WILT_2023-15

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 9 Apr 2023 to 15 Apr 2023.

1. Chants – Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Clinton Fearon
2. Love is Crucial – Iya Terra
3. Licks & Kicks – Israel Vibration
4. Me say – Mo’kalamity
5. Seconds – August Rosenbaum, Coco O.
6. This World Couldn’t See Us – Nabihah Iqbal
7. Zone 1 to 6000 – Nabihah Iqbal
8. Eden Piece – Nabihah Iqbal
9. Sunflower – Nabihah Iqbal
10. You Know How to Make Me Happy – HTRK
11. Tough Luck – Sneaks
12. Worry – Coco O.
13. Good Lies – Overmono
14. Good Lies (Outro) – Overmono
15. Is U – Overmono
16. Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood – Yves Tumor
17. slash – yama
18. Red:birthmark – AiNA THE END
19. Story Brighter – BiSH
20. ウォント (WANT) – BiSH
21. My landscape – BiSH
22. FOR HiM – BiSH
23. FREEZE DRY THE PASTS – BiSH
24. TOMORROW – BiSH
25. スーパーヒーローミュージック (Superhero Music) – BiSH
26. CAN WE STiLL BE?? – BiSH
27. ZENSHiN ZENREi – BiSH
28. NATURAL BORN LOVERS – BiSH
29. I have no idea. – BiSH

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2023-15

Notes

I started the week by looking for music by Clinton Fearon. I was interested after I saw a performance of his on KEXP. Chants came on and I just had to add it to the list for its positive message, as well as sublime instrumentation. A couple more dub and reggae tracks followed suit, each with their own sparks of brilliance. Love is Crucial had a rather innovative guitar line that you do not normally hear in the genre, Licks & Vibration is full of gorgeous vocal harmony, and Me say is just such a light breeze on the ears. 

I cannot quite remember how Seconds by August Rosenbaum and Coco O. got recommended to me, but I was drawn to its minimal arrangement and synth bass parts, as well as Coco O.’s syrupy vocals.

I then discovered another KEXP performance, this time of Nabihah Iqbal. I was immediately drawn to the no wave post punk instrumentation, as well as the confidence behind her voice. Went on a bit of a binge and added the ones that I thought portrayed her musicality, but obviously it is biased toward my preferences.

HTRK found its way into this listening cycle with You Know How to Make Me Happy. Jonnine Standish’s vocals become more ethereal with each new album, and the band’s musical arrangements also take on new life as well. From there we also discover Tough Luck by Sneaks, with an attitude-filled bassline and simple proto beat which is more than enough to make killer music.

Coco O. Makes a reappearance with Worry, and in similar fashion, the voice and music are magnetic and I should do more listening when I get the chance. But then Overmono comes on, and I am just having too much fun with it that I get slightly distracted. At the end of this leg, Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood by Yves Yumor comes on and fuzzes the heck out of everything with yet another daring and dazzling performance. 

The next arc of this playlist was kickstarted by the second season of Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. slash by Yama is the opening credits to episode one and Red:birthmark by AiNA THE END is the end credits. slash is interesting to me for its fluid J-Rock basslines, but it’s AiNA THE END’s vocals that left a bit of a mark on me. They were interesting and not ordinary, with the way she goes loud and adds little gasps of falsetto in a very stylistic manner, almost like pinch harmonics in guitar playing. It was interesting enough that I went to do a bit more research.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that this petite woman was generating such a voice. And also, I learned that she was part of an “alternative idol” group called BiSH. Firstly, I did not know that there was such a thing as “alternative idols”, and secondly, I thought BiSH was a pretty cool name because it remind me of “Gish”, which was the album title of the first Smashing Pumpkins album. (I thought it was a reference, but it was not.)

Something about BiSH struck a chord with me and caught my attention. The music they were performing was very reminiscent of the alternative rock, grunge, punk, and J-Rock that I had grown accustomed to, but it was all packaged in some sort of… girl group aesthetic, and the individual performers were performing through choreographed routines, yet belting away into handheld microphones like rockstars. I think what drew me in was that I was trying to determine where exactly the line between the authentic and the manufactured was, and I have concluded that it does not matter if you are contented with doing your own thing.

BiSH is fun, raw, contrived, imperfect, honest, packaged, kawaii, intense, ephemeral, individualistic, coordinated, and any number of verbs and adjectives. I am drawn into the world of packaged musical groups as products, but also reaping the benefits of a level of entertainment that is different from the kind of artistic pursuits that tend to take themselves too seriously. So in this level of entertainment, these are some of the traits that I appreciate about BiSH:

1. The absurdity of some of the side-antics. For example, on 14 February 2022, BiSH member Lingling won the Heavyweight belt in DDT’s Ironman wrestling championship. Previous winners had included a chair and a kotatsu. She commentated on another DDT match the follow month, but then ultimately lost her title to an apple on March 25th. [Link]
2. Each member has a stage name, and some of them are quite hilarious, like Hashiyasume Atsuko, which basically as the noun for chopstick rests in front of the name Atsuko, or Momoko Gumi Company. They all also have weird, manufactured personality traits that they really lean into. I suspect they extrapolate some quirk that they actually have, and dial it to eleven to bring out a vibe of oddity in their mediated personalities.
3. I love the energy. It’s that plain and simple. They might be an “idol group” but the energy is absolutely brimming in their live performances. One of my favourites is a performance of My landscape, and you really get to see how much intensity is put into delivering emotion rather than perfection.
4. That’s another thing, they actually do not strive for perfection. In the world of manufactured pop, they’ve also managed to manufacture an alternative and make it commercially viable by not needing to pander to too much fan service, not have beat perfect dance coordination, not be the most good looking or sing the most pitch perfect.
5. They have super fun promotional videos [Link]. I love a lot of the creative concepts, and the costumes look like extremely fun art projects. You almost sense that the creativity of the entire crew is being celebrated and not just the performers themselves.

I guess I’m gushing a bit, but I think more people should know about BiSH, and I think that more folk should give them a chance because they do seem like a bridge between the worlds of independent art and commercial mainstream music. Both ends of the spectrum gets exposed to the opposite ends, and I think there’s value in that. 

BiSH will be graduating (retiring) on 29 June 2023, and I was compelled to try to select some of my favourite songs from each of their albums since their first one in 2015. Since the end of 2022, they have also been releasing singles in dedication to their impending graduation (retirement). This started with FiNAL SHiTS and ended with Bye Bye Show. 

BiSH are:

• CENT CHiHiRO CHiTTii
• AiNA THE END
• Momoko Gumi Company
• Lingling
• Hashiyasume Atsuko
• Ayuni D