Cymbals was a Japanese pop rock band active from 1997–2004. The trio was composed of vocalist Asako Toki, bassist/guitarist Reiji Okii, and drummer Hiroyasu Yano. Like other Japanese bands which emerged in the late 1990s (including Clammbon and Hermann H. & the Pacemakers), Cymbals were strongly influenced by the British pop-rock sounds of the 1960s. Due to their eclectic blend of styles, the band is often linked to Shibuya-kei. Despite solid songwriting and album production, they never scored a true "hit", which eventually resulted in the band's breakup in September 2003. They played a final 90-minute farewell concert at Shibuya O-East on January 20, 2004. The group's members remain musically active – Toki as a solo artist, Okii as a producer (for Toki and others), and Yano as a session drummer and producer. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymbals_(Japanese_band)
Shibuya-kei ("Shibuya style") is a microgenre of pop music or a general aesthetic that flourished in Japan in the mid-to-late 1990s. The music genre is distinguished by a "cut-and-paste" approach that was inspired by the kitsch, fusion, and artifice from certain music styles of the past. The most common reference points were 1960s culture and Western pop music, especially the work of Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, and Serge Gainsbourg.
Shibuya-kei first emerged as retail music from the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Flipper's Guitar, a duo led by Kenji Ozawa and Keigo Oyamada (Cornelius), formed the bedrock of the genre and influenced all of its groups, but the most prominent Shibuya-kei band was Pizzicato Five, who fused mainstream J-pop with a mix of jazz, soul, and lounge influences. Shibuya-kei peaked in the late 1990s and declined after its principal players began moving into other music styles.
The term "Shibuya-kei" comes from Shibuya, one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo, known for its concentration of stylish restaurants, bars, buildings, record shops, and bookshops. In the late 1980s, the term "J-pop" was formulated by FM radio station J-Wave as a way to distinguish Western-sounding Japanese music (a central characteristic of Shibuya-kei) from exclusively Euro-American music. In 1991, HMV Shibuya opened a J-pop corner which showcased displays and leaflets that highlighted indie records. It was one of those displays that coined the moniker "Shibuya-kei".
At the time, Shibuya was an epicenter for Tokyo fashion, nightlife, and youth culture with a cluster of record shops like Tower Records and HMV, which housed a selection of imports, as well as fashionable record boutiques. British independent record labels such as él Records and the Compact Organization had been influences on the various Japanese indie distributors, and thanks to the late 1980s economic boom in Japan, Shibuya music shops could afford to stock a wider selection of genres.
Musicologist Mori Yoshitaka writes that popular groups from the area responded with their "eclectically fashionable hybrid music influenced by different musical resources from around the world in a way that might be identified as postmodernist ... they were able to listen to, quote, sample, mix, and dub this music, and eventually create a new hybrid music. In other words, Shibuya-kei was a byproduct of consumerism". Journalist W. David Marx notes that the musicians were less interested in having an original sound than they were about having a sound that reflected their personal tastes, that the music "was literally built out of this collection process. The 'creative content' is almost all curation, since they basically reproduced their favourite songs, changing the melody a bit but keeping all parts of the production intact."
Specific touchstones include the French yé-yé music of Serge Gainsbourg, the orchestral pop of Van Dyke Parks and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, the lounge pop of Burt Bacharach, and the sunshine pop of Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends. Wilson was romanticized as a mad genius experimenting in the recording studio, and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound was emulated not for its density, but for its elaborate quality. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibuya-kei
