or: why japanese electronic music is so different from western electronic music despite having the same origins
i replied to a post @vespidazed made a day or two ago asking for people to infodump about music to them, just mentioning this stuff. they were apparently very interested in hearing about it. i started writing this up as a discord DM but very very quickly both ran into the character limit and realized maybe other people would want to see this, so i put it here instead. the formatting might be a bit awkward as a result, but i THINK this should still look ok!!
okay, so: a lot of the modern japanese electronic music//"j-core" sound actually started in the netherlands in the early/mid-90s. there, the 'gabber' scene was starting to pop up, which was differentiating itself from normal rave music by being 150-180bpm and throwing around a lot of samples from movies, stuff like Rotterdam Terror Corps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxaScnLNwW4
enter one of the most influential but unknown names in music, DJ Sharpnel. bringing some of this dutch stuff back to japan and trying his own hand at making it, often sampling now-classic anime stuff instead. i mean, hell, his first release - Project Gabbangelion - literally opens with the Serial Experiments Lain intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_KmowL39Jg
fast forward a bit. still the late 90s/early 2000s. the overlap between dutch and japanese internet is obviously still pretty small, so there's little sharing going on between the two. gabber continues to push itself toward louder/harder sounds, giving us stuff like Angerfist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU3egZOE9dk
here we introduce the concept of 'circles'. comiket, the largest convention in the world (and it's not even close, hitting 750,000 attendees in 2019, wtf) in tokyo, dedicated solely to selling self-published and fanworks. a 'circle' is a group of artists focusing on similar content, all selling at the same table.
so sharpnel's still doing his thing in the early 2000s, running his circle 'sharpnelsound', and they take things in a very different direction than the dutch guys. faster, more sampling, more focus on the melody than loud stompy bass. stuff like killingscum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0VyNEdkYlE or... still sharpnel lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uikGRw_cxS4
so at this point it's pretty clearly a very different genre than what the dutch guys were doing!
around 2010, other circles start popping up, clearly inspired by sharpnelsound - groups like diverse system, exit tunes, hardcore tano*c, and psychofilth records. by this point, we're starting to get stuff clearly recognizable as modern jcore.
now that we're coming to the early/mid-2010s, it would be nearly illegal to not introduce camellia, who started shifting away from vocaloid music to this kind of stuff around 2013. despite not being a part of any of the major circles, he's still involved with almost all of them, putting a song or two on each of their releases, while also releasing his own albums on the side. his 2014 release PLANET//SHAPER was basically an influence on everything that came after it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEfI4uYYH9I. same with his 2018 GALAXY BURST - this song especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIilwm390Sw. the "change what you're doing every two bars" sound from overcomplexification is basically inescapable now. also im mutuals with him on twitter lol lmao
to bring things back around a bit, the dutch scene has largely evolved into modern hardcore. the melody and kick drum have just completely traded places, ~180bpm, designed for big stadium festival stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCkQx6sTnzw the same origins are clear, but WOW they went in different directions. which makes it EXTREMELY funny when the hardcore guys rip off the j-core stuff. https://youtu.be/-N90vFnbIKc?t=219 https://youtu.be/mcIX5ps6RaA?t=136 lol your drop is the bridge of j-core but slowed down 50%
ANYWAY. back to modern jcore stuff. at this point the genre's wide enough that honestly it should probably be split out into several smaller ones? it's hard to really give a "history of" type thing for stuff that's currently being released!! so i'm just gonna post some examples of some modern jcore stuff, vaguely sorted into subgenres, based off nothing other than my personal opinions and the vibes their songs give me, lol. this is by no means an exhaustive list, just some good places to start!!
speedcore: the name 'speedcore' is largely already used by western musicians, but again, the japanese take on it is very different. all about ridiculous BPM counts, only here will you call 500bpm slow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4lSZSOPeTQ - roughsketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43JgasYsr0 - m1dy. i honestly could have talked about this guy back in the section about sharpnelsound, he's been around for a WHILE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erjfbUiwjcU - dj myosuke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4d2NLn0K8g - laur
"speed dance": i really can't come up with a good name for this. it's still very fast, but usually sub-300 bpm. a lot more ridiculous samples get thrown in again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vISlvnJ6kY - t+pazolite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka70HI4orCg - kobaryo. hoooo boy you can hear the camellia influence in this track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZfMAnII78Y - camellia. not all of his stuff fits here! but a lot sure does.
actually kind of dancable stuff: actually a speed tolerable by normal people (but still pretty fast). usually pretty complex melodies while you're at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-eguxsAEeY - getty. hey look the song i pulled my fursona's name from lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp8uQzSXXRc - camellia. his more normal stuff. "how is a song that changes entire genres like 27 times normal" its camellia dude that's just normal for him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3XzgGBO3fo - juggernaut
approachable by normal people: like if i was just gonna show some random person some modern jcore, this is where i'd start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC16U2SEht4 - USAO. remember what i said about camellia's "change sound every 2 bars" style being prolific? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1m0RVHEg1o - yooh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBbIoA6Jc4 - c-show
like i said, these are all just a few examples, ifyou want more like [x] i'm sure i can find something lol. i am by no means a historian or authoritative on this shit obv, it is entirely possible i've got a few details wrong here, but this is more or less what i've picked up on from listening to this stuff for years now!!
