Metro-ko
Senoses - 18 novembre 2012 à 13:55
Metro-ko general thread, je viens de découvrir ça et ça me plaît gentiment, alors je vous c/c un truc que j'ai chopé :
>1) A name for your scene/genre Metro-ko >2) Artistic ideas/aesthetic/themes Album art is minimalistic with black or white design with framed picture in the centre or zoomed-in image. Recurring imagery of clustered metropolis centres and places like the Walled City of Kowloon and inner Tokyo. Grainy, zoomed-in stills of nineties anime series and PlayStation games. Evident pervasive but not overbearing Japanophilia. Inoccuous-sounding, anonymous artist names taken from objects or situations such as Mutual Love Chat, Abandoned Vending Machine or Secret City Casino with a sense of urban magical realism. Black-and-white and sepia dominate; very occasional use of pastels. >3) Cultural references Metro-ko is a reaction to life in a vast, anonymous urban metropolis but takes the senses of solitude, yearning and nostalgia and combines them with an appreciation for the aesthetic of the bustling city (images of tightly-packed apartment buildings are pervasive) and its recontextualization by cartoons such as Bubblegum Crisis and games such as Parasite Eve, which endowed the city with a vaguely futuristic sense of mystery and adventure. Cultural touchpoints include the movie Tekkon Kinkreet and Dark City, the works of China Mieville, anime like Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost in the Shell, video games like Parasite Eve and Shenmue. >4) How the music sounds Lo-fi, simplistic ambient synth pop with a preference for analogue warmth and track lengths under 4 minutes. Liberal use of samples from all the pop media mentioned above, rarely looped, instead sprinkled and occasionally distorted for atmosphere. Huge, huge focus on mood; potentially catchy music that still works in the background. Think of Burial, KWJAZ, Modern Scar, 0PN, Clive Tanaka y su Orquesta, nineties video game soundtracks, etc. >5) How people should dress Hoodies, fit jeans and worn sneakers. The metro-ko philosophy is that it's music made by normal people for normal people for utilitarian purposes (connection, solace, forming bonds through New Media). It's a strictly urban thing. Main differentiator should be a love for blocky nineties video game consoles/handhelds and old, washed-out anime or video game t-shirts in some circumstances. Metro-ko fans communicate succinctly and in lowercase. They use old chat services like AIM and get the older versions if they can make them work. There is a fetishization of 90s technology all-around, but in a Japanese cute way as opposed to a self-awarely kitsch way.
Metro-ko promotes itself non-verbally, i.e. tries to do so through iconic images with few words (usually the artist's name only) and doesn't use extensive declarations or mission statements. The description pages of metro-ko artists usually have a string of Japanese characters and/or short phrases such as "lonely music by lonely people for lonely people," or quotes from associated pop media. There is a disdain for pornography and sexuality in general, and in that sense it is childlike. There's an appreciation for images (related) that evoke a sense of nostalgic appreciation for the PlayStation and DreamCast eras in particular. There is a dislike for overly busy and colorful graphic design. Black-and-white pictures of the city (the more tightly packed and urbanized the better), apartment buildings and things like that are very common. Look at the album covers of Burial's South London Burroughs, Modern's Regret, Yellow Swans' Going Places and Luna's Penthouse. Artist names are in all-caps or all-lowercase; album and track titles are usually all-lowercase.