Shibuya Kei 渋谷系
Shibuya Chris
Looking back at 90’s music can be depressing for me for some reason—my own music included. I like that Beck came along, but there sure was lots of dreary music-making going on at that time. I also like that Nirvana knocked out Guns & Roses and all that, but “from my nest of salt, everythings my fault” about sums up the self-loathing in it all. I have loads of roots-Americana loving friends (why shouldn’t they be?) and I’m a Dylan nut, but that music just didn’t trip my trigger. I wanted people to dress like T-Boz, not Cowboy Joe…unless it was kitschy!
But then I remember there was this whole other 90’s trajectory going on with Stereolab and Broadcast and my favorite micro subgenre to obsess about: Shibuya Kei! The bands: Flipper’s Guitar, Pizzicato Five, Buffalo Daughter, Takako Minekawa, Cornelius, The Fantastic Plastic Machine, Ciba Mato…and even the dude from Deee-light was in on it. They were total connoisseurs of cool music, blending lounge, French Ye Ye, tropicalia, and old hi-fi test records. Incredible, beautiful kitschy shopping music!
I’ve been reading the book Retromania by Simon Reynolds and he kind of nails it:
The upper middle-class, privately educated rich kids who frequented these [Shibuya record] stores bought loads of imported records from the UK and esoteric reissues of all kinds, then created music that was a portrait of themselves as exquisitely discerning consumers.
It really is more curation as creation than some amazing creation out of nothing-but if you’re mixing Brian Wilson with lounge and hip hop it’s going to sound pretty amazing! And nobody dresses better than Maki Nomiya. There was also the whole postmodern theory going on at the time that I have always loved and the music fits right in as a perfect soundtrack for that.
Also, I remember going down the Brian Wilson long-lost “Smile” album rabbit hole before he and Van Dyke Parks finished that record 30+ years after they’d started it. I found a triple vinyl bootleg of the Smile sessions and snapped it up, and on Napster I found a carefully cobbled-together version of Smile made from the bootlegs that were out in the world, and it blew my mind.
If you listen to the Cornelius album Fantasma, you can totally hear the Brian Wilson influence!
With regard to this music, most recently I was turned on to music by Shintaro Sakamoto—thank you Caleb and Raina— and his records are amazing! I highly recommend this record, “Like a Fable”. :)
There is a fun youtube history of Shibuya Kei I found while monomaniacally searching for records and essays and books and anything I could get my hands on-it looks maybe a little amateurish but I don’t mind, he is so clearly into it that he felt compelled to make this documentary to share his love. I’m right there with him!
A funny lo-fi doc another devotee made
If anyone wants to make a big huge documentary about this with me I can assist with research and we can travel to Tokyo together and interview people! But we better get someone on the team with an attention span better than mine cuz I am a mere enthuuuuuusssssiaaast!
Here’s the Wikipedia article on Shibuya Kei it’s great if you want to see a list of the artists and the history all laid out!
And two more links :)