What Happened to Japan's Forgotten Shibuya-kei Band?

Shibuya-kei is a subgenre of Japanese pop music that emerged in the 1990s and peaked in the mid-2000s. It was a popular genre that has since reemerged thanks to internet culture, with its fans falling in love with it due to its mix of jazz, city pop, rock, soul, and funk.

Shibuya-kei artists created a unique sound that captured the essence of Tokyo's vibrant youth culture, with well-known bands such as Flipper's Guitar, Pizzicato Five, Cornelius, and CAPSULE, to name a few, but there was one particular band that never achieved the same level of success or recognition as their peers.

0:00 Do You Know a Band Called....?
0:20 Intro
1:03 So This Is the Meaning of Your Life
2:11 So Who Were They?
3:27 Highway Star, Speed Star
3:52 So the Journey Begins
6:30 That's Entertainment
8:14 So You Wanna Be a Rockstar
9:20 Mr. Noone Special
11:07 So This Is Where It Ends
13:57 Where Are They Now

#shibuyakei #shibuya #citypop #japanesemusic

[lucianocastagna]

I can't believe a channel like yours exists.Cymbals was my gateway into japanese music, thank you so much for making this video

[muhammadnaufal]

Kinda sad knowing that they didn't achieve a big commercial success and they eventually made it on their own respective solo project after they breakup. I'm a big fan of Cymbals, now I tried to collecting all of their physical release mostly on CD format and keeping the legacy so they will never be forgotten

[sunsuton]

Amazing video! I enjoyed the in-depth research you put in and it left me with many nostalgic memories of the past! The Cymbals as well as Asako Toki, were both big influences into the creation of the Persona 5 Imagining Project experiment I made back in 2011, which helped to introduce many people outside of Japan to their works when they were still very much unknown to the western listening audience :-)

The Cymbals legacy still lives on being sighted for many upcoming Japanese musicians of today for being a big influence in their lives, many of them doing copy covers in schools and also local session gigs

From my understanding based on interviews online back in the day, Asako Toki branched out from the Shibuya Kei sound and into jazz covers to pay homage to her father who was well known in the jazz music scene as a saxophone player, and later progressing to her current J-Pop Electronic Funk brand. It was true that the primary reason the Cymbals ended was due to not being able to reach the desired goal of becoming more recognized in the Oricon charts to find a 'hit'

There were rumours that their label at the time, Victor Entertainment had some influence changing their sound genre to see what the audience would like better, after much experimentation to find their sound however to no success, outside a cult following

The main trio however still have a lot of respect for one another in their solo projects, with even drummer Hiroyasu Yano later collaborating with Asako Toki for her cover rendition of Yellow Music Orchestra's song 'Kimi Ni Mune Kyun'

Speaking of Yano, he also later became a temporary session drummer around 2020 for another well known storied legendary Japanese musical group named KIRINJI, which I do hope you will cover in the future!

[miqkyn]

thank you for making this channel. it fills me with an inexplicable amount of joy listening to you talk about my favorite band. i've grown with their music so much... and to hear you describe the songs is wonderful!!

[dostsei]

FINALLY AN ENGLISH SPEAKING GUY COVERING CYMBALS