It’s the vocals! Which .. hey, placeholder synths can do a good job of illustrating what’s up, right?
This of course comes at a tremendously bittersweet time for ol’ PLIC PROCK, with Asumi on her way out the door and exactly what’s next for the group in doubt; the former Parallel Japan’s star-crossed existence getting yet another kick in the junk for no reason other than the universe being a cruel, meaningless place where joy itself has no greater worth than the synapses firing to create it. Continue reading →
Man, you guys, I’m kind of mad that I’m only publishing this piece now; it deserved better. But! Here we are, it’s Monday, and this is a great way to kick-start the week.
PLIC PROCK! The idols formerly known as Parallel Japan and formerly known as Parallel 5 and often just called Parallel. About a year ago, I thought that they might have themselves a proper breakout, being that they’re a) good b) loud and c) pretty friggin’ good dancers to boot. I don’t think it ever happened, and, other than the re-brand as PLIC PROCK back at the first of the year, they’ve been quiet.
Parallel Japan’s recent warning that they were done being Parallel Japan was meant very, very literally. Sari, Yui and Asumi are no longer in a group called Parallel Japan; now they’re PLICPROCK.
The big reveal’s going to come on the 28th, when they’ll headline a live featuring WiLL (who are cool), Hirano Yuri (Miracle Toybox etc., who is very cool) and Malcolm Mask McLaren. And maybe more! But that’s a pretty good show to put together.
The Curse*: Is it real? Does it require that we allow a goat to attend a baseball game? Who knows! What we do know, though, is that we took a look at the ill-fated Parallel Japan just the other day, and now they’re at the very least taking a break:
We’re fond of Parallel Japan around here, and I get to wondering sometimes what they’re up to, besides being some of the most absurdly flexible people alive:
And the answer, usually, is doing a ton of performing. They’re part of the Guso Drop family, too, and shared a stage with the Heaviest Idol in the World over the weekend. I figure, it’s Hump Day, we could all use a little kick, so here’s Parallel! Continue reading →
Remember a few months ago when Babymetal agencymates Perfume released their video for “FLASH” and everybody lost their damn minds? And then remember that fun back-and-forth here a few weeks ago about the relative dance merits of Parallel Japan vs. Babymetal?
It’s about to get weird.
Because Babymetal and Perfume have the same choreographer, see
I got a ping from my (secret!) personal Twitter account yesterday and was drawn to some dance video from the arguable masters of heavy, violent idol dance performance, Parallel Japan:
And in a very meta moment, it’s a song from one of the other great dance units, Osaka Shunkashuto.
And I thought, you know, we always talk about image and attitude and style and, of course, music when we talk about idols, but how much do we really ever talk about this extremely important part of an overall stage performance? Continue reading →
Is this just a thing that happens in the week before TIF? It seems like everybody and their mother is either making an official release or teasing something new in the last few days, and it’s still only Tuesday and then we’ll have all of the stuff from the weekend to enjoy and … whew.
Parallel Japan! You can practically hear them dancing violently non-stop for this one.
This is the kind of punk-inspired song that you can get me really excited about. Get some of that old-school griminess in there, and drive more than bounce. Good stuff.
Let’s tell a story, one that involves yet another attempt at forming a heavy idol group and failing and coming back stronger.
I’m actually not talking about Parallel Japan, but their predecessor, Parallel 5.
Notice anything, or anyone, familiar? Like maybe a certain center for a certain idolcore phenomenon? She’s obviously doing other things now. And that’s literally the story of Parallel 5 — they formed as something of a dance unit with their own vocals, all self-produced, and then lost one of the best singers in the game probably right about the time when they were starting to feel like they were getting somewhere. “Look at Me,” after all, is a pretty okay song.
This is usually the part of the story when the rest of the group breaks up, gets repackaged, etc. But rarely are such things the choice of the members so much as it is the prerogatives of management, and Parallel 5 were running that show themselves.
So despite losses in March 2015, the remaining members — Sari, Asumi and Tibiyui — basically said, “Okay, nbd, let’s reboot.” And that’s what they did. They kept working. According to reader Caleb, they were promised debuts that never materialized. Somebody disappeared with their money; yes, Parallel Japan could very easily have a sad trombone accompaniment.
Definitely feel free to correct this, but most indications are that their first significant appearance on stage following the regroup was actually at the 2015 Tokyo Idol Festival backing up none other than Pour Lui:
They also, without a single official release, spent the autumn of that year rolling out a series of videos that really highlight what Parallel Japan is all about:
The first thing that springs to mind for me when I think about Parallel is a news segment that MTV News did following Kurt Cobain’s death. It involved interviews with mourners, one of whom remarked that he didn’t even know what to do with himself anymore, given that Nirvana was about all he listened to. “Well, them, and Mudhoney.” I’m not saying that Parallel is the Mudhoney of idolcore (not like the way that I look at Himekyun Fruit Can as the Van Halen of rock idols), but that for every ascendant master of a particular scene or sound, there are always keeping-it-real, beloved-by-fans acts at the margins, fiercely independent and just embodying grit and earned emotional expression.
That is Parallel. You can see it in their dance — crisp and professional, a cut above just about everybody else not named Q’ulle, but so expressly violent — and hear it in their songs — raw, largely unfiltered, intense and purposeful. This isn’t yami-kawaii; this spits in kawaii’s face.
But unlike with Mudhoney, I get the feeling that Parallel’s story has a happier ending, or at least a more successful one. You may have noticed that they’re suddenly all over the place, sharing stages with everybody from BiSH to Screaming Sixties to NEXT Shoujo Jiken; their anniversary show was loaded with groups featured on this site, and idol Twitter buzzed about it for days. And for what it’s worth, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a group more well-respected by their peers: Maybe because they’re independent, or maybe because they’re just plain loved, but everybody takes photos after and genuinely shows a lot of affection.
Of course, such a sudden burst of attention is bound to mean something, right? As of this writing, the scuttlebutt suggests an album, which would be very cool. If anybody out there would get a huge bump out of working with pro producer to refine their sound, it’s Parallel, and the same goes for their presentation if they can get with solid management, especially if that management doesn’t make them lose their indie edge. Like, for example, these guys. The sudden appearance of this track on Soundcloud, and the accompanying art, suggests the possibility.
So keep an eye out for Parallel. They seemed to be poised to do some serious damage.
What they sound like
A gritty combination of hard rock and idolcore. Their performing style is so well-conceived and well-executed that you can almost tell the sound of their songs just from watching them dance. Which is violent. They are violent even when nobody actually gets hurt. Violence.
You’ll like them if
This is a tough one, and I hate to bring back Seattle scene comparisons, but I actually think that you’ll be able to get into Parallel Japan best if you’re a fan of those 90s-era bands that were distorting blues rock and adding punk and metal elements. Of course, Parallel involves plenty of synths, too, in which case the PassCodes of the world can give you a good place to start.
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