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idolisnotdead · 3 years

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The Goofball & The Gyaru - The End Of An Era For Oyasumi Hologram, Japan’s Best Kept Secret And Idol-Punk’s Last Bastion (A Farewell To Hachigatsu)

The Goofball & The Gyaru - The End Of An Era For Oyasumi Hologram, Japan’s Best Kept Secret And Idol-Punk’s Last Bastion (A Farewell To Hachigatsu):

I want to preface this by saying that Oyasumi Hologram is the best band you may not have ever heard of. They’re a complete enigma, nothing around right now quite compares to their unique blend of musical styles, emotional songwriting, unique vocal delivery, member dynamic, and downright chaotic live concerts. I’ve scattered hyperlinks throughout this post on keywords that will direct you to either YouTube videos or Spotify if anything piques your interest.

As of writing, it’s been just a little over 5 years since Oyasumi Hologram’s triumphant and raw debut self-titled album was released in 2015. It’s an album that lead the charge of what was a very short-lived renaissance of blossoming post-BiS idol groups taking on less traditional sounds and images than the idol groups past. Its release was also one of the main reasons the IDOL iS NOT DEAD blog began in the first place, not only being my single favorite album of 2015, but also the first album of many towards the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016 that would follow it in suit; the industry still wanted something like BiS, despite not exactly needing it as we’d fully realize just another short year or two down the line.

It was a light in the dark, a spark for a fading fire. Of course, as we can clearly see now, the flame is out and it’s been for a while. The new BiS is comically bad, almost completely taking the shape of what the original group actively stood opposed to, groups like PassCode and everything codomomental are doing have long since showed their corporate roots; the entire “image” of “alt-idol” is exactly that, just an image, an edgy aesthetic with no actual ethics, and nothing more than that.

Not quite an idol group and not quite a band either, Oyasumi Hologram - also known as OYSM (and I’ll be referring to them often from here on as such) - were something entirely idiosyncratic and different from the rest of the Japanese underground idol scene, the true last bastion of genuine anti-idol ideology, more often acknowledged as a punk and experimental band than simply the idol group their original lineup took the form of.

Forming in early 2014 by Kouichi Ogawa as a 5-member idol group, consisting of Haruko Tashima, Sayaka Hayakawa, Sayuko Nano, Yayoi Matsumoto, and Kanami Mochizuki (simply known as Kanamil), they released one song in April, Drifter, with this crowded and relatively aimless and un-unique lineup. Drifter has since been re-recorded half a dozen times as something of a “signature song”, though they’ve since accumulated a fair few more songs worthy of that title. In July, Sayaka Hayakawa (known at the time as Saekopi) departed the group and a few days later, a local bartender from Shinjuku simply known as Hachigatsu-chan had joined (I don’t believe her real name is public knowledge at the time of writing, as Hachigatsu means “August” and isn’t a standard first name in Japanese). Come September, the remaining members departed and it was down to just Hachigatsu and Kanamil.

This remaining lineup would take OYSM into a new era, originally focused on a raw and powerful punk rock sound on their landmark of a debut album before venturing into new territory on subsequent releases. Rather than continuing to take the form of a traditional idol group, Ogawa, Hachi, and Kana all saw it fit to take the group into a different and far more consistent and realized direction. Oyasumi Hologram are known and beloved not just for their energetic and ferocious concerts, but also for their less-than-ideal vocal performances (dare I even say poor?) that adds to the charm of the “rawness” of the band, “raw” and “energetic” being the two perfect keywords to describing Oyasum Hologram to the uninitiated.

Hachigatsu’s personality fits a little more in line with a traditional idol while still not really trying to be one. She often attaches a stuffed sea turtle (who she calls Sea Tarou) to her microphone, does silly little improvised and occasionally choreographed dances and arm motions, generally more of a lovable goofball than a full-fledged idol. Hachigatsu’s unique hair style splits her hairline down the back of her head completely into two braids that hang way off the sides of her head in a way that could almost defy gravity.

Kanamil on the other hand embodies the spirit of punk rock through-and-through. In a lot of early live videos of the duo lineup, she can be seen gripping a beer rather than a stuffed sea turtle. She does her makeup and her hair up in something more a modern gyaru style, something that’s also present in her fashion, speech patterns, and usage of slang. Her hair is usually put up in an ultra-high ponytail draping over the top and hanging down over sides of her head. I only mention their hairstyles not as mundane details, but specifically because their appearances were also entirely unique and downright iconic. I have friends who have done their hair like Kanamil on the regular, much like a few years ago when people started dying the tips of their hair red like Seiko Oomori. It’s more than just a look, it’s their influence.

On paper, the dynamic between these two shouldn’t work, but on-stage, they’re unlike anyone else. They work together like apple and cinnamon. Their energies rebound off of each other. The average OYSM concert would find Hachigatsu doing silly improvised dances on stage while Kanamil would often be drunkenly stumbling around stage or jumping out into the crowd, using shoulders, hands, and faces of audience members as her stage, spitting water and beer into the crowd and creating pure chaos, something that the audience reciprocated, often culminating in non-stop movement, shoving, mosh-pits, jumping, the works. If you were wondering where BiS’ original punk fans went, you’d be hard pressed to look at an Oyasumi Hologram concert and argue that that’s not where they all went to after BiS’ disbandment. They had become the furthest thing from idol.

There was no more choreography, no synchronized movements, and certainly no pandering to that audience. Oyasumi Hologram had essentially become a band with two lead singers, and the dynamic between each was inexplicably just pure magic, a match made in heaven.

Ogawa took it upon himself to form a lineup on instrumentalists to serve as the group’s main backing band, consisting of Ogawa himself and Kazuma Hashiga on guitars, Taku Fukuyama on saxophone, Piro Itagaki on drums, and Junet Kobayashi on bass, also known as JitteryJackal, an alias under which he has since produced numerous remixes for the group. Eventually, Ogawa expanded his connections into several different backing bands, some taking even larger lineups featuring violin by Jun Momose, and another lineup that featured Ahito Inazawa, the famed drummer from the legendary punk rock band Number Girl.

A year after this final lineup change and the formation of a backing band, Oyasumi Hologram released their debut self-titled album, an album that to this day I hold as one of my favorite Japanese releases of both the 2010s and of all time. This album is also special to IDOL iS NOT DEAD in that it’s among those albums I wrote a review for but somehow the draft went missing, and was thus never posted. If I remember correctly, something similar happened with the TOKYO BLACK HOLE and All Is Vanity reviews, though I went on to rewrite the former entirely. (Edit: While I was looking for a hyperlink to the rewritten TOKYO BLACK HOLE review, it...seems to have disappeared? I can’t find it in my archive, but here’s an ask someone sent that confirms that it certainly did exist at some point lmao)

That aside, OYSM’s debut album is unlike anything else I’ve heard since. It starts on the strongest note possible, a song called Plan that introduces them perfectly. It’s raw, abrasive, the production is dodgy, there’s feedback and grating guitar tones, and the singing is the furthest thing from what the rest of the idol scene would call clean or acceptable in terms of the tones of their voices. But all of that put together creates an absolutely beautiful mess, and that sound continues throughout most of the album with a few exceptions that show a glimpse into the sound of their sophomore LP known simply as “2″. Oyasumi Hologram’s debut album is a true 10/10.

Prior to “2″′s release in early 2016 they debuted a song called Strawberry which carried the same raw punk rock sound of their first album. However, upon release, “2″ saw OYSM mostly depart their raw punk rock sound and move towards a more indie-electronic influenced sound hinted at on songs like Note and Tab Song off of their self-titled record. Guitar work was still present, although it took a cleaner tone and more of a backseat to digital production and electronic sounds on about half of the songs. Their identity however was still completely untouched, they still had this same emotional power and raw unhinged energy, and this can be seen no more clearly than on possibly their biggest song, Neuromancer.

A few months later towards the end of 2016, they went fully electronic with their third album, known simply as “...” and pronounced ‘three’. Once again, despite the almost completely digital sound of this album, they took their emotional lyricism and vocal delivery to new heights with more on-key vocals and overall cleaner production without sounding sterile or like they lost their energy. These two albums were certainly a jarring 1-2 punch after their punk rock debut, but they never the less carried their identity close and delivered some of their best songs to date, like the opener Fairytale and the closer Empty Page.

Oyasumi Hologram was carving a path of their own at this point, already having sold out their one-man tours (in Japanese music, “one-man” refers to a concert played without any opening support bands, it’s just the headliner and that’s it) in larger venues than the Shinjuku basement bars they started out playing at in between the release of “2″ and “...”.

In November 2017, they released the “15″ and “17″ EPs. The “15″ EP featured two new songs, Sorekara and Ghosting, which brought back the chaotic punk rock sounds of their debut album, while the “17″ EP featured a slow indie rock song, Slow Dancer, more akin to the sound of their second album, and three other new songs with an electronic sound like their third album. The “15″ EP in particular stands as one of the highest moments in OYSM’s discography.

These EPs lead into the release of their fourth album, aptly titled “4″ in May 2018. The opener, Colors, immediately takes the sound back to the “2″ album’s indie rock opener Kaerimichi, with a bit more energy and pop sensibility. This is still Oyasumi Hologram, but more polished than ever. The vocal delivery on “4″ was stronger and the musical sound of the album took everything they had done up to that point and put it all into one consistent 10 song album.

That November, OYSM departed to America for their first US tour, which also brought the release of a US tour-exclusive EP, “27″, which was only available as a physical CD at first (it’s on streaming now, however) and featured a new version of Neuromancer as well as a handful of songs from what would be their fifth album released in 2019, but more on that album later.

Both coastal legs of this tour was supported by black metal/dark wave alt-idol darlings Necronomidol (who readers of this blog should be very familiar with, shoutout to their producer Ricky for always plugging it in and letting us be among the international earliest promoters of their music). The west coast leg of the tour was supported by chiptune pop legend TORIENA, and the east coast leg was to be supported by my friends from the Brooklyn alt-pop duo LOVE SPREAD (Rest In Peace Ryota, I miss you), who OYSM had just released a collaborative single with in April of that year.

I was fairly broke at this time, I was interviewing for jobs during the weekend of the east coast leg and couldn’t make it out to every show like I had intended to. Had I had the money, I’d have gone to both New York shows, one of which was acoustic, and the other of which was the only show of the tour where they were playing songs from the first album. I deeply deeply regret not going to that one.

I ended up going with a friend to the Philadelphia show, which we managed to get a parallel parking spot right in front of, completely unaware that it was the venue because the outside looked like some kind of store for mausoleums and gravestones. This preceded an unbelievably weird night of sets backdropped by projections of Eraserhead and The Holy Mountain (each movie played while Oyasumi Hologram and Necroma played their sets, respectively), films which if you aren’t aware of them, provide unbelievable amounts of discomfort and anxiety, and frankly could have been a bit distracting at points.

It was also a bit off-putting that OYSM decided to play mostly songs from that new EP they were selling out the merch table that nobody had heard yet, as opposed to songs that the handful of fans there definitely knew, with the crowd reacting the most to songs like Neuromancer and Strawberry.

You could tell that most of the audience were mostly very “want to be Japanese” wotas, as the majority of people were far more receptive to Necronomidol’s set. A big thing you hear a lot of foreign artists who tour in Japan say is that the audiences are so quiet between songs you could hear a pin drop; it’s a stark contrast to American concerts where if the band doesn’t do or say anything for more than 10 seconds, the crowd will start to chatter. It was like a Japanese concert in there.

You could tell that a lot of the audience wanted to strike some kind of weird “we’re fans of Japanese music so let’s act Japanese” balance. Dead quiet between songs, very respectful of the space. And it’s because of that that I find it incredibly weird to say that more fun would be had at a Japanese Oyasumi Hologram concert, and it’s because of that “quiet enough to hear a pin drop” sentiment that makes that a weird thing. Oyasumi Hologram concerts are loud and passionate and borderline violent. This was order, not chaos. It was a strange night, but it was nevertheless an exciting and fun night, albeit a slightly morbid one.

The venue was a small art gallery just a few blocks from the river, and had no more than 50 members of the audience at best. I was excited to meet up with my friend Ryota from Love Spread at the show, who I had just talked to a few days prior to let him know I was coming through to the show. But I found out after arriving that they would no longer be playing that night, and neither Ryota nor his bandmate Narumi were anywhere to be found.

A few short days after the concert, I found out that Ryota had passed away that week. Narumi had to clarify that this wasn’t a joke, as something so grim being passed off as a joke or promotional thing wouldn’t be off-brand for Love Spread; their lyrics frequently touched on topics of death and mortality, and the video for their anthem Sayonara Forever featured images of them in funeral attire and jumping off of a roof together. Rest In Peace, Ryota. You’re missed every day and I wish I could have seen you again that night.

After their US tour, OYSM returned to Japan. On April 1st, 2019, they played a prank by rerecording Plan, only this time, it was recorded like a heavy metal song and they jested that they would become a metal band, a pretty well-executed joke that I genuinely wouldn’t have hated were it not a prank. However, it was, and in May they released their fifth and possibly final album, “5″, which featured Russell Lissack of Bloc Party fame on a handful of tracks, and returned back to their electronic-influenced sound.

This is admittedly my least favorite Oyasumi Hologram album, but it’s by no means bad. Its release just felt a little empty due to the rerecorded version of Friday from the “3″ album for some reason appearing on it, and many of the same recordings of the same songs appearing on the “27″ EP the year prior, though that impression is very biased as there were likely less than 100 copies of that EP sold and I was one of the rare few to get my hands on it. Regardless, songs like Ghost Rider and Fire stand out as some of the best songs of the band’s electronic discography.

At the end of 2019, things started to look up again however, as OYSM released a compilation/best-of album titled “1″. The album cover was a recreation of the cover of their debut album’s cover, and featured them standing in the same positions in the same room. The beautiful thing about “1″ is that it features songs from throughout the beginning all the way up to the “4″ album rerecorded in the raw punk rock style of their first album, though this time, with much cleaner but still not sterile production. It’s incredible, and if this is the way we send Oyasumi Hologram off, then it’s a bittersweet ending.

Today on Halloween 2020, Hachigatsu will be officially leaving the band, as it was announced two days ago on the 29th. No fanfare, no farewell concert. Just...gone. I’m left feeling pretty hollow and confused, as I’m sure most fans of OYSM are. This feels like the very last candle being blown out. Oyasumi Hologram never made it “big” and they likely won’t be remembered as “legends” because of that, but to those who did know about one of Japan’s best kept secrets, they’ll always be legends. They always brought nonstop energy to their performances, they made absolutely every show count and never skipped a beat.

The future of the band is unclear at this point. What we do know is that Ogawa and Kanamil have talked and they want to continue in some fashion. It’s within my own personal opinion that I think they should continue with just Kanamil and focus on being a full-on band, with Kana taking on the role of a traditional frontman. Replacing Hachi just wouldn’t feel right. I know that OYSM started as an idol group, but that phase was quite short-lived and they’ve since become something entirely different, and treating them as such.

So as of right now, we don’t know what’s going to happen. It seems that Hachi’s desire to depart the group was a sudden announcement to Ogawa and Kanamil as well. They’re not under any traditional idol contracts so it’s not like they were locked into any deal or that they had to stay. They did what they did for so many years because they genuinely enjoyed it. You could often find them casually hanging out and drinking with fans after their shows, something you’d never in a million years see any idol, alt-idol or otherwise, be doing.

However the band themselves have a record deal that they announced was to end this month anyway, and they announced their intention to keep their own record label “Goodnight Records” completely independent going forward.

The strangest part of this news is that it put something into perspective that I had never even thought about before: I do not have a “favorite” member or an “oshi” or whatever you dweebs call it. I’m not bummed about Hachi’s departure because Hachi was my favorite, I’m bummed about her exit specifically because I’m going to miss the exact dynamic that only Hachi and Kana together are capable of creating. They were a + and -, like magnetism, it just worked.

And that’s all we know. I’ll likely be back soon with another post about IDOL iS NOT DEAD’s 5th anniversary and to update the Oyasumi Hologram situation, as they’re the only thing that’s left me giving half a shit about this scene over these past few years.

In the meantime, you can read the official post on Oyasumi Hologram’s website (Google translated has come a long way and will get the general point across to you English-speakers) here, you can stream Oyasumi Hologram’s music on Spotify here and you can also read our good friends at Homicidols writeup about this news here as well.

Stay safe, it’s been a scary year.

With love,

IDOL iS NOT DEAD

Post-Script:

Hey everyone. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Do people even still use this website after the female-presenting nipple fiasco? Ah well, I need to write this somewhere and this is the best place to do it. I think the last post I made here was my ranking of The Pillows’ discography (which I’ve since updated to include Rebroadcast). A huge undertaking, but I think this post might be a bit more of one, and certainly weighs heavier than something as light-hearted as a ranking of albums.

By now it’s just a little past the 5 year anniversary of IDOL iS NOT DEAD. I’ll likely make another belated post about that particular occasion and go into some details about why I started this project (it’s actually pretty heavy, so I don’t want to add anymore weight to this already heavy post).

#punk #punk rock #japanese music #japanese punk #japanese rock #japanese idol #japanese idol music #idol music #oyasumi hologram #idol is not dead #idol is dead after this

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