#i feel the wof fixation coming back……………..

[the-leafiest-leafwing]

he has that sadness in his eyes that you only see in eastern european gay porn

[ystk-archive]

First of all, big apologies to the six people above who asked me about this song over a month ago when it came out. I understand what Nakata meant when he said he only knows a song is finished when he hits his deadline – I could’ve easily let this sit another week and came back and messed with it more lmao.

If you want the short and simple of it: it’s nice, with all that piano it’s sort of reminiscent of jelly (aside from the WOF thing which I’ll, uh, get into below), it’s great to see Toshiko in one of their MVs again (and Nakata directing which hasn’t happened since ’07) though I’m not wild about the video per se. I guess in a broad sense I would say I like it, it’s a return to form for him and infinitely more enjoyable than anything he’s done with his “officially solo” material, but I could also fully understand if someone thought it was boring.

For my actual thoughts on it...

Hikari no Disco (ひかりのディスコ; Light Disco) as a whole package is sort of unusually mired in nostalgia. It’s got all that densely layered, classic style Nakata’s best known for which has been largely absent from his other projects over the past six years of CAPSULE (god I still don’t like the all-uppercase stylization) being in live-shows-only mode. As a piece of music it has an endearing sense of comfort and awe; it amuses the listener with odd little vocal modulations (my favorite is at 2:02), pointed percussive moments, and a strong piano backbone that work in tandem to give it character and charm. It even eschews the club-ready rinse-and-repeat of Nakata’s past compositions for capsule in favor of something very traditionally pop: an actual, proper break right before the song’s climax. Maybe it’s not a stretch to say all the tiny flourishes and embellishments in Hikari are a pure reflection of Nakata finally finding some kind of reason to go back to capsule – the overly bombastic (and loud) way the track opens feels like a curtain unveiling, like somebody pointing to capsule and going “hey, look at this!”

Though there is a bit of an elephant in the room here and that would be the recurrence of the motif from WORLD OF FANTASY (the repeating pattern of twelve-ish notes) which defined that track ten years ago. For the person who mentioned him recycling material, he did say in his Real Sound interview that he deliberately sampled it, but despite my agreeing with him in that it’s a good motif I have a few issues with its reappearance in Hikari. It’s such a specific and memorable facet of a previous track in their discography that its inclusion here feels like a sister song has been created rather than an entirely new work. Not only that, but Nakata went one step further with this callback and basically reimagined the entire music video for WOF as well. He’s definitely not a stranger to self-reference within his music but it normally seems to occur under incidental circumstances, and since historically capsule isn’t a music unit that does a lot of looking back, it comes across strangely for longtime listeners. Nostalgia and sampling oneself aren’t inherently bad, the problem here is that it doesn’t do enough to transform its inspiration point into a solidly new work. I spend both the song and music video just thinking about WORLD OF FANTASY and comparing the two in my mind.

Which, speaking of new works, you probably don’t need me to tell you this brings absolutely nothing new to the table for Nakata’s standard. I’m mixed on whether or not I could call this a detraction, because on one hand I’ve believed for years that he could stand to break out of his comfort zone musically and really try wholly different things (CAPS LOCK is an example), but on the other hand I recognize that capsule’s first new track in six years may not be the place to expect that. I think my concerns right now are for an album that’ll be too self-referential and maybe too focused on being something people remember liking from over a decade ago. (I mean, even their new artist photo is a goofy MORE! MORE! MORE! reference. Love the gloves, though.)

Lyrically Hikari is even more nostalgic, verging on the same type of sweetness present in past capsule songs like FRUITS CLiPPER’s dreamin dreamin and FLASH BACK’s Eternity. I often find myself fixating on the line “この身体にまだ / 慣れてないけど” (“Though I’m still not used to this body”); it strikes me as a strange thing to say in a song that’s otherwise teeming with sentimentality and familiar words (disco, stars, sparkling, landing, lights). Is the speaker meant to be an alien that got turned into a human? Are they now a 41-year-old grappling with age? Am I reading into things here? To answer the person who asked what the song “means,” it’s really up to your interpretation and how you relate to it. For me it’s a song about the lights of the city at dusk, the lights of the club and, just maybe, the lights inside all of our hearts. (That was awful. I’m kidding.)

The music video is an anomaly in that it is apparently Nakata’s return to the director’s seat after a fourteen-year absence from helming this aspect of capsule. While video direction isn’t exactly his forté, nor has it ever seemed like a passion of his, I’ve always enjoyed the outside-the-box approach that yielded visual works like Retro Memory’s stylish, static angle lounge singer concept and Glider’s quirky portrayal of the afterlife, or something. Despite what I said earlier, Hikari is equally helped by the immediate parallel the viewer will draw between it and the music video for WORLD OF FANTASY – it’s almost as if (note: he did not say this! I’m speculating!) Nakata revisited WOF and felt dissatisfied by director Tani Atsushi’s “night drive through Tokyo but make it Blade Runner on a budget.” As someone who never particularly cared for that MV, I have to praise what Hikari does differently with the same basic premise. Here, Toshiko is shown through a neutral lens that chooses not to highlight her body as she gets into a Honda Prelude, an older car almost utterly devoid of the cool points earned by WOF’s Lamborghini. The core of Hikari’s intrigue is in anachronism: the car is from the 1980s, but the road Toshiko is driving on didn’t exist at that time, so when does the music video take place? They carefully include a shot of Tokyo Tower, a symbol of pre-2010s Tokyo, and exclude the much newer Skytree. There’s also the appearance of the cassette tape from which the single’s cover art and central nostalgic ethos are derived. Where WOF followed expectations of an ultra-sleek futuristic cityscape, Hikari is subversive in only the way something with Nakata’s direct involvement could be. It does it all with an unsteadily amateurish camera, a fixation on the unfocused glittering lights of the city, and an intense 3D-effect filter that brings to mind Sugarless GiRL, his last directorial work.

Though as charmingly set up as Hikari is, the video – and Toshiko – ultimately go nowhere. Not that capsule’s music videos were ever particularly story-driven (the animated sci-fi trilogy notwithstanding), nor do they need to be, but there’s a one-note sameness that permeates Hikari and leaves me wanting more. This is especially glaring in the way the video ends with in-car audio and prolonged silence, suggesting something is about to happen, but nothing does. As the music itself ended I found myself desperately hoping for a visual conclusion to go with it: maybe she’d answer a phone call, or arrive at her destination and get out, but the MV just sort of...stops. Legend has it she’s still driving to this day.

Overall the music video does its job better than any other capsule MV between 2010 and now, and the musical nostalgia here is a fun diversion even if it isn’t exactly introducing new ideas. I’m presently just confused about the status of the album (and whether something as jarringly old-school as Utsusemi will get tacked on there) but capsule’s not really followed consistent scheduling since they moved to Warner/ASOBISYSTEM. Maybe next time they drop something I’ll be more conscientious of the timing of answering questions about it though, lol.

[autistic-council-spectre]

tagged by @turianfetishist and i kept forgetting 2 do it afauahs

and then i tried to commit suicide via peanuts so u know that’s how it be sometimes on this bitch of an earth

1. Whats the favorite item of clothing you own?

mmm do binders count as clothes bc if so that one BUT i also have this skirt that’s like a pastel galaxy it’s a #look

2. Tell me about the first time you watched your favorite movie?

hums one of my favorites rn is the new mlp movie(thank u tiny me 4 ur special interests that continue to kidnap me) and me andf my bf watched it when he came to visit AND IT WAS SO GOOD!!!! we went there after dinner and we looked all fancy to watch it and i had So Many Feelings™ tempest is,,,iconic and dramatic i love and support her

3. What was the last book you finished?

tbh tbh i usually read more fics than books recently bc im trash b u t i reread the darkstalker:legends and it’s,,,so good darkstalker is equal parts relatable and a trash child. the biggest trash child like what the FUCK my son

4. What is the next book you want to read?

mmmMM i think i wanna reread lotr tiny me fixated on it and it’s still good THAT OR i need to find the rest of the wof books 👀👀give me them dragons. esp the nightwings. i love them

5. When is your birthday and what do you want for it? (If your birthday has already happened this year did you get what your heart was set on?)

the sweet sweet release of death

okay so dramatic emo-ness aside my bday is on September 28th and Honestly there’s this pair of boots i high-key want bc it has that like. that feeling that if u wear them ur gonna get together a rag tag group and go be space pirates or smthin.

but if we go for non material things i want my bf to come for a visit bc he came for like a week or two last yr for my bday and now im like??? come back??? give me attention????? u done fucked up and now ur stuck with me so Come Back Fucker

6. If you were given one month and $10,000 where would you travel to?

JAPAN!! japan,,,, partly bc i was quite literally made in japan not born there just. made. (an i also want a tattoo that says that but that’s another story) AND ALSO the street fashion there is 👀👀 i can finally look weird and fit in yis

7. Cake or pie?

im not able to have either for awhile adsgsh but fucking. pumpkin pie HELL YES i can live off that

8. Name three things you think you’re good at.

being an annoyance

but mm art, writing sorta?? and sewing :v

9. Name three things youd like to be better at.

if someone could teach me how 2 be a ppl that’d be Great (bc apparently ur Not supposed to lick ur friends. sounds fake), cleaning tbh bc im Bad at that and uhh honestly i wish i knew how to skateboard bc it looks fun but i am useless at it

10. Name three far fetched dreams you’d like to do some day.

i rlly wanna write a novel someday tbh i have alllllll of the plans and plots for it just. gotta do it. don’t wanna do it that takes effort

i want to be friends with every lizard and snake :v THEYRE GOOD FRIENDS good scaly bois

and i Also wanna make some kind of break through in science either engineering or genetics, tiny me had plans for this cool ass robot and everything. but i do not understand the engineerings™

11. If you had to dye your hair what color would you die it?

i used to have the tips this bright blue and i loved it So prolly bright blue but listen

listen

the anime weeb part of me that binge watches psychopass

REALLY wants white hair so i can be a doomed anime protagonist bc thatd be Awesome™

an ill tag uhh @thecouncilwasright @electric-space-possum @erkthewanderer @theravenofwynter an @danceswithturians i don’t think y'all have been tagged but idk :v what is a memory