Soundtrack, don’t disappoint.
Momoiro Clover Z: What we talk about when we talk about idols
This started out as a review of Momoiro Clover Z’s new album. 1,600 words later…
Ayumi Hamasaki's LOVE again
Some thoughts on Ayumi Hamasaki’s LOVE again album over at appears.
This event is my favorite Ayu-related thing in months and months.
Punk Isn't
“Punk is totally safe, a terrain not of social contention but of cultural consumption, and as such, it is the perfect moment to sell expensive books claiming that punk is revolutionary.”
Jolin Tsai: “Re Dong” (Butterfly, 2009)
So we all know f(x)’s ridiculously awesome hit “Hot Summer” is not exactly an original composition, but here is something I nearly forgot about: Jolin Tsai covering it first on 2009’s Butterfly.
Beyond lies the wub: a history of dubstep
“I just went to the Hard Festival over the weekend,” Reynolds told me. “The thing I liked about it was that this was music that had absolutely no sense of the past being better. In house culture, or even dubstep in Britain, there’s a lot of referencing of roots reggae, or the early days of house, or the early days of jungle. In dance culture, the purist stuff, there’s sort of this in-built reverence to the past. And what I liked about the EDM vibe, there’s none of that: it’s just like ‘now, now, now.’”
This article glosses over everything fairly quickly and sort of loses its point towards the end so they can fit in some quotes from Simon Reynolds, who is forever forced to carpe diem since the publication of Retromania, but I do like this colorful chart!
Momoko Kikuchi: “ADVENTURE” (ADVENTURE, 1986)
I didn’t really have anything new to add, but I talk a little bit about Japanese City Pop over at the blog proper in terms of its recent “revival,” most notably Hitomitoi’s City Dive. One of my favorite City Pop albums is Momoko Kikuchi’s ADVENTURE, whose cover art perfectly captures what I think is the genre’s entire aesthetic. OCEAN SIDE is probably better at defining City Pop musically, but it doesn’t have this title track.
