shibuya-kei: a breakdown of the cheekiest genre of the 1990s

WORDS BY AMELIA ZOLLNER

ART BY JENNY LEE

Disclaimer: In 2021, interviews in which Keigo Oyamada (who was a member of Flipper’s Guitar and makes music as Cornelius) discussed bullying disabled classmates resurfaced. EMMIE and the writer do not support his actions.

When guitar pop group Flipper’s Guitar formed in a Japanese junior high school in the ‘80s, its members never expected to form one of the most interesting microgenres of the next decade. But as the group evolved after the departure of three of its members, its cut-and-paste method of sampling inspired other artists disillusioned by the pessimism of much of the era’s music. Unknowingly working together in a movement that wouldn’t be named for years, these musici ans set out to create a sound rooted in surrealism, childlike wonder and some really silly samples.

Enter Shibuya-kei, a microgenre defined by its collage-like reliance on sampling, its ‘60s inspirations and its blend of everything from bossa nova to indie pop.

Though the movement technically began in the late ‘80s with the formation of Flipper’s Guitar, its name wasn’t coined until 1991 (when a record display in an HMV store named the genre after its geographic prominence in Tokyo’s Shibuya district), and it didn’t gain an international audience until years later.

Here is a timeline of Shibuya-kei’s rise and fall told through seven of its most influential albums.

Doctor Head’s World Tower by Flipper’s Guitar (1991)

The same year that the term Shibuya-kei was coined, Flipper’s Guitar released Doctor Head’s World Tower. Of course, the group had been experimenting since its first album in 1989, but this release marks the moment when Shibuya-kei finally found its footing.

Named after the 1968 movie Head , Flipper’s Guitar’s Doctor Head’s World Tower is an ethereal experiment on the sounds of the same era. Its 10-minute long psych rock epic “The World Tower” exemplifies Shibuya-kei flawlessly, crafting a collage of the songs that led up to it into a surreal, dreamlike conclusion.

Just months after releasing Doctor Head’s World Tower , Flipper’s Guitar disbanded. The experimentalism across their discography didn’t go unnoticed, though — in the years following, other groups would borrow and improve upon this album’s cut-and-paste method of sampling, letting Shibuya-kei truly grow into the foundation that Flipper’s Guitar laid.

Bossanova 2001 by Pizzicato Five (1993)

While Flipper’s Guitar created the sound of Shibuyakei, Pizzicato Five popularized it. With production from Flipper’s Guitar’s Keigo Oyamada, Bossanova 2001 is one of the group’s strongest, peppiest releases. Contrary to its name, though, it doesn’t depend on bossa nova for more than a few of its 16 tracks. “Go Go Dancer” is a jazzy, funky jam, “Magic Carpet Ride” is a hip-hop infused trip through the stars and “Cleopatra 2001” is (finally) a shimmery, horn-filled exploration of the bossa nova that the album title misleadingly promises.

Thanks to the genre’s heavy sampling of American songs in its earlier years, Shibuya-kei’s creative sound felt like it was waiting to travel abroad. Luckily, it did thanks to Pizzicato Five — a year after releasing Bossanova 2001, the group made its American debut, eventually popularizing the sounds of Shibuya-kei internationally and paving the way for future artists within the genre.

Viva! La Woman by Cibo Matto (1996)

On Viva! La Woman, Shibuya-kei’s now established style of sampling is the main course, rap and elements of hip-hop are side dishes, and a tasty concept is the key ingredient. (In case you haven’t picked up on this by now, Viva! La Woman is a concept album about food, and it’s one of the most innovative projects to come out of the genre.)

Taking a turn from its laidback predecessors, the album feels explicitly defiant in its strongest moments. On “Birthday Cake,” vocalist Miho Hatori yells an especially cheeky recipe for a disgusting, weed-laced birthday cake she’s making for her son. “Add milk of two months ago / ‘It’s moldy mom, isn’t it?’ / I don’t give a flying fuck bro.”

Fantasma by Cornelius (1997)

As a member of Flipper’s Guitar, Keigo Oyamada helped form the sound of Shibuya-kei, but as a solo artist, he perfected it and took listeners on a fantastical journey that goes quite literally everywhere. I mean this geographically — in just over an hour, Cornelius’ Fantasma takes listeners to a miniature Disney parade, a surfboard in a starry ocean, a soccer game and nearly everywhere else on and off the planet (there’s even one song that feels like the musical equivalent of Planet of the Apes fanfiction, written in tribute to the movie from which Cornelius took his artist moniker).

In its remastered version, the album’s ambition is ultimately tied together with closer “Typewrite Lesson,” a song speckled with typewriter sounds and and acronyms rapped in a robotic voice: “FBI. Space. / CIA. Space. / KGB. Space. / CNN. Space.” The song attaches no meaning to these acronyms, but it somehow feels like a profound statement on everything, and it’s an excellent way to make the album’s grand scope feel complete.

Sushi (4004) by Various Artists (1998)

While Fantasma took listeners on a trip around the world (and even into space), Shibuya-kei’s actual location was much more restricted. Since the genre originated and thrived in a single district of Tokyo in a time before streaming, many of its less prominent releases were lost to time. A few compilations survived, though, and Sushi (4004) is one of the best to make it out.

Like any Shibuya-kei compilation album, it encompasses an incredible range: a watered-down techno bossa nova groove, an ambient Hawaii-themed track and a charming indie rock-esque tune all take center stage. Its highlight, though, is its first track, a seven-minute bowling-themed jam on a 1960s spoken word lecture about space titled “Bowlers In Space.” It’s funky, futuristic and, best of all, liberally uses the most comically abrasive boing sound effect possible.

Romantico by 800 Cherries (1999)

In 1998, producer Momus pronounced Shibuyakei dead after a few of its most iconic groups like Pizzicato Five disbanded. Despite the genre’s alleged passing, artists kept Shibuya-kei on life support well into the early 2000s, and some labels even coined a neo-Shibuya-kei wave in reference to the genre’s newly polished sound.

800 Cherries lasted through this wave, and they played it incredibly safe on Romantico. In the larger context of Shibuya-kei, critics often hate this album — it’s been dubbed elevator music and referred to as “watered down Stereolab.” In a way, they aren’t wrong. Romantico doesn’t really add anything to the genre other than polished production and cutesy, nature-focused lyrics. But it’s one of the genre’s most accessible releases, successfully taking the sounds of Shibuya-kei and turning them into a neat, easy listening album that’s seen a resurgence in recent years.

Katamari Damacy Soundtrack: Katamari

Fortissimo Damacy by Yuu Miyake (2004)

In a sense, Namco’s 2004 game Katamari Damacy is about making a collage. Tasked with rebuilding the night sky after a god destroys the stars in a drunken rage, the player rolls up a ball of items that get progressively more grandiose — erasers, plants, cats, people, buildings — to then send it into the stars. It makes sense, then, that the game’s soundtrack is driven by the collage-like sounds of Shibuya-kei.

As a standalone album, Katamari Fortissimo Damacy shines in its ability to incorporate bits and bobs of Shibuya-kei into nearly every other genre. “The Moon & The Prince” is an enthusiastically rapped anthem, “Walking on a Star!” is a melancholic, glitchy soundscape, “Que Sera Sera” is a Sinatraesque tune and “Angel Gifts” is an incredibly monumental orchestral track that builds up into its own destruction.

It’s an incredible callback to everything that made Shibuya-kei great, but sadly, it was one of the last authentically Shibuya-kei albums ever popularized.

After Shibuya-kei’s short-lived revival, the genre eventually declined in the mid 2000s. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to stick around forever — but the impact it had on music as a whole was.

In the late 2000s, groups like Plus-Tech Squeeze Box pitched up the sounds of Shibuya-kei to create picopop. HALCALI built on Cibo Matto’s blend of Shibuya-kei with rap, and Capsule infused house into the genre’s sampling. These very sampling techniques have seeped into other genres, too.

While Shibuya-kei may be forever tied to the ‘90s, it still lives on as a gentle reminder that music can be full of contradictions. It can be futuristic while still calling back to the 1960s, it can be taken seriously while being fun and it can be innovative while relying (sometimes a little too much) on really silly samples.

(And, best of all, it can be a little bit cheeky).

The Beths aren’t taking themselves too seriously. On their latest album, Expert in a Dying Field, they explore the hope and agony of heartbreak and ask, “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field / And how do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” While grappling with forgetting a painful history, they manage to maintain an overwhelming air of optimism for the future.

The four-piece from New Zealand has been on the road since the year started and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. We were lucky enough to catch up over Zoom with lead singer Elizabeth Stokes on a rare, quiet day.

The Beths had just completed a 13-day run and were finally enjoying a day off. Stokes said even on the days where they aren’t playing shows, they are still booked up doing radio and TV sessions throughout the day. The band just performed a Tiny Desk Concert with NPR and a Saturday Session at CBS.

Currently, Stokes isn’t writing much and, at times, is finding creativity hard to come by. “I wonder if I enjoy songwriting. I think I enjoy having written a song, if that makes sense,” she says. Writing has been something that has caused a lot of stress in the past, but she is looking forward to writing again and healing her relationship with music.

“Music has gotten really weird for me. It’s because it’s now my job and so my relationship with it is kind of warped in a strange way. I would like to find my way back to having an uncomplicated, loving relationship with it,” she says.

Right now, she is happy to be on the road and is looking forward to touring for most of the upcoming year. “We really do feel like a touring band,” Stokes says. “I feel like we feel most like The Beths when we’re playing on stage.”

As well as performing, another field The Beths are experts in is telling jokes. They range from new jokes Stokes tests out on stage to longer running, almost performance artlike bits.

One of The Beths’ greatest strengths is their ability to commit to the bit. “We don’t travel with guitar techs, just a sound engineer and that’s it, so we wear hoodies that say ‘guitar tech’ on them and we set up our own equipment, which I think is quite funny,” Stokes says.

“And though we’ve been doing it for like over a year, I still think it’s funny because people usually know, but they pretend with you.” Her favorite part of the joke is complaining about how she has a terrible guitar tech when her cables end up tangled at the end of the night.

Stokes isn’t the only one cracking jokes on stage — bassist Benjamin Sinclair is also working the crowd. “He’s got quite a segment that’s just gotten longer and longer, but he just talks and makes an ad for the blog, just like in a very unhurried way. It’s extremely dense. It’s great,” Stokes says.

“The blog” refers to Sinclair’s travel diary, “Breakfast and Travel Updates.” He makes a new post every day on tour sharing what he had for breakfast and shares details and secrets from the rest of his day. Sinclair recently posted about a fun day they spent rock-climbing with friends from Chicago-based band Ratboys. He also had some wonderful looking chilaquiles and a glass of orange juice for breakfast that day.

It will come as a shock to no one that the blog started off as a joke. Sinclair kept mentioning he should start a blog so that his mom would stop texting him every day asking for updates. As the tour went on, he kept mentioning his blog, and Stokes laughed along thinking he was teasing, but it turned out he had actually done it, and that he takes it quite seriously, “He writes it diligently every day. It’s a lot of work,” Stokes says.

Accompanying The Beths on tour is their giant inflatable fish, which has become a mascot of sorts, and has of course been the genesis of a new bit. The fish, first seen on the cover of Expert In A Dying Field, became so emblematic of the album it made sense to bring it on tour. Immediately upon seeing the visuals from Lily Paris West, friend and collaborator who designed the artwork, Stokes knew it was the album cover. “What’s a bigger dying field than the ocean?” she says.

“It’s just funny to me during a quite earnest or serious song and then you look in the background and it’s just this giant inflatable fish,” Stokes says. And it was silly, making the audience laugh as they sang about heartbreak with a huge blow-up king fish bobbing in the background, mouth open, taking up a third of the stage.

The band also asks the audience to name the fish each night. (Our favorite answer they’ve come up with so far is Sidney Fish, named after Sidney Gish, the opening act for The Beths).

The Beths are shaping up to have a very exciting year. After finishing their North American tour, they are heading to Europe later this spring and have some festival dates lined up in South America. They will also be joining The Postal Service and The National as support for their upcoming tours. Even though they will be traveling the world, it’s safe to say Stokes is excited to come back to the Midwest — “We just seem to get along with people there” — and we know we are excited to have them back and hear some new jokes.