Words: Ryosuke Akagane. Editing: Hajime Takatsuki
February 10 marked exactly three months since the release of “UNNATURAL,” a collaborative album by meta-pop project Frasco and music producer SKYTOPIA, who explores the space between dreams and reality. It was personally one of the albums released in 2021 that most caught my attention, and I have listened to it many times. At this point, I spoke with the artists again about the record.
[SKYTOPIA, タカノシンヤ(Frasco), 峰らる(Frasco)]
Building a World of Unnatural Pop
—Please introduce yourselves.
SKYTOPIA：I’m SKYTOPIA, a sound producer. I make songs on the theme of the space between dreams and reality, and this time I collaborated with Frasco.
タカノシンヤ(Frasco)：I’m タカノシンヤ from Frasco. Frasco also works around the theme of mixing reality and unreality, so that resonated with SKYTOPIA, and I think we made something that turned out quite well. I mainly handle the tracks, lyrics and composition.
峰らる(Frasco)：Hello, I’m 峰らる. I handle vocals and graphic design for Frasco.
—It’s a pleasure to meet you. First, could you tell us again about the album’s theme?
タカノシンヤ：Why don’t you explain the album’s theme, 峰?
峰らる：Two acts with similar concepts explore new possibilities in electronic music and build their own musical outlook: unnatural pop, or UNNATURAL. That’s it, really. Should I say a little more?
タカノシンヤ：No, I think that’s good. The idea of unnatural pop is like a collection of unnatural things, bringing together songs scattered with unnatural elements.
SKYTOPIA：So let us break down exactly what makes it unnatural.
峰らる：Let’s do that!
SKYTOPIA：Starting with the artwork, all sorts of unnatural things are happening. Right, 峰?
タカノシンヤ：What process led to the album cover turning out like that when you first started working on it?
峰らる：The covers for the four singles released ahead of the album each placed something symbolic of the song in the center. I carried that approach into the first draft of the album cover. At the time, I thought: since it’s a collaboration, the motif should be chairs. I imagined us sitting facing each other.
タカノシンヤ：That’s the interesting part.
峰らる：[Laughs] And because it’s UNNATURAL, I was developing designs with something unnatural as the motif, like a chair that couldn’t stand up in real life because it was missing a leg. Later, we decided to make a new design with the album’s own world, so I changed the overall image completely but kept the motif: nine unnatural chairs that can’t stand on their own. From a different angle, they look like the title UNNATURAL, but you don’t see it straight away. I brought it together with that slightly unnatural feeling. Also, lots of songs from the album would be appearing on both Frasco’s and SKYTOPIA’s artist pages.
SKYTOPIA：On Spotify and so on.
峰らる：Exactly, and Apple Music. They would take up quite a lot of the main page, so I designed it with the overlap between our respective artist images in mind.
—The colors certainly gave me that impression.
タカノシンヤ：You get both a SKYTOPIA feeling and a Frasco feeling.
SKYTOPIA：They all look as though they’d fall over if you sat on them. Some have already fallen over.
峰らる：I wanted to make them into letters, so some are already upside down or tilted. But if you stood them all up with the seats facing upward, they would topple over.
タカノシンヤ：Exactly. That’s why I thought it was very UNNATURAL.
SKYTOPIA：The way 峰 presented the ideas was businesslike and funny. We often decided by looking at options and asking which one we preferred. There were two completely different types of album cover, and we decided through discussions about whether to go this way or that.
峰らる：We thought it would be more meaningful to give the album its own approach rather than follow the singles.
SKYTOPIA：There was also a separate cover that resembled the immediately preceding single, taking a different direction from the final album artwork.
峰らる：The reason we gave the album its own world was that I remembered we had been putting out collaborations with SKYTOPIA since 2020, and all of those would be part of the album too. [Laughs]
Everyone:You remembered! [Laughs]
UNNATURAL Topics That Look at Love and Story from a Distance
—I’d also like to hear specifically what makes the music UNNATURAL.
SKYTOPIA：A lot of songs are quite subjective, expressing energy or something that comes from within. In our case, though, many of the songs express some kind of phenomenon. We choose topics and sing about them. That’s what makes it UNNATURAL within pop culture. I feel that all three of us have been strongly influenced by approaches like ケンモチヒデフミ’s, for example. “Love Story” is often seen as the only love song, but even there we step back and make “Love” and “Story” into topics. Parts of “MAD” are about windows. And stylistically, a lot of the songs leave you unsure whether they’re cool or uncool. You’ll hear an electric guitar, then some strange sound goes boing.
タカノシンヤ：There are golf sounds in there too.
SKYTOPIA：That’s “Title.” We aimed to make sounds that play around with the idea of what pop music is supposed to sound like. I think that’s part of what UNNATURAL means.
タカノシンヤ：Both SKYTOPIA and Frasco had been making UNNATURAL songs already, so perhaps collaborating made that unnaturalness explode even more. As SKYTOPIA just said, taking a detached view of a topic is something I consciously do when writing lyrics. That continues the style we’ve had all along. I try not to become too emotionally immersed. I often write lyrics that depict life in a parallel world, describing a scene. Because it’s another world rather than everyday life, it becomes a strange world. So I hardly ever write lyrics like “This is what I think” or “This is how I feel.” More often, I calmly describe and narrate something that happened.
SKYTOPIA：Right. The word 「君」—“you”—hardly appears in the lyrics on this album.
峰らる：Maybe シンヤ’s lyrics have always been like that. Frasco itself has.
—Thinking about it that way, “UNN” gives that impression at first, but once the distinctive “UNN” part begins, it suddenly becomes objective. At the beginning, it feels like a conversation, perhaps involving memories. Then the “UNN” section suddenly makes you go, “Oh, so that’s what it is!”
タカノシンヤ：It’s as if a conversation has started.
—From that objective position, it makes you wonder what a conversation even is.
タカノシンヤ：How about telling the story of making it? The story of “UNN.”
SKYTOPIA：About “UNN,” yes. First of all, our process is that シンヤ makes a demo, I remix it so that 峰 can sing over it, and an engineer called ナギー finishes it. With “UNN,” I was at a Gusto restaurant in Shibuya when シンヤ sent me the file. When I heard the demo, I wanted to add some spice, some salt and pepper, so I sampled ordinary radio narration and things like that.
タカノシンヤ：It wasn’t just salt and pepper—it was more like sansho pepper. Really punchy, like yuzu kosho. [Laughs]
SKYTOPIA：But I think “UNN” is probably like this too: with the sound Frasco and SKYTOPIA aim for, we really do want to make cool, stylish music. But if we go all out, there’s the worry about whether we can actually make something truly cool...
Everyone:[Laughs]
SKYTOPIA：And secondly, even if we manage it, it’s embarrassing.
SKYTOPIA：The attitude of really going for it because you want to make cool music feels embarrassing. It’s easier to add something like sansho pepper and show that, yes, we’re making cool music, but we’re also doing comedy.
タカノシンヤ：This might sound strange when we’re talking about being UNNATURAL, but I feel that it naturally brings out something characteristic of our genre. So in a way, it’s like putting sansho pepper on carbonara.
SKYTOPIA：That’s a complicated analogy. [Laughs]
SKYTOPIA：We do want to make a delicious, classic carbonara, but we’re three people who also find it interesting to suggest other possibilities, like how a variation can be fun too. What do you think, 峰?
峰らる：Well, I don’t really want to sing about my own feelings. Even with lyrics written by シンヤ, once they come out of my mouth, they become quite real. I want to say them a little more mechanically. As 峰らる, I want to be somewhat machine-like.
SKYTOPIA：You stay in the position of a narrator, someone telling a story, rather than bringing that person’s inner emotions out into the open.
峰らる：That always feels easier for me. The lyrics and the musical style have a slightly android-like quality.
タカノシンヤ：That gives it a good balance, creates that atmosphere and makes it sound the way it does.
峰らる：Sometimes people tell me the lack of emotion is frightening. But when I listen to the songs, I think that degree is right. Still, I’d like to try an emotional song someday.
タカノシンヤ：Do people become emotional listening to these songs?
峰らる：I wonder when they listen to them. [Laughs]
SKYTOPIA：Maybe they don’t relate to them emotionally?
—I listen quite a lot, particularly “Dramatic - SKYTOPIA Remix -,” which I’ve played repeatedly.
SKYTOPIA：That remix has been well received.
タカノシンヤ：It really has. As you’d expect.
SKYTOPIA：It was worth letting it mature.
タカノシンヤ：SKYTOPIA had already made it shortly after Frasco released the 10-part “シンバム” series that included “Dramatic.” We kept wanting to release it someday without getting the chance, so I’m glad we could include it on this album.
—The original “Dramatic” also stands out quite strongly compared with the other tracks.
Everyone:Thank you.
Challenging the Cultural Mainstream from a Wider Perspective
—And you can’t quite tell whether it’s emotional. Conversely, though, so much of the current scene is intensely emotional, dominated by works expressing personal memories and feelings. Against that background, the way you keep doing this so matter-of-factly leaves a strong impression. You call it UNNATURAL, but I feel that perhaps it’s actually natural.
SKYTOPIA：If you look at music’s possibilities as a map of the world, the mainstream in Japan—or any country, not just Japan—takes a tiny part of that map and works within it. There are lots of wonderful songs in Japan’s mainstream, but when you think of style as a possibility, there are so many possible styles and forms of expression, and it has narrowed down to a very small area. In fact, that itself is very UNNATURAL. I think we had a desire to get even a little outside that area and push some of that other world into it.
タカノシンヤ：Without being conscious of it.
SKYTOPIA：Exactly. “Title” has ambient-like sections, “UNN” brings in footwork, and we use lots of vocal chops.
タカノシンヤ：“MAD” has rock elements and Latin elements too. It crosses genres. I think we’ve made interesting, borderless music.
—I think it’s good that you can actually bring that back and communicate it to people. Some of the instrumental music I like stays within its own world, but Frasco and SKYTOPIA can express it outwardly.
SKYTOPIA：Thank you.
—Being able to do that within the cultural mainstream...
SKYTOPIA：I do feel that various artists in Japan are doing things like that, especially people such as tofubeats and 中田ヤスタカ.
タカノシンヤ：And 中村佳穂 and 長谷川白紙. I think there are people within that scene trying all kinds of things.
—Because music is a form of expression, it needs to be approached with something like the same sensibility as language or painting. It shouldn’t only be about things tied to emotion. I feel there’s so much of that at the center of the charts, which is why it stayed with me that music calmly leaving a record of things is being properly recognized and listened to. That’s interesting.
タカノシンヤ：It’s a record of everyday life in another world.
SKYTOPIA：[Laughs] I’m sure that’s what it is.
—I think keeping a record is important.
タカノシンヤ：That feels right.
With this album marking a milestone, it will be worth watching what kind of new electronica these artists go on to create.
RELEASE
Album “UNNATURAL”
Release date: 2021/11/10
Format: Digital release
Artists: SKYTOPIA × Frasco
Label: Toro Toro Sounds
Streaming link: https://big-up.style/7duqcGYKx3
ARTIST
SKYTOPIA
A London-born, Tokyo-based sound producer and DJ who was previously a member of ケロケロボニト. Combining tracks that cross house, electro, soul/R&B and Latin music with an individual pop sensibility, SKYTOPIA keeps creating catchy songs that make you want to hum along. In 2020, collaborations with 最上もが, 篠田美月, okkaaa, Frasco, MARMELO, Genick and Emi Satellite arrived in quick succession. In January 2021, SKYTOPIA formed the new project KOMONO LAKE with singer Kanbin. The group quickly attracted attention, including being chosen for the cover of Spotify’s official “キラキラ・ポップ・ジャパン” playlist in February 2021.
Instagram：https://www.instagram.com/skytopia/
Twitter：https://twitter.com/skytopia
YouTube：https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNtgMiup6PztEtxrQEqhSTg
SoundCloud：https://soundcloud.com/skytopia
Frasco
A music project built around mixing reality and unreality, comprising composer タカノシンヤ, whose viral tweets repeatedly receive over 300,000 likes, and vocalist 峰らる, whose wide-ranging skills extend from design to development. The duo releases songs that offer a distinctive interpretation of electropop and synthwave with a focus on Japanese rhetoric, and also creates music for commercials and event themes.
Their songs have been selected three times as outstanding works on 坂本龍一’s J-WAVE radio program “RADIO SAKAMOTO.” A music video was selected as a Jury Selection in the Entertainment Division of the 22nd Japan Media Arts Festival. Frasco created “Theatre,” the theme song for “星にタッチパネル劇場” at the Roppongi Hills observation deck, and the song received a physical vinyl release with a remix by 須永辰緒. The duo co-created the theme song for “うんこミュージアム” with ケンモチヒデフミ（水曜日のカンパネラ） and produced the sound for YouTuber まこ’s debut work, among other activities that have expanded since the project’s formation.
With additional members, the creative production team “チームフラスコ” also works across video, apparel, installations and other fields. The team’s ideas have attracted attention through proposals for a new release format called “シンバム,” the vinyl trilogy “2面性プロジェクト,” releasing a song through balloons, and developing a game-like listening device. In 2020, the group became J-WAVE navigators, while Microsoft’s AI “りんな” joined as a painter, adding to its wide-ranging activities.
Website: https://frascotts.com/
Instagram：https://www.instagram.com/frascotts/
Twitter：https://twitter.com/FrascoTTS
YouTube：https://www.youtube.com/c/FrascoTTS-p
SoundCloud：https://soundcloud.com/frascotts
