It is the center of a growing genre of electronic music that remixes the sights and sounds of 1980s Japan into an energetic, dancefloor-ready style called “future funk.”
“Nostalgia is a really big part of the whole future funk community,” says Davey Lo, owner of Showa City Club and Neoncity Records, a local label run by the same space that released albums by most of the future funk stars. And artists like Macross 82-99, Yung Bae, and Night Tempo.
Early releases of future funk relied heavily on samples of 1980s Japanese pop songs – a genre that today is loosely collected under the heading “city pop” and includes artists such as Anri, Junko Ohashi, and Mariya Takeuchi, who Her song “Plastic Love” thrilled the whole city. Pop revival.
City pop's soft rock styles have found a new audience outside of Japan as a younger generation of fans, many of whom grew up consuming Japanese pop culture through anime and video games, have rediscovered the genre on YouTube decades after the songs were released in the beginning.
“The real kind of breakout moment for her is Maria Takeuchi’s ‘Plastic Love,’” says Patrick St. Michel, a music journalist based in Tokyo.
In the Footsteps of American Soldiers: An Underground Music Center in South Korea
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“For whatever reason, the YouTube algorithm starts picking up on it and people are really amazed by the groove and the rhythm and also that kind of thing [melancholy] And the longing that lies inside.
Soon, the city's pop fans began remixing the songs into tracks that would define the early days of future funk.
“If it weren't for pop music in the city, the funk of the future wouldn't exist,” says Law.
Early future funk producers shared their songs on YouTube, often accompanied by short clips of classic anime series edited into an episode.
The songs became popular among fans of vaporwave, another genre of internet jam that mines a similar vein of nostalgia but produces a moodier, more downtempo sound.
“Future funk happened on the Internet,” Lou explains. “It started from SoundCloud, to an indie thing [become] “Nowadays there is a very big style of music.”
Future funk music makes people happy. When you listen to it, you just want to dance and forget all the sad things.
“The future of funk and the pop revival in the whole city has changed the Japanese music industry somewhat,” says Saint-Michel.
“Before, the image of the Japanese music industry was very outdated. Companies and talent agencies were very afraid of the Internet, and famously you could only watch 30-second music videos of Japanese pop acts back in the day.
Much of the continued growth of future funk music is due to the efforts of Hong Kong label Neoncity Records. Law started the label by issuing cassettes of early future funk albums, laying the foundations for what would become the genre's formative years.
“A lot of future funk artists weren't releasing their music on physical formats,” says Law. “The first cassette we released of Night Tempo is called imaginary. This product sold really well and we had to repress it and it all started from there.
imaginary It has since been released five times, on three different physical formats, by Neoncity Records.
The South Korean producer, whose real name is Jung Kyung Ho, has gone on to release around 17 albums, including with major labels such as Universal Music Enterprises and Victor Entertainment.
For his part, Law remains humble about his importance to the genre. He released his own future funk album, Hong Kong city days and nightsunder the name Daviouxx, continues to DJ in Hong Kong and abroad and has expanded Neocity into a fashion line inspired by future funk as well.
“I never planned to start a company or anything like that,” Lu says. “It was more like a hobby, you know, just DJing and partying with friends and playing music that we liked.
“Future funk music makes people happy. When you listen to it, you just want to dance and forget all the sad things.
