#Shinbangumi

[chickenburgergmod]

How can you say this is not for debating

How can you say that you've got no problems

[felixisstimming]

shinbangumi (ginger root) stimboard

☁️ - with related stims

📷 - requested by anon

x - x - x // x - ☁️ - x // x - x - x

[leostimstuff]

A Shinbangumi themed Ginger Root stimboard with cameras for anon!!

🎥 ☁️ 🎞️ | 🎥 🎞️ | 🎥 ☁️ 🎞️

[dailygingerroot]

Big news! Ginger Root’s new album is coming soon!

Shinbangumi is set to release 9/13! ‘No Problems’ is already released as a music video.

Track list:

Welcome

No Problems (5/22)

Better Than Monday

There Was A Time

All Night

CM

Only You

Kaze

Giddy Up

Think Cool

Show 10

Take Me Back (Owakare No Jikan)

[falphie]

i drew the art for this one! go support megabaz and all of their other works 🫶

full original piece under the cut

[datclassydame]

I believe this is the intended use of the building paper craft.

[koushizzy]

I WENT TO A GINGER ROOT CONCERT LAST NIGHT!!!

oh. my. gosh. WHAT AN AMAZING SHOW!!!! amaiwana was super duper cute and cameron was awesome as always!!!! he played DAY TRIPPER!!!! BY THE BEATLES!!!! aaaaa!!! as a beatles fanboy and a ginger root fanboy it was one of the most magical moments of my life. thank you cameron lew.

[sa-banana-ana]

I wasn't sure what the Ginger Root fandom was looking like here on Tumblr, but it looks like there's a good chunk of us enthusiasts of aggressive elevator soul.

Anyways, I recently went to a show and it was sooo good!! Cameron's opener was the absolutely adorable Amaiwana. She was amazing and really got everyone grooving and jamming. Once Cameron came onstage, everyone went crazy and sang along to every song. And I personally think everyone was super cool about personal space and being able to jam out comfortably. I'm so happy I got to go this year, and I hope Ginger Root decides to come back to my city next tour. I fucking loved it!

[iamlisteningto]

Ginger Root’s SHINBANGUMI

[aroace-elgyem]

WAIT WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THERES A NEW GINGER ROOT MUSIC VIDEO AND ITS 19 MINUTES LONG???? WTF THIS IS AWESOME

[breezysmoak]

Ginger Root Brings Wholesome Dose of ‘Aggressive Elevator Soul’ to Brooklyn Steel

[dustedmagazine]

Ginger Root — SHINBANGUMI (Ghostly International)

Photo by Cameron Lew

The latest Ginger Root record has multi-instrumentalist Cameron Lew diving deep into retro sounds, drawing inspiration from Paul McCartney, Yellow Magic Orchestra and other pre-internet vibes. It’s a well-constructed LP and one with the flow and pace of a concept record, but it’s also one that sticks to a formula.

Things kick off with “No Problems,” a slice of McCartney-esque pop with warm keyboards, touches of strings, and a thin guitar tone that twangs like a rubber band. Lew builds an emphasis on the McCartney II, early 1980s ambience: the analog synths, the way everything sounds like it’s been built by overdubbing one instrument at a time, or how it feels like it’s old without actually being old. This sort of not-quite-nostalgia is all over SHINBANGUMI, and “No Problems” does a great job of setting the scene for listeners.

Lew’s a musician who wears his influences on his sleeve, and throughout the first half of the record you can almost make a checklist of what he likes by the way each song sounds: “Better Than Monday” has a slinky, almost mechanical funk groove that recalls Yellow Magic Orchestra, while “All Night” has a driving, bass-led groove straight out of a vintage city pop record by Tatsuro Yamashita. And “Giddy Up” throws in a vaguely tense sort of energy that lands somewhere between solo McCartney and Todd Rundgren. When Lew’s at his best on songs like these, he makes music that’s engaging and fun.

But when he errs, it grinds the album to a halt. “Kaze” is a curveball that sounds like an odd, almost-listing sort of lounge music. Tonally it doesn’t really match what else is happening here: there’s little rolls of percussion and it builds into an uneventful climax. It feels like it’s from a completely different record and it disrupts the flow he’s been building up.

Throughout SHINBANGUMI, Lew hides his voice behind filters and it’s occasionally hard to make out his lyrics when he’s shoved to the back of the mix. He isn’t a strong singer or especially a wordsmith, but his singing almost feels incidental to the music here. This is a record that’s big on pop hooks and funky basslines. And perhaps a plot of some kind, too. Lew’s released a series of connected videos for this that suggest it’s a concept record following a TV executive in 1980s Japan making his own network. The plot feels loose and sort of incidental to the lyrics, but the way this album flows does have a feeling of a storyline, right down to a climax on “Show 10” and a coda on “Take Me Back.” Those two close the album out with more lush city pop grooves, touches of sax and strings, and carefully placed splashes of keyboards.

The thing about a record like this is that you almost know the game plan from the album’s lead single. Lew sets the template early: lots of old sounding keyboards, basslines that move all over the rhythm, and a vocal template that keeps his voice almost buried. Aside from a couple of curveballs and a few short interludes, he never really strays from that model. It’s an album that if it catches you right away, it’s probably one you’ll enjoy all the way through. But if you’re expecting it to build into something or for him to explore a wide palette of sounds you’ll be left wanting. As they say on TV: viewer discretion is advised.

Roz Milner 

[thebowerypresents]

Ginger Root – Brooklyn Steel – October 17, 2024

Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Lew makes soulful pop-fueled throwback R&B as Ginger Root, and he brought his recently released fourth LP, Shinbangumi — and a few bandmates — to Brooklyn Steel on Thursday night.

(Ginger Root plays Union Transfer in Philadelphia tonight.)

Photos courtesy of Jay Hamilton | @justinejayphoto

[lovejustforaday]

2024 Year End List - #15

Shinbangumi - Ginger Root

Main Genres: Funk, Pop Rock, Funk Rock

A decent sampling of: Lo-Fi Indie Pop, Psychedelic Soul, Sophisto-Pop, Yacht Rock, Synth Funk, City Pop

Starting off the list proper this year with an album that I can safely recommend to most any of my friends, thanks in part to the city pop revived interest boom of the 2020s.

Ginger Root is the project of California based musician Cameron Lew. Lew has described his own sound as "aggressive elevator soul" and cites influences ranging from Paul McCartney to Toro y Moi. His sound is slick, and generously influenced by the funk music of the 70s, as well as the chintz of early 80s synthesizer-led synth funk, yacht rock, sophisto-pop, and of course, city pop, which seems to be the only label that ever sticks.

And I can imagine a few reasons why. Firstly, among many zoomers such as myself (*cough* by technicality), and especially those immersed in internet "aesthetics" culture and Japanese media fandoms like anime and J-pop, the music and associated visual aesthetics of "city pop" has exploded in popularity.

This is part of a broader youth cultural appreciation and awareness of the late 20th century yuppie, and the early information era's somewhat naive utopian attitudes towards the endless economic growth model which we (mostly) now understand as a retrofuturist smokescreen. See also and especially: vaporwave.

Young folks today are probably so fascinated with this era because, y'know, present day is a shit time to be in your 20s in terms of socio-economic prospects, what with the infrastructural decay, soaring cost of living, and endless corporate greed that defines late stage capitalism (brought to you by Reaganomics and Thatcherism, born of the same era that my peers are currently romanticizing no less).

Like much of the global north, Japan was embracing a culture of excess in the early 80s. Japan had undergone rapid economic growth and urbanization during its "economic miracle" and was now in its "bubble era" (before that bubble popped in the 90s). Hence, a trendy subgenre of Japanese pop music was born that reflected the attitude that "life is good, city life is good, success is abundant, and the future is exciting".

This was the aforementioned city pop, which combined large luxurious studio production, talented set musicians, influences and crossovers from smooth jazz, boogie, disco, and even sometimes samba music, and easily digestible pop melodies with great BIG choruses. In some ways, it parallels the coinciding emergence of the more subtle "sophisto-pop" subgenre that was popular in the Anglosphere.

So yeah, Ginger Root scratches that itch for the many folks hungry for a proper style revival. Mind you, the project does it with a lot of indie kid sensibilities like the lo-fi vocals, prominent reverb, pastiche music videos, and the occasional tongue-in-cheek interlude.

But I don't wanna call this a city pop record. Not fully anyway. Doing so is undermining the myriad of other influences from the 70s and 80s, and frankly I think if Cameron Lew wasn't Asian-American then I it wouldn't be the only label that ever gets applied to his music. Yeah, the upbeat, urbanist ethos is definitely there, but honestly, this record is more straight up funk and funk rock than anything else.

Shinbangumi is a collection of songs that would come on your local morning "golden oldies" rock radio station if they would play anything more interesting than Journey and The Police ad nauseam. This is a record that just screams: "Wake up, it's 7:00 AM! Have a slice of toast and a cup of coffee, put on your best clothes, and hop outside; it's a beautiful sunny day!"

Lew and his band have injected this LP with funky fresh rhythms, soulful soft boy vocals, and a healthy small dose of nerdy technical jams perfectly befitting of the set musicians of the time that it pays homage to. Plenty of sonically delicious slap bass on this thing too, as to be expected of any good funk rock record.

The first proper song on the record "No Problems" is its greatest strength. True to the album cover art, this song feels like a vibrant miniature world of busy workers on commute, outdoor patio café lunches, and young lovers strolling through urban parks. This track has all of the bells and whistles in its production and instrumentation, and I say that as a positive (including the literal bell chimes at the beginning of most bars). Sometimes less really isn't more, and Ginger Root made sure there was enough "more" here to leave one hell of an impression as an opener. Just hearing that funky keyboard line at the beginning gives me a big ol' grin from ear to ear every time I hear it. As an added bonus, the lyrics are that same kind of sentimental, wistful cheery that you find in a lot of classic pop songs written by hopeless romantics.

"All Night" is a wahwah dance track with a whole lotta ass-shaking energy contained in what feels like a tiny fish bowl-sized venue. In fact, a lot of this record is somehow maximalist while feeling tiny and contained at the same time, and that's something to appreciate as being no easy feat.

"Only You" is about on par with "No Problems" in terms of production mastery. This is the track that truly sounds like city pop to me, and Lew himself described it as "if [he] were to write a true city pop song". This is a song laced with all the twinkle of those 70s TV disco performances, between the sequins on the women's dresses and the men's jackets and the background stage lights and props.

There's moments where I wish the lo-fi-buried mixing of the vocals would peek out a little more every now and then. The record is very sonically colourful, but in such a way that a lot of tracks end up being the same combination of colours, if that makes any sense? The back half being not nearly as memorable to my ears, and I think maybe if the mixing was given a little more breathing room on some of the later songs then it would feel more varied.

That being said, if consistency is your thing, you'll love this record. Not a moment goes by where Shinbangumi gives up on that slick vintage polish, those rose-tinted melodies, and the masterful grooves that defines its signature sound. Ginger Root has tapped into a very meticulous style on this latest LP, and it's great to see that there are folks out there that still unabashedly embrace and pay homage to this sort of lovable, goofy old-school sound.

8/10

Highlights: "No Problems", "Only You", "All Night", "Better Than Monday", "Welcome"

For fans of: Swimmer by Tennis Daddy's Home by St. Vincent Causers of This by Toro y Moi Tatsuro Yamashita in general

[ventriloquistvillain]

ginger root new album is out!!!!!!!!! shinbangumi!!!!!!!!!!!!! yahooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! iot came out yesterday but i missed it because iw as sleeping but its okay this still sounds good

[rustedbread]

IMHERHERIMHEREIMHEREIM

FUCK YEAH

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