Steven Smith
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durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Steven Smith
@durianmilkshake.bsky.social
58 followers 27 following 1.9K posts
I write a weekly newsletter on the latest Japanese "City Music" with an accompanying playlist. It is free!
🚫No AI is used!🚫
Newsletter: https://neocitypop.substack.com/
Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ojdY5RKVdES4RcvGFB6fJ?si=f7cda9e7015b4c
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durianmilkshake.bsky.social
I read a piece on substack this morning that rubbed me the wrong way. It was about how we need to look out for artists rights in the wake of all this GenAI stuff (which I totally agree with!), but I felt the way he went about it was clumsy. Here's an excerpt from a rebuttal I probably won't publish:
Text from blog post: "If it’s not obvious, I’m joking. This is still a serious conversation. Here’s a fun what-if: In the fantasy scenario where artists get compensated if their work was used to generate an AI song, and they find out a whole “Sunday Morning Classic Soul” Gen-AI playlist was trained on Silk Sonic songs, who gets paid? Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes? Can The Spinners get in on this? Or is it just Mars and .Paak, continuing to benefit from the systems that gifted them a super-lucrative Vegas residency copying those older acts?"
December 6, 2025 at 7:33 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
This month's Bandcamp purchases. I've actually included two that I did not buy during Bandcamp Friday, but *you* should!

punipunidenki's Kabu is the only Japanese album you need this year. No offense to whatshername that got the big Pitchfork review (bleh), but Kabu is all heat.
Nao Kodama x Kan Sano - Coffee Shake Summer Eye - Urasoe Gimgigam - Nine Days Wonder Submerse - Quendresa - Be Mine (Submerse Edit) TOSH7 + FiJA - Walk moe - Therapy ROMderful + KayFaraway - LIKE NOBODY IS WATCHING punipunidenki - Kabu
December 6, 2025 at 2:38 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
December 5, 2025 at 2:01 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Now that I *do* have! The 12” single came with 3D glasses, hah!
December 4, 2025 at 10:49 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
December 3, 2025 at 4:58 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Let that sink in
December 3, 2025 at 4:55 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Thankfully he was actually credited, so the answer is not "all of her recording revenue forever and all time" like one poor soul
November 28, 2025 at 8:41 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 1:00 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
we've got iri at home
Magic Hour ere
November 20, 2025 at 6:47 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Full liner notes, only on Instagram and absolutely nowhere else, SMDH!!!
Liner notes in Korean Liner notes in Korean Liner notes in Korean
November 18, 2025 at 5:16 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
muque (mid-tier J-Pop band): “yeah we used GoogleAI for our new music video”

Billyrrom:
Music video shoot on a lake, band members balancing with their instruments on small floating platforms, film crew wading knee-deep around them
November 14, 2025 at 4:35 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
November 14, 2025 at 3:29 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Egregious vinyl November continues
Covers of two Yaya Bey vinyl records
November 11, 2025 at 3:30 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
meanwhile lol
November 10, 2025 at 12:31 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Absolutely no idea why this is so cheap but can’t wait to get home and find out
November 9, 2025 at 11:07 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Most of the time I'm like 'I'm total garbage, just write the stuff and get it out there, feed the webcrawlers!' but then I re-read this stuff and I'm like 'wait a minute....'
Text from an article I wrote: Billyrrom - Hold Me Tight It doesn’t take long (16 seconds) for Billyrrom’s new single to introduce the cheeky record scratches and distorted vocal samples that have become emblematic of modern Japanese funk rock records. Just as we take pride (?) in ushering in a genre-less world, music will continue to establish and follow trends that make it easy to categorize in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I like this kind of relaxing acid-jazz adjacent lounge-meets-department store song (I spend hours every week searching for and compiling playlists full of the stuff!), but sometimes I have to double check: Is this the group that released a full album with a whole block of ‘now we’re in outer-space’ experimental music, more at home in a live performance than a studio recording? It is the same group! So this string of vibe-heavy dance singles is great, but where does that other Billyrrom fit in? Maybe this was the correct answer to Suchmos’ dilemma of a harsh change in sound; Release the catchy singles you know will get airplay and spread the band’s influence, save the experimental stuff for the B-side of your album2. Footnote 2: It should be noted that Billyrrom released a single for one of their album’s deep cuts 5 months after the album’s release. Almost unheard of in Japan, though the strategy makes perfect sense, especially considering how the streaming economy works.
November 8, 2025 at 4:53 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Song of the year has its own bedazzled raglan tee. What a time to be alive
November 7, 2025 at 12:21 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Endearing artist profiles
5,212 Followers **Need Some Romamce**
November 6, 2025 at 6:35 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
I never saw any music video for this
Pop Star" is a song by Japanese singer Ken Hirai. The single went on to top the 2005 Oricon Charts and is known for its remarkable music video, featuring Ken in seven different personas, including a raccoon and his own manager.[1] The Video also helped Hirai break into the US and Canadian Markets where stations would play the video despite the fact that it was in Japanese.[citation needed]
November 5, 2025 at 6:50 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Citation DESPERATELY needed because what?! I thought the song was moody popular among gigantic nerds because it was in a famous video game
November 5, 2025 at 6:48 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
I was listening to her new EP and hoping I could find an explanation for what "NEEMIA" meant, because when I looked it up I could only find stuff in hebrew:

www.billboard.com/music/music-...
From Billboard interview with singer-songwriter eill: Moving on to “NEEMIA,” this is a bit of strange song. What does “NEEMIA” mean? “NEEMIA” doesn’t mean anything. I wanted to repeat some word with no particular meaning, and I was like “neemia’s got a nice ring it, don’t you think?” I don’t even remember why I said “neemia.” In the temporary vocal track, I just sang “nya” for the lyrics, and that stuck. The world’s getting too complicated, so I was thinking that not everything has to have a meaning. That’s how I came up with the song.
November 5, 2025 at 5:51 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Lol good ol Lefty Miyata - AI could never!
From Billboard Interview with singer-songwriter eill: How did the name “ACTION” come to you? I’d like to be able to say “I read the manga and the name just came to me,” but unfortunately, it was nothing like that (laughs). When I was working on the melody, recording a temporary vocal, my producer had left their mic on, and they let out a sneeze, which sounded kind of like “hakushon.” The completed song starts out with record scratching, and then someone saying “ACTION,” and the point where they say that is right where my producer sneezed. We were like “This is fire!” So that’s where “ACTION” came from.
November 5, 2025 at 5:47 AM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Amazing iri photos in this style journal (it appears to be a feature related to some pop up store, not something from their main magazine). I swear if they don't get my queen some furniture though 😩
podiumstudio-journal.com/en/blogs/jou...
November 4, 2025 at 8:49 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
And controversies aside (not dismissing any of that), the issue was the same as all other albums around that time, way too much bloat. Keep these 7 tracks and add whatever happens at the end and you’ve got a solid 9/10 or 10/10.
October 29, 2025 at 4:14 PM
durianmilkshake.bsky.social
Can someone who understands K-Pop fandom explain this unhinged tweet to me?!
October 28, 2025 at 5:23 PM