-Bit Boy", and since then, the song has often been a go-to earworm for me. He also mentioned about Mito's debut single, "Maegami Kiri Sugita" (I Cut Too Much of My Bangs) that he said that he would write about someday.

With full apologies to my good friend in Brazil, I couldn't wait anymore so I've gone ahead with "Maegami Kiri Sugita" which was released some months before "8-Bit Boy" in 2015.

I'm unsure which came first: the song about the bangs being cut too short or Mito's most conspicuous feature of extremely short bangs. In any case, it was an auspicious debut for the model-singer. "Maegami Kiri Sugita" is a catchy tune which might be as much an earworm as the second single of "8-Bit Boy". Another interesting thing about the song, written and composed by Yasutaka Nakata（中田ヤスタカ）of capsule and Perfume fame, is that apparently several videos, each with a different theme, were created for it. The one above is officially titled "The Chinese Cabbage Version", although I think it could easily be dubbed "The NHK Kids' Show Parody".

There is also the nifty "Graffiti Version".

Then, there is the "Suspect Version" which humorously goes into how Mito got those bangs in the first place.

Finally, there is the "Everything But The Kitchen Sink Version" which puts in scenes from all of the individual versions. So far, "Maegami Kiri Sugita" has been Mito's most successful song, peaking at No. 36 on Oricon. Let's see if the song can get out of your head overnight.

Natsume Mito -- 8-Bit Boy (8ビットボーイ)

Source: generasia.com

If Perfume, CAPSULE and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ) weren’t enough, Yasutaka Nakata (中田ヤスタカ) started producing another artist this year. Her name is Natsume Mito (三戸なつめ) and, like Kyary, she’s a Harajuku model.

Kyary’s gimmick is the so-called creepy kawaii aesthetic that also transposes into her music, while in Mito’s case it's a very random one: her short bangs. The thing is, Mito’s image is based solely in the strange bangs that don’t cover her entire forehead, which makes her look a little bit odd. It’s also cute, though.

Mito’s debut single was “Maegami Kiri Sugita” (前髪切りすぎた), or “I Cut My Bangs Too Short”, which is a quirky and funny song about her short bangs gimmick. She released it in April 2015, and also shoot a lot of different low-budget videos to promote the song. I didn’t count, but, according to generasia, she released eleven videos just for “Maegami Kiri Sugita”.

Personally, I liked her debut a lot, but ended not writing a post about it yet. Maybe one day I’ll do it. But for now, the song that I keep playing non-stop is her second single, “8-Bit Boy” (8ビットボーイ), which was released in September 2015.

“8-Bit Boy” is tied to Adam Sandler’s latest movie, “Pixels”, and athough I’m not very excited for the movie itself, I’m glad that Nakata had to compose “8-Bit Boy” with the movie in mind. Based on that, it’s a song with an exciting arrangement full of retro video-game sounds.

As a 90s kid, the song really made me remind the time I played games such as Sonic The Hedgehog, and so many others, in my Sega Mega Drive (or Sega Genesis in North America). Well, the Mega Drive already used 16-bit technology, but I still associate it with the older 8-bit tech consoles. They’re both old technologies, anyway.

More about the song, the chorus is ridiculously catchy, especially when Mito keeps repeating “uh, uh, 8-Bit Boy”. Another great thing about it is the instrumental break where Nakata just unleashes he’s well known synth magic. And kudos to him for making “8-Bit Boy” sound so fun, light and exciting at the same time. I don’t know, but it’s probably he’s freshest work of 2015 so far. I also hope he keeps creating good songs for Mito-chan now that Kyary’s sound is starting to not work very well anymore.

To finish, here’s the short version of the music video, which, unfortunately, don’t show Nakata’s instrumental break. That’s basically why I was happy to find the song in its full glory in our beloved Chinese (?) site above.

As always, Nakata created the lyrics, the music and the arrangement.

Source: generasia.com