CHARISMA.COM - Not Not Me

Something is changing in the Charisma.com camp. No, fortunately it's not a new member in the line-up: the partnership between MC Itsuka and DJ Gonchi remains as solid as ever, with no risk whatsoever of falling apart. Nor has there been a label switch in the meantime, if only because Warner is well aware of having a project with huge potential on its roster, provided it's allowed to express itself freely. The change, though still far from fully spelled out, concerns something far more substantial, something that ushers in an entirely new phase in the already flourishing career of one of the most explosive and distinctive bands on the whole Japanese music scene. Clearly the label of electro/hip-hop duo must have felt rather too tight for the (now former) two most famous salarywomen of the Land of the Rising Sun, who have been busy since 2012 exploring the considerable stylistic possibilities afforded by such an aesthetic choice. While still keeping their urban DNA intact, albeit understandably skewed towards pop, and playing with a sonic palette that branches off in a thousand different directions, the pair deliver with "Not Not Me" (their first full-length for a major label) a record with a warmer, more refined sound, one that retains the outfit's sarcastic, playful streak but channels it through jazz colourings, funky breaks and minimalist experiments. And this seems to be just the beginning — once the transformation is complete, we may hear even better things still to come.

Charisma.com haven't entirely abandoned the more electro, dancefloor-ready forms of their past (even their recent past), yet they end up letting them fade almost into the background, nearly emptying them of meaning, in the face of the compositional and production curiosity stirred up by the many devices put to use here. Not that there aren't due exceptions: "#Hashdark" (the title alone says it all) dutifully fulfils its role as opening track, building itself effectively around harsh guitar riffs and a dance beat, while also dropping an irresistible pop chorus that would have worked brilliantly had the track been released as a single. "Yajiuma Dance", on the other hand, manages to transfigure a not particularly extraordinary sonic palette by leaning on the dynamism of the melody, which makes good use of the gap between the apparent monolithic quality of the verse (delivered with MC Itsuka's usual detached, sly attitude) and the breeziness of the chorus, which almost mimics the all-sugar, fake-cheerful refrains of so many idol groups.

The applause, however, breaks out elsewhere, at times even thunderously. Such is the case with the excellent "Classic Glasses", carried solely by a bassline that shifts its ostinato in step with the changing tone of the vocal line — the clearest demonstration of just how well the two can get by with the barest essentials. The same goes for the "Like It"-"Iji Easy" pairing, in which the duo looks back to the golden age of old-school hip-hop, reclaiming its bombastic attitude and sense of groove, in a journey across eras that manages to strip away the veneer of nostalgia through brilliant compositional touches — whether it's shrewd off-beat cadences over which to let their flow drift at ease, or an emphasis on the funky edge of the samples, building impeccable j-pop melodies on top of them.

Funk, in its many shades, is indeed the girls' new true love. Whether it provides the pretext for staging yet another acid satire of the Japanese job market, laid out over an infectious, quasi-disco groove ("Lunch Time Funk", complete with a charming male-female vocal duet), or draws on its ties to jazz to embroider other fine pop-rap sketches ("Dattara Show Me"), its sheer recurrence suggests that the future of Charisma.com could end up speaking this language even more emphatically.

Of course, for a duo so prone to reinvention, there will never be a shortage of wild curveballs and moments of sheer unpredictability (here represented by the circus-tinged big-band of "Muko Ni Oide", with its ever-shifting melodic framework and bizarre brostep inserts); even so, a new, far more general approach to rhythm and to interpreting hip-hop vocabularies seems to be emerging from the duo — an approach that's perhaps softer and warmer on the surface, but no less willing to land jabs and barbs at a grueling system that's anything but perfect.

There's always time, though, for the two of them to retrace their steps and present themselves once again as the anti-divas of electro-hop they've always been. Whatever their future decisions may be, Itsuka and Gonchi prove themselves among the sharpest, most irreverent figures on the modern Japanese pop scene, blessed with an inspiration that, on average, essentially never falters. May their life away from the office keep their creativity intact.

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16/08/2017