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City Pop: The Late 70s-80s Funky-Smooth Japanese Music Phenomenon

J

jstripes

Banned
So the genre has a name.

As someone who watched a ton of '80s anime in the '90s, this really brings me back.

SD-Ness said:
Mulatu Astatke
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23241-mulatu-of-ethiopia/
Click to expand...

HotHamBoy said:
Oh yeah, Ethiopian and Nigerian Jazz is the shit. I was turned on to Fela Kuti and Afrobeat like 12 years ago thanks to a friend and I went through a long obsessive phase.

Mulatu Astatke came my way thanks to the Broken Flowers soundtrack. So good.
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Mulatu Astatke and Fela Kuti are amazing. Didn't expect to see them mentioned in this thread.
 
M

MogCakes

Member
jstripes said:
So the genre has a name.

As someone who watched a ton of '80s anime in the '90s, this really brings me back.
Click to expand...
It was a big influence on anime of yesteryears. Most of us didn't have a name for it until people started looking into the samples used in vaporwave tracks.
 
A

andymcc

Banned
some of this stuff is begging to be in a japanese crime movie set in the 80s.

a nice juxtaposition of some of these grooves with an over the top violent shootout awash in blinking neon lights.
 
P

poppos2097

Member
Thanks for this thread. Got introduced to Tatsuro Yamashita by stumbling upon "For You" on YouTube recommendations. Yakuza 6 (at least the import version) has several Yamashita songs that are used pretty sparsely but I'll miss them if they don't make it in localization.
http://yakuzafan.com/5-tatsuro-yamashita-songs-yakuza-6/
jstripes said:
Mulatu Astatke and Fela Kuti are amazing. Didn't expect to see them mentioned in this thread.
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Same, I want to throw 1969-75 Miles Davis in here but don't want to derail.
 
H

HotHamBoy

Member
Infinite said:
This was my jam last year https://poor-vacation.bandcamp.com/album/young-folks-in-metropolis
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059fcddc1a0ca1690021931ba0c76294--les-sauces-design-blogs.jpg
 
O

Omadahl

Banned
I'm having a hard time finding much on Spotify. It's never played well with non-english spellings though and I'm not certain what I'm looking for.
 
Theonik

Theonik

Member
City Pop is the good stuff. Really like listening to it in the weekends and served as good companion material for Yakuza 0.
 
A

admiraltaftbar

Member
Omadahl said:
I'm having a hard time finding much on Spotify. It's never played well with non-english spellings though and I'm not certain what I'm looking for.
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Most of it's not on Spotify. Youtube is the place to look because a lot of the tracks/albums seem to be straight pulls from a record/cd copy of the album.
 
S

Seiryoden

Member
This is a good thread. My stuff is more soul enka, but these links have made me happy, I think they'll make you happy too :)
 
H

HotHamBoy

Member
ponpo said:
For those whining about Spotify, here
https://open.spotify.com/user/tjnickerson/playlist/3j2osvmecEao5nmo9jZ5df

But fuk streaming post physical popgets
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A lot of the vinyls are pretty expensive to import and some stuff like Psychotic Cube is super rare and OOP.

If anyone wants to download the stuff they can't legally purchase I can tell you that vinyl rips exist and one blog in particular seems to have everything.

I will also just remind y'all that there are ways to get the mp3s directly from the youtube vids.

I only say these things because a lot of this stuff isn't just ready to buy on iTunes or anything but videos do get deleted and it would suck to lose track of great tunes.

It's also hard to find things when all the text is in Kanji
 
P

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
HotHamBoy said:
A lot of the vinyls are pretty expensive to import and some stuff like Psychotic Cube is super rare and OOP.

If anyone wants to download the stuff they can't legally purchase I can tell you that vinyl rips exist and one blog in particular seems to have everything.

I will also just remind y'all that there are ways to get the mp3s directly from the youtube vids.

I only say these things because a lot of this stuff isn't just ready to buy on iTunes or anything but videos do get deleted and it would suck to lose track of great tunes.

It's also hard to find things when all the text is in Kanji
Click to expand...

Into the genre for 48 hours and already advocating massive piracy ;_;

Buy modern represses :)

CuN4XyBXEAEPuJr.jpg
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H

HotHamBoy

Member
ponpo said:
Into the genre for 48 hours and already advocating massive piracy ;_;

Buy modern represses :)
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Yes, do buy represses. I'm not saying that you shouldn't support the artists or the labels that make their music available to a modern audience.
 
H

HotHamBoy

Member
U

Umbooki

Member
Now that I'm actually sitting down and listening to the songs, I recognize so many samples from my Future Funk songs. It feels great to find the original songs, especially when no one seems to know the source.
 
M

Mortemis

Banned
These are really great, damn. Thanks for this OP.

SD-Ness said:
Wow. Never heard of this genre/style but I love it.

I tend to dislike the term "world music" as I think it's the result of western ethnocentrism. Nonetheless, I've always had eclectic tastes and enjoy discovering music from different countries/eras. Some stuff I've found:

Somalian 70's music scene
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073GVVZG7/?tag=neogaf0e-20
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fe...ia-forgotten-music-1970s-170704123301195.html

East African dance hits from 1972 to 1982
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J4DOPWC/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Mulatu Astatke
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23241-mulatu-of-ethiopia/


Yes - YouTube is a digital treasure chest. I hope it never changes.
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Was not expecting Somali music to pop up in this thread, lol. Haven't heard of Mulatu Astatke or much Ethopian music, but this stuff sounds great. Thanks
 
B

BlazeBreak

Member
C

Cosmic Bus

pristine morning snow
Have around 50 albums on vinyl, almost all original pressings, in and adjacent to this era; been gathering them up from Seattle record stores for 7 or 8 years. There's not much left around here, heh.

A number of key reissues are coming from some existing and new record labels in the near future. This is the next big thing thanks to all that dumb vaporwave stuff.
 
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