It’s starting to feel like spring and your house isn’t the only thing that needs cleaning: Time to get your music playlists up to date.
The year so far has been a good one for Japanese music. A cohort of young creators who spent the past few years experimenting with their sounds have come of age and are releasing tracks that dabble in a little bit of everything.
While it’s always good to explore for yourself, below are four great jump-off points that will help nudge your algorithms in the right direction.
valknee
Naming your debut album “Ordinary” might not seem like a particularly bold statement at first, but for Tokyo-based artist valknee, this ho-hum adjective perfectly captures her artistic viewpoint.
“I imagined what kind of people would be listening to my songs,” she says about her first full-length, released last week. “It may be ‘ordinary,’ but I wanted to express my feelings of pride in myself.”
Since the late 2010s, valknee has elevated the everyday into something worth singing about. Though she’s been labeled as a rapper, the 33-year-old has stood out as part of a wave of underground acts eager to tear down genre walls and let their sounds intersect with elements of rock and electronic (once tagged “hyperpop”). The songs on “Ordinary” revel in blown-out bass and bubbly synth melodies, but valknee focuses on quotidian issues, including the challenges of buying a good down jacket (and avoiding Shein knockoffs).
Valknee says her entry into music came as an elementary school student when she became fascinated by the disco and house stylings of idol heavyweights Morning Musume. Her tastes diversified as she got older, eventually discovering what she describes as “rappers who don’t look like rappers” — Punpee, tofubeats — while in college. So, she decided to give hip-hop a go.
From the beginning, valknee approached the genre with a sonically experimental edge, but a more grounded eye when it came to lyrics. “Hip-hop culture has largely been created by men, and that foundation is strong in Japan, too,” she says. “I don’t think it’s realistic if I express myself just like that.” Instead, she has embraced left-of-center sounds alongside focusing on topics such as the joys of idol culture or everyday challenges for women. Her breakout came with the quarantine-era posse cut “Zoom,” in which she and other women MCs rapped about pandemic life.
With “Ordinary,” valknee wanted to push herself, saying she wanted “to explore a wider range of musicality.” To that end, she tackles PC Music-indebted dance-pop and the pounding sounds of East European “drift phonk.” It’s a snapshot of the sonic restlessness many creators in her sphere share, but it’s tied together by her celebration of the self.
Uilou
The world has gone wild for Y2K sounds. Acts like PinkPantheress and NewJeans have struck gold by tapping into turn-of-the-millennium garage club sounds, complete with era-appropriate imagery.
Electronic duo Uilou plays with the same iMac G3-colored sounds — but with a twist. The pair, Afamoo and June-chan, reimagines the skittering dance sounds for introverts, with songs like “Homebody” and “narcissism” focusing inward despite their party-ready rhythms. Last year, Uilou shared its first EP, “In My Mind,” and built on that vibe with recent releases such as “cancer girl.”
“I wanted to form a music unit, and I found June’s YouTube channel, and sent them a DM over Instagram,” says Afamoo, who has been active as a house-focused producer and DJ for a few years. “We met up two months later.” The two clicked and decided to collaborate.
Afamoo describes the pair’s creative process in fairly typical terms. “We talk about the overall idea of the song, then I work on the track, while June thinks about the lyrics and melody,” he says. “We get into a flow.” Yet Uilou’s ability to flip a musical trend into something largely ignored by other revivalists — what if the dance party never left your living room because that’s where you’re most comfortable? — has helped the duo stand out, buoyed by the streaming success of songs such as “In My Mind.”
The next step, Afamoo says, is to keep releasing singles and perform more club events. So, get familiar with Uilou’s catalog before summer clubbing season starts.
Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin
Everyone got through the pandemic years in their own way. Some folks got really into the video game Animal Crossing, others became overnight experts on Formula 1. The 20-something members of Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin, herein referred to as Cho Co Pa, spent the time cruising around Tokyo.
“Our main activity then was just driving around,” says member Daido. “We’d be going around listening to music — Louis Cole, Clown Core — and then we’d stop to work on our own music.”
The trio behind the band — Daido, Yuta and So — were childhood friends, recalling times they performed dances set to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” while in elementary school. They went their different ways in the 2010s, but the pandemic brought them back together.
With no intention of forming a group, the three used their time to imagine far-off locales, borrowing from personal experiences. In fact, Daido studied South American music in college, visiting Cuba and taking the group’s name from a common rhythmic pattern in Latin music. They also say they got goofy, recording each other blowing into harmonicas after being hit in the knee with a mallet, and then sampling it.
In 2023, Cho Co Pa released “tradition,” the culmination of this car-bound era. The album offers a modern take on exotic sounds filtered through “quarantine brain fog,” imagining Cuba, India and beyond within its sweltering compositions. The debut was a critical hit, and this year Cho Co Pa have begun performing live more, with a slot at this year’s Fuji Rock Festival already secured.
kinoue64
The artist recording as kinoue64 says he was often bored as a teen. “I was 17, spending my days stuck at home watching anime and playing video games,” he says. “I had nothing else to do, so I downloaded the trial version of (digital audio workstation) FL Studio and started making music.”
With a little help from Vocaloid performer Hatsune Miku, kinoue64 found his artistic voice.
Vocaloid music, which refers to songs made using singing-synthesizer software of the same name, has become a major source of inspiration among young Japanese musicians. Marquee J-pop acts like Yoasobi, Ado and Kenshi Yonezu got their start fiddling around with the digital voices, but it has proven just as important to indie acts, with kinoue64 — a leading creator in the intersection of Vocaloid and shoegaze, the feedback-drenched rock style most associated with bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride.
The Hiroshima-born kinoue64 says a friend in school introduced him to this world via the seminal 2012 compilation “mikgazer vol. 1,” which found Vocaloid producers adding Miku’s voice to shoegaze-y sounds. This has led to a healthy niche corner of online rock, but few have done it better in recent years than kinoue64, who has spent albums showing just how fitting the synthesized singing of Miku can be against a Kevin-Shields-like wall of noise.
This year, kinoue64 the human plans to step a little farther into the spotlight.
“The last album I did in 2023, ‘Shiawase ni Kurasou Ne,’ was filled with more emotional and ideological messages than ever before. I thought it was the perfect embodiment artistically of Miku and myself,” he says. To follow it up, he recorded his own voice for the first time on last month’s “The Time Machine School,” a shoegaze highlight of the year thus far and one powered by his own personal signatures.
“Up until 2024, I had refused all live shows. I’m afraid of appearing in front of people,” kinoue64 says. “But in January, I had my first show in Seoul, and it really made me feel encouraged, to the point where I’m looking for more live shows.”
So whether it’s with his own voice or a digitized one, kinoue64 sounds like he’s ready to spend the year releasing more than just his unique spin on rock.
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