One of the greatest soundtracks ever recorded to one of the greatest films ever made is coming out on vinyl this week. Isn’t that exciting?
While the work is powerful enough to endure decades, it has remained relevant to following generations through wild hip hop flips that you may remember from a previous J-Sampler post.
Pitchfork lowballed it at 8.4/10 but their review gives a great history of the Geinoh Yamashirogumi and how this symphony came to be.
Original pressings of this vinyl are considered #rare and sell for nearly $1000, but this one is priced at a cool $30 so if you’re feeling froggish, leap.
Abel Tesafaye follows up his video for “Belong to the World” with a gloomy, drug-addled sequel, that keeps with Kiss Land’s Japan-inspired aesthetic. No art school girls this time around though. Just OVO and XO traipsing around a defunct office building/warehouse, emoting in the darkness from behind occasional bursts of hiragana that reiterate to the j-audience that this is, indeed, the shit he lives for.
Again, the use of Japanese here seems strange. Like, what’s the basis? The Weeknd has said before that Kiss Land is like a horror movie, and now that I think of it, his character in these videos does remind me of that weird dude from Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Cure.
But still, why Japan?
“Kiss Land is the story after Trilogy; it’s pretty much the second chapter of my life,” he continued. “The narrative takes place after my first flight; it’s very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me ‘Why Japan?’ I simply tell them it’s the furthest I’ve ever been from home. It really is a different planet.”
The promo run for Internet Famous Canadian, The Weeknd’s, new album has begun with the release of this video for “Belong to the World” off the upcoming LP Kiss Land. If the clip is any indication, the eponymous locale is a dystopian Japanese horrorscape, filled with an endless sea of stereotypically robotic J-men and one (1) black Canadian all vying to ogle a powdery art school girl.
Witness the insanity:
The baffling, lovesick intro is narrated by a man I presume to be an ancient, Japanese version of The Weeknd posing as a 21st century Bashō. The imagery is all seen-it-before, near-future Japan brimming with soulless fools marching/dancing through a hollow metropolis. There are no ravaged buildings, or giant lizards or megaton bombs; it’s an apocalypse of ennui, which I suppose is pretty appropriate for our current generation.
A rare-get interview with Complex suggests that this video is supposed to be “scary.” Iunno bout all that, but it does communicate an atmosphere heavy with isolation and repression, which is probably why they set it in Japan (burn??).
Country music to many people is a sort of albatross hanging around the neck of popular American music. Those who love it, LOVE IT while those who hate it seem to really, really hate it. I can’t say I know enough about country to fall into either faction, but I do know the “Tennessee Waltz” and can register a bit of sadness at the fact that the person who brought that into the world is no longer living in it.
Country is a quintessentially American musical form, and Patti Page was a dominant voice throughout her early career. In the 50s, Patti Page’s influence stretched across the Pacific to Japan where local entertainers adapted American popular music for the expatriates (mostly soldiers at the time) that filled the clubs and bars. Eventually a 14-year old by the name of Chiemi Eri got her hands on the music and used her version of the American classic to launch a bright, if unfortunately short, career. I’m tempted to say that her version of “Tennessee Waltz” was the first real crossover hit in the Japan-US postwar era, but I really don’t have any “facts” to back that up.
Here is Page’s original version for context / listening pleasure. We should all be so lucky to be remembered looking like this.
The death of Dave Brubeck one month ago generated lots of Internet traffic to touching Youtube videos and blog posts about memories that were soundtracked by Take Five. One such touching video:
“They only tell you you great when they reminiscin’ over you.”
You could fill an 8-Disc CD changer (if they still existed) with cover version of Take Five, and I only recently discovered this version by AJICO off their live album, AJICO SHOW. AJICO was a short-lived (one year!) group built on the foundation of two j-indie artists: UA (née Kaori Hasegawa) and Kenichi Asai of Blankey Jet City fame.
For as hype as Japan is on jazz music, I expected to see more J-covers of the song from a number of artists – I’m lookin’ at YOU, Hiromi!
This version takes the iconically baffling time signature from Take Five and places it under some freestyle stadium guitar expressions courtesy of Asai. Meanwhile UA mumbles (and then belts, as she is prone to do) some lyrics that perhaps no one will ever decipher. As you may know, I really go in for UA, but I’m not sure her rendition will do anything for people who are not already fans of her…unique sound.
But don’t let me tell you what you like. Listen below.
Jet Set Radio 