Hi. Are you stressed? I’m stressed. I wonder why. Maybe it’s the global pandemic and the still present risk that I or any of my loved ones could be stricken with a potentially fatal virus at anytime. That’s the kind of the thing that could keep one up at night.

Maybe it’s the unprecedented global heat waves, forest fires, and deadly storms. Rapid climate change is here, everyone! It’s not going to cause the extinction of humankind, but it sure as fuck isn’t a picnic. And the heat seems to be getting worse in Tokyo every summer. The masks don’t help either.

I think that it could be the election that’s making me stressed. Fate of the free world riding on an election that will probably be corrupt and rigged by the incumbent party. Scary thought. It’s definitely keeping me up at night.

Or maybe I’m stressed out, cant’ sleep, and am having a hard time writing because my big toe (right foot, for those curious…ew) decided to get an infection and swell up like a balloon before exploding in a rainbow of wondrous puss.

Might be that. Who knows. Anyways, stressful times call for relaxing tunes. And this is the most relaxing stuff I have at the moment.

And don’t worry, I went to the doctor and got a cream for my toe.

Dip In The Pool
Rabo Del Sol
Spring From The Surface
Sur Le Pois
Again
I first wrote about Dip In The Pool back in October of 2019. I called them a Japanese Cocteau Twins, chill as fuck, beautiful, awesome, and so on and so forth. I stand by all of that. And much of what I wrote in that post goes double here.

These tracks are from the group’s 1986 EP, Rabo Del Sol. All the tracks from it eventually made their way onto the band’s self-titled debut LP, which came out later that year. I don’t know if these versions are in anyway different than the ones on the LP, because I can’t find that album anywhere. For some reason, the overwhelming majority of this band’s output continues to be out of print. That gives me stress too, but I’m going to try and not focus on that.

These tracks aren’t all that different than the ones I featured before. Again, very chill. Very ambient. Very mellow. This is music for listening to with a nice red wine, preferably in a bubble bath. This is some of my go to music in the winter, when I go for late-night walks after work downtown. The city is quiet, almost alien-like, and the music serves as an incredibly fitting soundtrack to it. I’m not listening to them too much right now when I’m out walking, however. My walks at the moment tend to be in the morning, in the oppressive sunny heat, and are more about losing weight than chilling out. Dip In The Pool are many, many things, but “workout music” sure as hell ain’t one of them.

Enjoy the chill tunes for un-chill times and decidedly un-chill weather.

By the way, a quick programming note, if you will. Posts here might stay bi-weekly or so for a bit. Nearly everything I have queued up to post here is incredibly obscure and hard to write about. I don’t like to rush those posts. So I apologize if things slow down here again for a while. This could, of course, change at a moment’s notice if I happen upon a score of CD maxi-singles or something like that. You never know. I might also just say “fuck it” and write about Madonna singles for a while again. Still got a load of those to get through!

Also, I do plan on finishing my articles about MTV’s Top 100 of 1985. I’m very close with the next section. But…stress. Trying to be witty and funny about 80s pop is really hard when the world is on fire. I’ll give another go this week, I know a few of you really like those articles, so I appreciate your patience very much!

Stay positive. And chill.

Dip In The Pool
Silence
Hinamari
Hasu no Enishi
Facing The Sea
Dip In The Pool is a strange group. One that not many people have heard, yet conversely, many people have written about. They kind of got swept up in that whole “city pop” thing a few years back, despite not even being remotely connected to it. Later on, they were more accurately grouped as “Japanese ambient pop.” I don’t know if there are enough acts around for such a genre to be a proper thing, but the tag fits good enough. Dip In The Pool are chill. Super chill. And quiet. Super quiet. Dip In The Pool have their upbeat numbers and pop tracks for sure, but when they slow things down, they take things so minimal and ambient that they push the very definition of what a pop song can be.

Oh, and did I mention their fucking incredible? Because they’re fucking incredible.

Very few acts pull of “ethereal” quite like Dip In The Pool. I often compare them to Cocteau Twins. Their otherwordly charms and haunting vibe create an atmosphere that is simultaneously comforting and alien. Both relaxing and off-putting. This is almost entirely due to the incredible vocals of Miyako Koda. Yes, the sparse instrumentation does well to create that distant-yet-calming feel, but it’s really her voice that puts it all together. Simply put, its heart-crushingly beautiful. An aural sedative. Nothing, absolutely nothing, rips out my anxiety and throws it into a sonic wading pool of chamomile tea and lavender essence quite like Miyako Koda’s voice. It’s heaven.

Of course, nearly everything the band has ever released is out-of-print. Because of course it is. As of right now, only a handful of singles and remixes on for sale on iTunes. And Spotify only has a smattering of tracks and one album, none of which are their best. Dip In The Pool’s early work, all of which came out in the 80s, is just heaven on earth. And it’s a hell of a situation that we can’t listen to any of it easily.

I’ve been lucky and have been able to snag up quite a bit of their work since I moved to Japan, but even then it’s not easy. I got two albums only because they were re-released (on vinyl only for some reason). Everything else I got is vintage, and I paid accordingly for it. I’ve never even seen a CD of theirs for sale. Some can go for a quite a bit online.

The tracks I’m sharing tonight are some of my favorite by the group, and make up the entirety of their 1985 self-titled debut EP. All of these tracks would later on appear on the band’s 1988 debut album, which was released as Silence in the UK and was self-titled in Japan. Rough Trade actually released the album in the UK, and if it was their decision to name the album after “Silence,” I can totally see why. For me, it is the stand out tune by a group that has loads of them. Koda’s vocals (did I mention that I like them) are absolutely angelic here, and the complete absence of any real beat lets the song just float over you like a cloud.

After the brief interlude “Hinamari,” things kick up a notch with “Hasu No Enishi.” There are actual beats! It has a tempo! A lot of Dip In The Pool sounds like this, honestly. I’ve been focusing a lot on their more minimal and ambient side, but they had their share of upbeat numbers. Still, “upbeat” for Dip In The Pool is rather chill. Koda’s not Madonna, even on a track that has the tempo to qualify as a dance number, she’s still going to take her damn time and deliver a sedate, prolonged vocal that slows the whole thing down to her pace.

The EP closes with “Facing The Sea,” which splits the difference between the purely ethereal “Silence” and more beat-driven track that precedes it. There’s a pulsing beat here, but it’s little more than a click track, pushed back in the mix in exchange for some lovely synthesizer bells that work to match the melody put out by Koda. Again, it’s the kind of lovely, happy, pretty music that, after the reading the news or dealing with an exceptional bad day at work, is all I want to listen to.

Let’s chill.