YMCK – Family Music

YMCK – Family Music / 2005 Records of the Damned / 12 Tracks / http://www.ymck.net / http://www.recordsofthedamned.com / Reviewed 03 August 2005

YMCK play a brand of J-pop that has ties to both Nintendocore bands like Horse the Band and also the slower, sixties-influenced pop acts (who have current Japanese analogues in bands like Fantastic Plastic Machine). The resulting music is quaint, and even with the very inorganic sounds that drive tracks like “Magical 8bit Tour”, individuals will be abler to recall much earlier periods in their own development with all the sunshine that bands like YMCK can muster. Interestingly enough, tracks on “Family Music”, instead of just portraying the aforementioned style (sixties) really start to emit an early-nineties, almost New Jack Swing backdrop to the track.

To be honest, the brand of music that YMCK plays will appeal only to tremendously open-minded individuals who can appreciate tracks like “Darling”, even though the basic components of a song are only lightly adhered to (the instrumental accompaniment, and a pseudo-vocal synth line being the only things that really tie together the music into a semi-coherent composition. Those fans of the Nintendo will have to tune into “SOCOPOGOGO”, a “normal” track that mixes dreamy vocals with Super Mario sound effects, turning the latter into a chaotic mess before the orthodoxy of Midori’s vocals can step in. Most approachable on “Family Music” has to be “SOCOPOGOGO”, as tracks like “Synchronicity” uses a computer program to create staggered, uncomfortable vocals even as purely synthesized sounds create the framework for the track.

The fact that YMCK can experiment with all aspects of the song (even modifying the song length, condensing their music into sub-thirty second compositions) is perhaps the act’s strongest contributions to current music. The style of music has been approached in the past, but the completely computerized sound of “Family Music” has never been done so successfully as it has on this disc. Challenging at all points, “Family Music” is the nut that is nearly impossible to crack but provides orgasmic taste after eating it. The infectious melodies present in tracks like “Tetrominon” rival any pop creation of the last century in pure charm, and there are moments on “Family Music” (the tenth track) which hint at the prevalence of the pop form even in something as un-traditional as YMCK. “Family Music” is an interesting look at the nexus of a few poorly-understood genres; this fusion of J-pop and Nintendocore makes sense and sounds great, and avoids all the problems (the unfamiliarity of the subject matter of J-pop and the repetitive compositions of Nintendocore) associated with both genres.

Top Tracks: POW*POW, SOCOPOGOGO

Rating: 6.0/10