ASOBISYSTEM, the home of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, CAPSULE, RAM RIDER, Yun*chi, Hasta La Vista and countless popular youth fashion models as well as the organizer behind such events as “TAKENOKO!!!” and “HARAJUKU KAWAii!!”, is a company undertaking a wide variety enterprises in the name of spreading Harajuku culture. The compilation album they’ve produced, ASOBITUNES, features songs from artists signed to their agency included on CD for the first time and club anthems sure to heat up the dance floor for a total of 15 tracks.
In this feature, we’ve provided commentary on the album tracks receiving their first CD release and an interview with ASOBISYSTEM representative director Nakagawa Yusuke. We encourage you to listen to the album and drop in for the release tour flying across the country from now until November.
capsule’s first new song in roughly one-and-a-half years, “Rainbow” is a sure bet for the dance floor with mellow vocals at the outset and a blend of synth and drum sounds starting near the middle. With no plans for its own digital or CD release, it’s exclusive to this compilation and the final song to be released under the duo’s lowercase “capsule” spelling.
An exclusive piece made by Nakata Yasutaka specially for this album, RIP SLYME’s hot, sexy summer anthem originally released in 2007 has been reconstructed into an aggressive electro track. The cover art for the digital single released ahead of this album has gotten attention for its self-referential design hearkening back to the original single cover.
This remix of “PONPONPON,” Kyary’s debut song, has been given a CD release at long last after previously being limited to distribution on the iTunes Store and her 7-inch vinyl release. The track, extended by two minutes to a new six-minute runtime, is loaded with synth tones and loops not heard in the original.
Hasta la Vista is a five-MC, one-DJ unit made up of adios a.k.a YUTAKA (Full Of Harmony), GooF (SOFFet), DJ ISO (MELLOW YELLOW), AKALITTLE (LITTLE), PACO a.k.a MASSATTACK (Spontania), and JEFF-ani a.k.a Ryo-Z (RIP SLYME). Their debut track “Cartel” is a hip-hop tune produced with a country taste reminiscent of Texas.
Fresh off her major debut this August, Una’s debut track is already a perfect fit for remixing. Teki Latex, a leader in French electro, was appointed as the remixer. Why not check out ASOBISYSTEM’s newest cute and edgy icon right away?
This year, ASOBISYSTEM welcomed the fifth anniversary of its establishment. Today, while looking back on those five years, I’d like to hear about what type of company ASOBISYSTEM is from your perspective. We handle management and our own label now, of course, but in the beginning, our focus was on creating club events and fashion shows. Our events weren’t particularly restricted to any one genre of music, but more centered around the idea of wanting to have music that would liven up the place. That was the kind of atmosphere I liked. I suppose the desire to create events which mixed fashion and music became my motive for launching ASOBISYSTEM.
How old were you when you started thinking that way? I’d always thought I might like to produce a company ever since I was in high school. I wanted to transmit a culture of some sort through that. For instance, I’d construct a building, then I’d make the first floor a live house and the basement a club, and the third floor could be a beauty salon, and the fourth floor a café, and so on. I really enjoyed thinking about that, and I always had an image in my mind of that becoming like one collective culture.
Given that explanation, the company name ASOBISYSTEM makes sense. You wanted to create a culture not limited only to music but made up of all kinds of “play.” That’s right. That’s how I’d always thought of it. However, the first three years were unsparingly difficult. We more or less got by doing anything we were asked to do, even if it had no relation to event planning.
From there, when did you start to feel like you were on the right track or what happened to make you think so? I definitely think the words “Harajuku-kei” [Harajuku street fashion style] and “aomoji-kei” [“blue lettering style,” the type of fashion represented by magazines like CUTiE, Zipper, etc., which tend to use blue font on their covers] starting to be recognized thanks to Kyary’s debut was a very big factor. The term aomoji-kei had existed and been used by models in Harajuku all along, but of course, it wasn’t well-known… Or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say it wasn’t appreciated. There have always been aomoji-kei magazines and fans of those magazines, but there were few opportunities for people outside of that fanbase to find out about this culture. Until then, hadn’t people always automatically thought of youth culture as being rooted in Shibuya? From salarymen to housewives watching TV at home, I think they’d considered the people who gather in Shibuya to be the core of youth culture. I think Kyary’s rise and the discovery of all the kids who love this stuff through her probably made the biggest impact.