Soutaiseiriron's abstract influence

I decided to take a break from the usual classical and art music, and have found myself listening (or rather, dissecting) an unusual piece of Japanese Popular Music.

Everyday, I go to college via train. Of course, to free myself from utter boredom, I bring my iPod and just waste the commuting time away through music. Although eight percent of my playlist consists of classical and art music, I decided to have a change of pace and listen to the twenty percent in my playlist which consists of Japanese popular (JPop) songs.

Then I started to tell myself that it’s been quite some time since I listen to these kinds of things, yet fail to understand the lyrics, because, of course, it’s in Japanese. I then told myself that I would do a bit of research on the lyrics, and convince myself whether or not Japanese people really can write lyrics wonderfully. Because in the past, I find myself scooping and gawking over Anime then carefully scrutinize the lyrics of the intro. And I must say that more often than not, I am not convinced by the lyrics – it’s garbage. Of course, I always enjoy the way they write their music; they have their own unique mixture of color and vocal timbre that just makes it so worth listening to. But whenever it came to reading the subtitles while the vocalist with her “coquettish” voice enters the fray, I couldn’t even choose whether to laugh at their gibberish or to frown at it.

For the absolute musicians think that as long as a piece of music has a well-balanced sound, it would be permissible even though it possesses poor lyrical content. But for the singers and careful musical scrutinizers, even having an excellent piece of music with poor lyrics could critically jeopardize the work. I, for one, agree with the latter. I would want my song to be with great, intellectual content.

But for the Japanese band named Soutaiseiriron (Theory of Relativity), having an absolutely nonsensical set of lyrics once in a while wouldn’t really be so bad – especially if you have a reason for doing so. In this blipped video of Youtube, they present one of their earliest works with absolutely peculiar lyrics entitled Sumatora Keibitai (Sumatra Guards). Below I will post the lyrics, and the English translation as well.

yattekita kyouruu
machi hakai
mukaetsu watashi
SAIKIKKU

koushinsei tourai
fuyu nagai
asa wa yowai watashi
akubi wo shiteta no

Taiheiyou, Taiseiyou
koko iitai nani hei-you yo
nosun'da watashi no kioku wo kaeshite
CIA, KGB, FBI ni kyousantou no inbou yo
dareka, watashi wo nigashite

ton'detta BOIJAA
wakusei hakai
nasusubenai anata
SAIKOPASU
kanjousen juutai
saki nagai

matsu no tsurai watashi
GEEMU BOOI shiteta no

Hokkyokasei, Choushinsei
ryuuseigun ni onegai yo
dareka tomete
ano ko no SUUSAIDO
shinkansen, renrakusen
unmei-sen yo oshiete
watashi, asu wa
doko de doushiteru no

akubi wo shiteta no

Taiheiyou. Taiseiyou
koko iitai nani sei-you yo
nosun'da watashi no kioku wo kaeshite
CIA, KGB, FBI ni kyousantou no inbou yo
dareka, watashi wo nigashite

---
ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Dinosaurs came and wrecked the city
But then I ambushed
and attacked them with my psychic powers

Soon, the Ice Age came
Bringing along its long winter
And me, feeling so weak in the morning,

I yawned.

Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean
What the hell is "Pacific"...?
Memories of mine stolen
came back to me
The CIA, KGB, and FBI
The communists were spreading conspiracies to them!
Somebody,
please set me free!

A flying voyager ship
is wrecking the planet
You've lost your mind,
And turned into a psychopath
The roads are blocked and the destination's far

Sick and tired of waiting, I played with my Gameboy

Oh, North star,
Supernova,
Please let there be a meteor storm...
Someone stop that girl
from suiciding!
Oh, bullet train, railroad tracks,
tracks of fate
Please tell her
When morning comes,
Where and how will I cope?

I yawned.

Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean
What the hell is "Atlantic"...?
Memories of mine stolen came back to me
The CIA, KGB, and FBI
The communists were spreading conspiracies to them!
Someone,
please set me free!

Now wasn’t that set of lyrics very familiar and pleasing to the ear (of course, that was sarcasm)? The band, Soutaiseiriron, does not always have lyrical structures as peculiar as this one, although they are a band who loves to parodize Anime and other Japanese Media and infuse them into their lyrics. Other lyrics of other songs are full sci-fi concepts, but still peculiar in such a way.

But what makes them apart from other bands is that their lyrics do not try hard to “sound correct”. In my opinion, they know how to commune with the rest of the world, and truthfully know their limitations in grammar and English. So they create this kind of gimmick to seemingly “warp” their lyrics and use them as a valid excuse that this is “Anime parody”.  I mean if we check the first verse, it reminds us of the usual Japanese cartoons we find ourselves watching when we were children. One might even say that “Hey! That sounds just like (insert Japanese name here) from (insert Japanese Anime series)!

As for their music, it’s nothing too fancy. Their Genre varies, but this is an example of Post-Rock – a subgenre of Alternative Rock. It is, in a sense, Rock, albeit the utlization of certain harmonies, melodies, timbres, and chordal progressions not usually found in traditional Rock music. An immediate element that defines their genre is the vocalist, Etsuko Yakushimaru’s “coquettish ‘moe’ voice”. It’s a tad contrasting when you have a solid sounding foundation with the musical atrocities of distortion fused with the vocalist’s flirtish, smooth voice. This is new music for us. This is innovation.

This greatly reflects on our situation today – our adaptation to the ever-changing world. So much could happen in a blink of an eye. And we, as artists – what are we supposed to do? Soutaiseiriron, the band’s influence, albeit abstract, is an essential factor in this generation. The fact that they have peculiarly structured lyrics and odd musical tastes mean to tell us artists that the time is now for us to open our minds. Not be too constrained with the constraints of traditional Classical music. I’ve really nothing against Classical music. I love Bach, Mozart, and of course, Beethoven. In fact, they make up eighty percent of my playlist at home. Yet, we find ourselves being too constrained with their theories – so much that we forget to open our minds to what’s new in this generation. We find ourselves too absorbed in the past, that we forget to appreciate even the little things these people of today do.

 The odd fusion of musical forms and ideas. The peculiar combination of unorthodox timbres with traditional ones.  The literary nonsense of some lyrics of songs. These are small things that define our generation. Like it or not, we embrace it.

Clusters

Tone clusters, then, are chords built from major and minor seconds which in turn may be derived from the upper reaches o the overtone seriers and have, therefore, a sound foundation.

-Henry Cowell on Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (Schwartz and Childs)

Cowell, as a composer, had unique aims in searching for his own musical style. He was fascinated with primitive music or primitivism and folkloric music, particularly with non-western instruments. I believe that this opened his mind to many new means of sound production – using your palms, fists, elbows, and forearms when playing the piano made him discover certain musical textures and timbres. This technique will be later known as Clustering.

One of the known works of Cowell that employed tone clusters was his 1912 piece entitled The Tides of Manaunnaun. All throughout the duration of the piece, Tone Clusters are very eminent in the accompaniment section. This creates a sort of vibrant and sonorific characteristic. The melody of the piece is very singable and lyrical, and although there’s the fact that the ‘singable’ melody superimposes the unlyrical superimposed secundal accompaniment, the character of the piece has a very strong, folkloric element. Cowell was smart to have separated the melody and accompaniment in 2 or even 3 octaves, so that the music does not sound ‘clashing and mishmashing’ – by this, he achieves musical balance.  And by playing with fists, palms, and elbows seems to have some sort of effect to the listener both visually and aurally. It really does create that seemingly 20^th century element.

The Pointillism of Luigi Nono (Ruijinōno no tenbyō)

          Pointillism or Punctualism is a style of musical composition whose structures are predominantly affected from tone to tone. It is unlike the music that we are used to listening to everyday, which has a certain theme or a melody being developed overtime, and divided by means of phrasing. In Punctual Music, such things are not to be treated with much attention. As I’ve said, the music’s intellect comes from the interaction of the several fragmented musical particles that occur during the duration of the piece. Much similar to Psychology’s “Knowledge Ordering” (more specifically, the known “Bottom-Up processing”), Punctualism involves observing (or in our case, listening) to the individual notes – the “micro-components”. Afterwards we listen to how these several “micro-components” interact with each other. And at the end of the piece, based on how all of these notes have interacted with each other, we can define the “macro-structure”, or the piece as a whole.

          Punctual Music is a direct opposite of linear, group-formed, or mass-formed music. It is music, which consists of separately formed particles.

          One of the best examples of Punctualist music is Luigi Nono’s “Polifonica Monodia Ritmica” scored for Woodwinds, Percussion, and Piano.

          There were rarely any “singable” or how should I say, sustaining themes in the piece, only various fragments. This explains the “separate particles” I was saying a while ago. And at first listening, one might not understand what’s really happening to the piece. One might even say to himself that “this is just an absurd sounding of random notes”. There are no diatonic relationships or any other scalar relationships between notes, which would give us a hint that this is atonality, as well as a scarce utlization and play in rhythm. If we would notice, there aren't much "runs" in the piece, neither could we listen to the rhythmically confusing tuplets. 

          Though as we listen to it again and again, we find out that there is a connection that is being formed from these several separate particles. There are also small hints that the rhythm develops over time, though there still isn't any clear reason as to how it developed (abruptly, I suppose). Also, one of the peculiarities of this piece is in it's instrumentation. Classicalists and Purists might object the idea of having an intellectual piece of music scored for Woodwinds, Piano, and Percussion (particularly, the Snare Drum) because of it's unorthodox manner and imbalance. 

What's worse, is that there is an extreme scarcity in the music's thematic identity, and no immediate sign as to how the music develops.

          This may be what we would call a radical piece of work, because of the seemingly farfetched method it utilizes to express an idea, and for the ordinary listener, the composer's "whimsical ploy in placing notes".