You’d think that two genres as disparate as black metal and J-Pop would go together like orange juice and toothpaste. Their chops are serious, but Tokyo Karan Koron’s breezy demeanor makes Go Nin No Entertainers feel effortless. Doo-wop a cappellas, quirky math rock interludes, and hard rock riffage share space with brilliant indie rock in the vein of early Two Door Cinema Club. Though the band never quite managed to pen a tune as undeniably catchy as “Spice” over the course of their 13-year career (and honestly, could anyone?), their discography is loaded with clever songcraft and adventurous genre fusion.
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This now-defunct quintet is probably best-known for recording “ Spice,” the first ending theme for Food Wars: a popular shonen anime series that makes cooking competitions look as dangerous and thrilling as martial arts. Each time we meet a band from Tokyo, we get the exact same reaction: ‘Oh yes, Tokyo Karan Koron! They’re our friends, we love them!’” “They are really brilliant, funny, and lovely people, and they seem to be very appreciated musicians, both in the mainstream and indie scenes. “After our first collaboration with Avex Records, the label opened up a part of its catalog for us to browse, and we immediately fell in love with Tokyo Karan Koron’s fresh and creative take on J-Pop,” says Zakrzewski.
Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track This guide, with releases listed in chronological order, should help direct you toward some solid entry points. Specific’s chaotic array of globe-trotting, style-hopping releases may be overwhelming to first-time shoppers. In addition to an album’s worth of ambient library music by Geoffrey Lolli, a drone-y witch house outing by Le Seul Elément, a retrospective compilation of work by Tokyo’s BALLOND’OR, and a collaboration with Taiwanese math-rockers Major in Body Bear. Over the second half of 2021, Specific plans to expand their horizons even farther. “Even in the West, it was kind of difficult to find affordable pressings of popular Japanese bands.” “You have to be aware that, at the time, vinyl wasn’t all the rage in Japan,” says Schall. Since then, Specific has carved out its own niche pressing J-pop records for Western audiences. Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan put Specific in touch with BiS’ label Avex, which allowed them to make contacts across the fringes of Japan’s pop music industry. What was a joke quickly became serious business. “He was right, so we kinda asked him, as a joke, if he thought we could maybe release their album on vinyl for Europe.” “Our good friend Yves Botz from Mesa Of The Lost Women told us about BiS Kaidan and how that band could be up our alley,” says Schall of the eccentric Japanese group comprised of legendary noise collective Hijokaidan and anti-idol band BiS. Specific launched in 2010 after the couple’s first-ever trip to Japan with a simple goal in mind: “To release good & interesting music, no matter what the specific genre was, and to keep records as affordable as possible.” While initial releases came from sources close to home, like local improv outfit 14:13 and Schall’s own project Twin Pricks, releasing Japanese music on Specific was their aim from the outset. Zakrzewski describes Specific as a “musical laboratory” in which artists can experiment and collaborate, but the label could also be considered a kaleidoscopic look into the lives of its founders, whose passion for curation is an art in itself. Sometimes, the label functions as a mouthpiece for the indie pop scene of Metz, where the label is headquartered, though it just as often serves as an outlet for vinyl editions of underrated J-Pop albums that might otherwise only exist as CDs. Subject to the eclectic tastes of French husband-and-wife duo Florian Schall and Jennie Zakrzewski, Specific Recordings’ discography spans continents and fuses genres, taking delight in its own ambiguity.
For a label named Specific, it’s surprising how broad the scope of this vinyl-only imprint really is.