> Hi all, I'm glad to meet a group who has actually
> heard of Shibuya-kei pop. I listen to a lot of
> Pizzicato Five, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Towa Tei
> and Takako Minekawa, and a little bit of Cibo Matto &
> Cornelius.
>

> It would be nice if this was the dominant form of
> Japanese music. Unfortunately, over the years I've
> listened to most lifeless, boring crud from the
> Japanese music industry. Whenever a Japanese youth
> puts a CD on and asks me, "what do you think?" (Utada
> Hikaru/Mr. Children etc.) I say... annooooo it's okay,
> but have you ever heard of Pizzicato Five? I like
> Pizzicato Five "style" music. And they will inevitably
> look confused, screw up their face and say, "they're
> quite old, aren't they?"
>


Well it's slightly ironic if the examples are true in that I'm pretty
sure Mr. Children has been around way longer than any of those acts
excepting P5 and I guess Hiki's pre-Teen Cubic U stuff was more or
less as old.

Sadly Takako seems to be at least temporarily retired but the rest of
these acts or former band members of them are still recording and or
producing good new stuff.

When I encounter people like that I just tell them to look at the pop
charts of their own country and see if they really like most of
what's on it (well for anyone with good taste I'm sure they can stand
less than 10% of who's charting). I tell people it's exactly the same
situation in Japan.

Though I guess a lot of people only have access to what's popular
and of course what gets "popular" in the first place has more to do
with marketing and industry product placement than talent. Then again
many people are only motivated by music that makes them fit in socially.

I'd give Patrick's site the nod for new release info if you want to
drop some very new releases that generally aren't corporate hype nor
happen to be friends of the blogger
http://www.chipple.net/mt/agenda/


nick

http://technopop.info