This is an art attack. This is an art attack. This is Art Attack…
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[6.00]
Madeleine Lee: Recently, I was trying to explain to a friend the difference in tendencies between K-pop and J-pop. I was trying to do this on a cup of coffee and an empty stomach, so I didn’t succeed, but I’ll try again here: One thing I’ve observed is the tendency in J-pop to have several voices sing the melody together, as opposed to K-pop’s practice of splitting one main singer into (sometimes pitch-adjusted) harmony. “Colorful Days” does this and then goes one further, assembling a slew of genres and signifiers (wubs, beat hiccups, saxophone) into a unified whole. It flows nicely, but “smooth” isn’t quite the word — there’s still enough of the different textures to catch.
[8]
Iain Mew: LinQ are like an all-in-one package of top Japanese idol groups of recent times. The electro-futurism of Perfume, the relentless intensity and dubstep-incorporating spectacle of Momoiro Clover Z, the… huge number of members of AKB48. That “Colorful Days” manages to fit many different good things together into one song without them clashing is some achievement, and the glitching and saxophone bits even do some extra work to establish a fun separate identity.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Bigger and faster than Perfume, not stronger maybe. The crypto-Atari beats and vocals chase each around the same motherboard.
[6]
Will Adams: It’s Perfume minus the polished songwriting and Nakata frippery. Call it Febreeze.
[5]
Anthony Easton: I am on board with the disco lasers, but everything else is so unrelentingly cheerful and manically upbeat that it becomes profoundly obnoxious. Which might be a feature for a lot of listeners, but for me, is like being throttled to death by Jigglypuff.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: The song is a treadmill — a whizzy, new one — and LinQ are showing it off to their friends. “Yes,” they think, “that is quite an impressive treadmill.” And the group keep it at a steady pace for about three minutes, and yes, it is quite impressive, but also moving quite steadily. So their friends send in some quacking ducks to “accidentally” nudge the turbo button, forcing LinQ to frantically (and successfully) try and turn it off, not realising that in the process they’ve queued up a surprise key change for about 10 seconds later. Then the treadmill explodes. It’s quite exciting. But it took a while to get there.
[6]
Brad Shoup: I’m not one to back machines in a fight, but LinQ were winning this one-handed before getting bucked halfway through by a system error and reboot. I suppose that sort of thing is played out. Then again, so is hitting the Shift key. No, my favorite part is when LinQ ride a frantic bassline, tossing the same rappy cadence at each other until someone throws it at the ceiling, possibly in rage. As a newly minted laborer in the software industry, the subsuming of humanity into technology makes a hell of a lot less sense than a mutual breakdown and shit-fit.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: “EDM” has become a trendy thing in Japan, to the point where Universal Music Japan made a website devoted entirely to it, promoting baffling wait-huh acts like The Wanted and Capital Cities. Established J-pop artists now drop in wobble breakdowns, usually in a way that comes off like someone desperately trying to seem cool. LinQ (stands for “Love in Qshu,” with that last word being another abbreviate for home-region Kyushu) manage to actually sound smooth while still working in sonic elements of contemporary electronic music. The beat slows and ripples, but it never comes off as showy, just another detail moving along while the group sings over Yasutaka-Nakata plink-plonks (made even more clear when you remember this). It won’t fly with the club crowd, but this paints a brighter future for EDM pop.
[7]