Renzu blog

This is the first time I’ve maintained a “blog”, and it won’t get read very often (until I release that new LP, play local shows and start building a fanbase) so I’ll just write whatever for now and maybe some crazed fan (lol I know) will read it all later and be like oh my god, this is complete shit a goldmine! Today’s topic is Akihabara Time-Lapse.  The mixing, composition and mastering may not be all that great, but I feel it may be one of the most “effective” tracks I’ve ever written in terms of conjuring a certain mood and imagery.  I don’t know about you, but whenever I listen to tracks, they often prompt me to imagine vivid music videos, whether they’re typical singer-centric pop imagery or abstract Gantz Graf-like visualizations.  However my own tracks very rarely conjure any kind of imagery for me except when I play the “Japan card” on tracks like Kuruma K (JPG). Akihabara Time-Lapse is obviously one of those tracks, but like almost everything I write, I went in trying to make one thing (a funky dance track) and ended up with something else.  As I added the pianos and wacky Japanese “talking clock/calendar” samples, I realized the song was actually turning into something — a melancholic song conveying the passage of time against the backdrop of otaku culture.  I produced the rest of the song with that vague mood in mind.  It’s very rare that I produce a track with a tangible “message”, especially one that conveys it without written lyrics.  Actually it’s pretty rare that any song does that by juxtaposing a mood with an aesthetic.  In case you don’t get Akiba Time-Lapse, let me break it down: Lonely mood, passage of time, etc that’s obvious.  There’s also a sense of not going anywhere — stagnation.  Like some elements fade in and out from the mix but you never move far beyond your starting point.  Usually I let my tracks build or travel, but Time-Lapse doesn’t.  The drums and pianos and flutes drone on and on.  All that is set against the cutsey backdrop of “moe” characters counting up the days, weeks, and months of the year.  The voices are triggered mechanically, highlighting their artificiality.  They often clash over the order of holidays — there’s not only a passage of time, but a confusion.  All this adds up to a theme song for the lonely otaku — a social satire created from an intersection of the new Japanese aesthetics of moé and the old aesthetics of transience and the “beauty of imperfection“.  Despite it’s melancholy tone it’s a rather pretty track, conjuring the feel of changing seasons and whatnot.  However I didn’t place all those elements with those specific emotional goals.  I just made what felt right and what my mood dictated, and only afterwards did I realize the meaning of what I wrote. The more I reflected on that, the more I was like “this is what my next album has to be about” — exploiting Japanese aesthetics and sounds, old and new, in order to conjure up vivid imagery.