Japanese freestyle

[koganbot]

Japanese freestyle — is there a lot of it? I wouldn't know. Just glad that the style, which is pretty much gone from U.S. airwaves, is still strong in Asia.

(h/t arbitrary_greay, of course)

Tomato n' Pine FAB ("Free As A Bird")

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The rhythm is simply a hopped-up electrobeat,* not freestyle's fast twists and breakneck turns, but the melody, at least in the verse, could have come out of NYC or Union City, 1987. Like this:

Maribell "Roses Are Red"

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Also, in the midst of this week's Brave Brothers discussion I discovered a freestyle riff right smack center in the debut days of After School, 2009:

After School "Play Girlz"

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*[UPDATE 2018: I didn't know it when I made this post, but the correct term for the rhythm is "Eurobeat" (a term a couple readers use in the comments); but FAB's melody resembles freestyle in a way that most — but not all — Eurobeat doesn't. (I say "not all" given that Italodisco itself was in interplay with freestyle and feeding this into Eurobeat.) The term "Eurobeat" has had several uses over the years, but the one relevant to this post is an Italodisco-derived sound in the early to mid '90s that sold almost exclusively in Japan, though some producers and performers were Italian. The beats move fast at '90s speed, though, unlike vintage Italodisco.]

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Tomato n’Pine was sort of a bizarre thing. Most of their songs were composed by a company called agehasprings. The only name repeated on each song (at least on “PS4U”) is Kenji Tamai (the CEO). And he is basically a hit producer (according to the company website sales over 30 millions).

http://www.ageha.net/

And sort of when you know that, you can understand why each song was kind of exploring musical ideas on some sort of music style. I don’t know, the guitar and organ interplay on this one, for example:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyc40n_tomato-n-pine-yyyyyyyyyyy_music#.UZf1VrUvUUg

Maybe is the wrong thing to search this influence on idol music (I mean “80’s” mean specific things on idol music so if you go from CoCo to ANNA☆S (first song) you can see the homage over there (even is only felt)) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLgPSwp_qLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9XBTa2g1FQ

So maybe it should be good to search on other 80s in Japan. Like “city pop” (don’t know much about it, so a list and how that influence can be felt in current groups like Especia):

http://zonestyxtravelcard.blogspot.com/2012/11/green-linez-city-pop-top-10.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztUmrH1qVxU

Or really on other groups that (still being idols) sound less like idols, with references to R&B scattered around as tasteful elements, don’t know from Speed to Fantarhyme (or TRICK8f) or in some songs for local groups like Caramel Ribbon (first song on that clip)or Rev. from DVL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r3CyMdY3Tc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ua8sQFxzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHuvyyxNrxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydhR8ZhrO54

But again, don’t know much about it, and probably is not what you are looking for.