![]() Martin Roberts notes that “What differentiated the Shibuya-kei bands were their references not just to contemporary but to retro popular music genres, including 1960s French and British pop, Brazilian bossa nova, easy listening and exotica, European movie soundtracks, Motown, disco and 1980s UK indie pop.” It was a very insular community, with lyrics (at least at first) focusing on the trivial concerns of well-to-do young people. While their appropriation of consumerist Western culture may seem the opposite of subversive, it was, counterintuitively, a critique of the Japanese pop music of the day. Eventually, they became the first underground Japanese groups to receive international attention, being released on notable Western indie labels and retaining cultural resonance with avant-garde artists across the world to this day. The makers of Shibuya-kei were a group of young artists who were incredibly popular among the Tokyo indie scene and, at first, absolutely nowhere else. Literally, Shibuya-kei simply means “Shibuya style,” in reference to the record stores of the Shibuya neighborhood, one of the major commercial hubs of Tokyo. After a short while, the music also got much better.Īt this point, it would probably be good to describe what “Shibuya-kei” actually means, or at least what it represents (as the artists it encompasses would never self-identify as a cohesive collective). Nomiya is often credited for giving the band a strong visual identity, wearing multiple wigs during every concert and providing a sense of drama and theatricality. The band really hit its stride after 1990, when vocalist Maki Nomiya joined its ranks, and they went on to gain some acclaim (even if they are currently inaccessible on many streaming services). Their debut single “Audrey Hepburn Complex” was released in 1985. Pizzicato Five was founded in the early 1980s by Yasuharu Konishi, one of the wealthy, young, Japanese music collectors that defined this scene. At first, their music may appear to be anything but class-conscious, but Pizzicato Five’s focus on foreign sounds shows a desire to distance themselves from 90s Japan and all its struggles. Their influences were primarily Western rather than Japanese, as the hip record stores they loved stocked British, French, and American albums. These musicians, of whom Pizzicato Five and Flipper’s Guitar were the most notable, were self-consciously chic in all aesthetic areas, and this translated to the music they made (and all the accompanying visuals). But this crisis did not really affect the musicians of Shibuya-kei, who came from wealthy Tokyo families and spent their days curating record collections rather than worrying about their wages. This frivolity is especially striking when you consider that the 1990s were a dire decade for Japan’s economy, after a real-estate bubble burst and left many unemployed, especially the young lower-class. A year later, he established the label playtime rock.The musical movement of Shibuya-kei, based in Tokyo in the early 1990s, had the rare quality of being an underground musical style based on frivolous consumption, not making any attempts to speak for vulnerable members of society. In May 2009, he was discharged from the hospital but arcorhyme broke up. However, a couple month later, Takanami was hospitalized when he was diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia. In 2007, he formed the duo arcorhyme with Nishimura Ikuyo. ![]() A year later, Pizzicato Five disbanded and Takanami began to compose songs for other artists until 2007. Then in 1993, he released his first album, entitled SO SO, under the label Nippon Columbia. While attend Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, Takanami joined the band Pizzicato Five with Nomiya Maki and Konishi Yasuharu. Birthplace: Nagasaki, Nagasaki Prefecture. ![]()
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