The crowd at Shibuya’s WWW venue bounces around as the two artists in front of them flail about and scream through a thick layer of distortion. On stage is BBBBBBB, experimental pranksters hailing from Aichi Prefecture, a 90-minute Shinkansen ride away. Members Ryuseigun Saionji and G.R.D.V. appear on the verge of falling over, yet stay upright to scream into their microphones or headbang along to the noise engulfing them.
Amidst all of this chaos, the sweat-drenched duo find time to crack jokes, albeit with their voices heavily distorted. It doesn’t matter – the crowd loves it, laughing along with every experimental goof.
“As music genres become more diverse, it has become difficult to create music that everyone can relate to” Saionji tells tQ a few months later. “So, I thought that it would be more valuable to create music that no one can understand.”
This mindset, of shoving aside old ways of thinking in favour of just going for your own style, defines the current attitude of Japan’s underground music scene. A new generation of young creators coming of age on an eclectic mix of sounds running from SoundCloud-powered hyperpop to experimental Japanese rock to anime themes revel in slamming disparate sonic ideas together.
That’s been facilitated by larger changes to Japan’s music landscape over the last few years. The COVID-19 pandemic upended every level of music across the archipelago. For the underground, that meant clubs and live venues of all sizes were forced to close, some of them permanently (accelerated by the pace of redevelopment in major cities like Tokyo, where new projects resulted in older spaces vanishing). Musicians faced a rough stretch where pursuing art became even more difficult in the face of financial challenges.
Yet all of these shifts invigorated a new generation of artists. Even during the pandemic, younger people turned to raves in far-flung corners of the countryside, and when live shows started returning with some regularity, they flocked to shows, particularly ones celebrating the sonic mish-mashes created by their peers. Japan has always had a healthy underground music community, but a decade ago a city like Tokyo could feel extremely cliquey. Lots of thrilling music was being made by many different people — but everything felt separated from one another, with very little crossover.
Owing to the pent-up energy to go out to anything during the pandemic — coupled with those raised with the internet being more open to a variety of sounds rather than following strict genre lines — the current state of the Japanese underground is one where all kinds of sounds and styles overlap. Parties like Tokio Shaman bring together SoundCloud rappers with “hyperpop” kids and rave-loving, while influential alternative music website AVYSS covers a wide range of Japanese experimental music they then go on to feature via diverse lineups at their own events across the country. Emerging Tokyo event series Kyun Desu not only smooshes together different underground strains of rap, dance pop and experimental electronic music, but also emphasizes women in underground spaces alongside LGBTQ+ creatives.
“At live venues, there is an enthusiastic sense of unity,” the genre-skipping artist e5 says, likening the atmosphere to what you would find in bass and club music. “That’s something you don’t see often in the J-pop space.”
Helping to facilitate this era of Japanese underground music has been a new wave of live spaces allowing for more experimentation. After the closure of many spaces in Tokyo, primarily in famous neighborhoods such as Shibuya, once centres of youth culture, are slowly transforming into tourist-centric destinations. While mid and large-sized spots have been reduced, however, smaller clubs and “music bars” have sprouted up all over the capital. New destinations such as Asagaya Drift, Shinjuku’s Space and Shin-Okubo’s Bacon – along with long-running spaces such as Hatagaya’s forestlimit, which survived the pandemic – host a wide array of events, while being more accessible to young and more left-field creators. A similar trend is playing out across the country, and helping new visions flourish.
“Artists with innovative ideas often suddenly appear in the underground music scene,” Nagoya-based ambient artist marucoporoporo says of the state of experimental music. “Their emergence teaches me new ways to perceive sound, making the music scene incredibly fascinating to me.”
It’s helping to create exciting new creative blends in the country. Labels like the fledgling Siren For Charlotte merge shoegaze and ambient with sonic markers of otaku culture such as anime and the singing-synthesizer software Vocaloid, most known for its avatar Hatsune Miku who has become a new generation of Japanese creator’s Blinda Butcher. Experimental imprint KAOMOZI dabbles in fragmented electronic compositions. Many more artists, though, just go it on their own, using social media and attention from online publications like AVYSS to find a like-minded community.
“There are many unique bands in Tokyo, Osaka, and Sapporo, and although these cities are physically far apart, they often travel back and forth for live shows and events,” Arata Senkawa, the guitarist for nervy Tokyo rock outfit computer fight, says. “Many artists feel a sense of stagnation in the current Japanese society, and I get the impression that many bands perform in a way that appeals to the body out of frustration with that.”
Across the Japanese underground (and even mainstream J-pop, where recent hits have meditated on the more glum side of life and even screamed against the country’s societal norms), there’s a new energy coursing through. The country has never lacked for thrilling artists on the edges, yet in the 2020s they seem more eager to blur genre lines and see what’s possible by pushing ideas to the border. They are also seemingly reacting to the realities of their home country in the 21st country, either by expressing their lives via hybrids of pop, rap and electronic music (young hip hop and post-hyperpop projects such as e5, Peterparker69 and lilbesh ramko among others), seeking solace in quieter spaces (ambient-leaning creators such as marucoporoporo and those merging the voice of Hatsune Miku with shoegaze [dubbed “Miku-gaze”] creators like inuha or kinoue64) or just by freaking out (BBBBBBB and computer fight to name just two).
“I feel like there are more and more young people who make strange music while maintaining high quality, so I hope there will be even more strange people coming soon!” Saionji says.
BBBBBBBSHINPISelf-Released
To understand the noise goofballs comprising Aichi Prefecture’s BBBBBBB, it helps to know that member Saionji’s initial creative draw was comedy, to the point he spent several years studying stand-up in the nation’s capital of punchlines, Osaka. Inspired by chaotic performers like Hollywood Zakoshisyoh, Saionji sees BBBBBBB as an extension of his comedy career — which is to say, unpredictable and dizzying.
Rounded out by members G.R.D.V. and Marao, BBBBBBB find a balance between noise and nonsense. The group’s Victory Hardcore displayed their blistering side, while follow-up album POSITIVE VIOLENCE via Deathbomb Arc underlined the humour at play in their songs (complete with the occasional fart sound effect). “Until POSITIVE VIOLENCE released last year, we were pursuing fast, noisy, high-tension music, but now we are moving in a more maniacal direction,” Saionji says. This year’s SHINPI only builds on the madness. “At the end of last year, I got into progressive rock, and with this latest release I aimed to create music that combined desktop music, progressive rock, and scum [a Japanese subgenre of punk and hardcore] from the 2020s onwards.”
marucoporoporoConceive The SeaFlau
The genesis of electronic composer marucoporoporo’s 2024 album Conceive The Sea came about via an offer to create the soundtrack to a movie about life being born. “As I progressed with the production, I felt a growing desire to present this music as my own album rather than just as film music,” she says. “I selected and restructured the tracks, considering the overall flow of the album.”
The resulting work is an ethereal set of songs inspired both by childbirth and the ocean, specifically the latter’s function as “the origins of life.” Conceive The Sea aims to reflect the passage of one’s own life, including moments of self acceptance (‘As I Am’) and eventual decay (“‘Reminiscence’, symbolizing the continuation of life through repeated cycles of birth and death, acknowledging that I, too, will eventually face death”).“For me, the time spent working on this album was also a period of introspection. It provided a valuable opportunity to find tranquility amidst my daily life,” marucoporoporo says. “My hope is that when someone listens to Conceive The Sea through their earphones, they can feel enveloped and protected by the music, like a fetus growing safely in its mother’s womb.”
inuhaHi No KakeraSiren For Charlotte
Hatsune Miku, the anime-style avatar for the singing-synthesiser software Vocaloid, stands as the most influential Japanese pop star of the 21st century. That’s largely because she’s closer to an instrument than a character, allowing anyone with access to the program she represents to create and share music with her digi-voice over it. She inspired an alternative music world in the late 2000s, while most of today’s biggest J-pop stars got their start creating songs using Vocaloid.She continues to inspire, down to the underground. The artist inuha hasn’t exclusively used Miku in their music — a 2023 EP found them playing around with a different voicebank — but their finest experiments in blurring shoegaze with nods to Japanese electronica feature her voice caught up in the swell. That’s especially true of this year’s ennui-drenched Hi No Kakera. A bittersweet set of songs full of chugging guitar melodies undercut by lyrics interested in the fleeting nature of everything (see ‘Byoki No Kodomotachi’, or ‘Sick Children’, a particularly soaring sounding song seemingly about lives cut short). Through it all, the synthesised voice of Miku adds not only texture but emotional heft, blending in perfectly with the feedback around her voice.
e5‘PARADIGM’ROG
The artist e5 has been connected to music since she was very young. “My father was in a rockabilly cover band as a hobby, so I had to memorise Elivs Presley songs to sing and dance with the band while still in kindergarten,” she says. She eventually found her own musical inspiration as a teen, discovering the Vocaloid community online, which inspired her to create her own music in junior high school…a period she says was the most difficult of her life, but which creation helped relieve stress.
Today, e5 (pronounced “e-go”) continues to channel her frustrations through music drawing from hyperpop, rap, rock and much more. She captures the fluid nature of young creators raised on SoundCloud, as she jumps from fractured dance-rap meditations like ‘Entanglement’ to the rumbling minimalism of ‘Aladdin’ to the chest-puffed-out rap of recent single ‘PARADIGM’.
“I often write songs when I feel like I’ve had a misunderstanding with a friend, when I’m fighting with my mother, when I’m in a relationship, when I’m in pain after a breakup, when I want to promote myself but it’s not going well, when I feel regret when I can’t perform well at a live show, when I feel jealous when my friends overtake me, when I feel anger or inferiority towards the world,” she says, adding she often quotes lines from movies and anime she likes for an extra personal touch.
computer fightgushagushavinylSelf-Released
Tokyo trio computer fight came together in the summer of 2019, inspired by guitarist Arata Senkawa’s desire to build on original songs he was constructing in Cubase. He recruited members over Twitter, bonding over a shared love of fractured Japanese rock bands of yesteryear such as Number Girl, Friction and especially Gaseneta (“computer fight” coming from the name of a YouTube account that uploaded the latter’s music).
“I basically make demos on my home PC using Cubase. I play and record the guitar and bass myself, and input the drums in MIDI. Recently, I’ve also started writing lyrics, so I often put in the vocals,” Senkawa says. “Before practising, I share the demo with the members and solidify the arrangement in the studio.”On recordings and at live performances, however, computer fight sound frantic. Songs on the album suburban blues zip forward, rambling off in all kinds of directions while lyrics are delivered in sing-speak. The band both took the tempo down at times on follow-up gushagushavinyl while also finding time to go even faster. It only becomes more hectic in person, with a recent live recording showing how it translates as a concert (saxophone enters the picture, adding extra wildness to songs such as “jikka punk”). The group channels an older generation of Japanese rock…but approaches it from a new perspective offering a snapshot of the energy coursing through the entire underground community.
