Existence can be challenging enough without feeling as though your life is some kind of video game and you’re a little pixelated person made to run and jump around it’s many obstacles. I mean, the Marios, Sonics and Mega Men of the world may have been animated automatons forced to risk life and computer-chip-generated limb for the entertainment of others, but at least they got to do it to their very own computerized soundtracks, and were rewarded by being fed the occasional power-up! When it comes to our very real everyday adventures though most of the time the only “power-up” we have access to is whatever music we choose for our soundtrack.
While it may not be a glowing “Starman” or magic “Super Mushroom” the music of YMCK, a female-fronted 8-Bit Chiptune Pop trio based out of Tokyo, Japan, just might be the power-boosting soundtrack the side-scrolling adventure that is your life has been needing.
The group, comprised of uniformly single-named Midori on vocals, Yokemura handling music, lyrics, and arrangements, and Nakamura tackling visuals, formed in 2003 and have since released 3 full-length LPs, making a name for themselves outside of Japan by performing at music festivals in Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand and New York. Their newly-released third LP, titled Family Genesis, is a 14 track excursion into a fast-moving, brightly-colored, block-shaped world where traditional Pop, Jazz, Electronica/IDM and saccharine J-Pop have mutated into a new gleefully childlike genre of music whose deceptively complex, and beautifully melodic tones are created entirely from the sounds generated by the circuitry of primitive video game consoles.
Although the tracks on Family Genesis are sure to give you flashbacks to all the most nerve-wracking levels from your favorite 8 and 16 bit video-game titles, YMCK don’t simply make retro “video-game music” or trade on nostalgia and gimmicky kitsch. They craft simple, pure Pop songs with catchy melodies, layers of blissful harmony, choppy electronic beats and speaker-rumbling basslines, they just choose to orchestrate their songcraft using the synthesis of old-school computer-chip technology instead of traditional instruments. So even if the songs like the Jazz inflected hand-clapping sing-a-long “8 Ban Me No Niji” and the vocoder-infused “Starlight” do conjure up images of blocky pixels and clumsily animated sprites, musically they share much in common with other electronically-produced genres like Synthpop and Laptop-Pop.
YMCK - “Starlight”
American audiences will be able to catch YMCK in a rare live performance of their “Magical 8Bit Show” as part of the “Japan! Culture + Hyperculture” festival Sunday, February 10th at the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage in Washington, DC.
-El Keter
