#the digital version of the original isnt in my files at all for some reason so idk. gotta find it first

[motherforthefamicom]

happy new year!!!! hope it treats yall well

[ruemxu]

HI sorry to not ask a silly question via here but i coukdnt find a non business email so sorry!!!recently got back into the newsprints world after i reread it for ghe first time since 6th grade a few days ago(i am now a junior☹️ and decided to purchase headlines but noticed that the quality on all the pages except for the first and last one isnt the best;;which sucked while trying to see the little notes and text next to concept art,,was wondering if there was any other way to view headlines in better quality??ive tried exporting it to google drive and files to no avail im so sorry to bother😭 but if not totally ok i understand!! i get that 1:1 fan issue stuff shoildnt be discussed on your Tumblr Page so if i have to be redirected to someone else my dms r open!!if youre not comfortable with that i completely get it either way thank you for making one of the defining books of my preteen years!!!!!<33

Hi there! I'm glad you like the NewsPrints series enough to support the little indie artbook I self-published over half a decade ago! I super appreciate it!

I don't think it's a silly question! This is actually kind of a semi-interesting story in book production, if you're interested in the backstory...

HeadLines was originally a limited print run (only 100 were sold), so it was easier to see the notes and art as spreads in a book you could flip through. After they sold out, I was asked to release it in digital, so I did. It sounds like the font size relative to the images is annoying in digital, though, which is a fair critique!

Unfortunately, 2015-16!Ru decided to use That font in That font size because it Looked Nice in print. I didn't even considered digital at the point, so this book is kind of a time capsule of my aesthetic decisions at that point of my life, the good ones and bad ones. x'D

(That reminds me, I remember the physical edition was $30 and personally signed and sealed. I'd be curious to see if any popped up on ebay over the years.)

The digital version is at screen resolution rather than print resolution to prevent someone from printing bootleg copies at the same quality as the official physical book after buying the PDF for $9. The best view size is around 100% in any PDF viewer, ideally on tablet or desktop. You might still have to zoom in a little to read it, though.

Sorry, let's keep the blame on past!Ru. I'm a new person. :'DDD

(The reason that the covers look like they're 2x higher in resolution is that they're actually twice as wide as the interior pages. The covers are 2-page spreads, but I didn't split them like I did the interiors. When the PDF viewer shrinks them to half their size to fit the PDF viewer's format, it does make the resolution seem twice as high, if that makes sense.

I should have probably also halved them so they looked like the interior spreads. You live and learn!)

TLDR: Sorry. The text-image layouts of the book were intentional for print reading, but they require some zooming in and out in digital resolution, but not too much past 100%.

Thank you again for the words of encouragement! I'm glad that Blue's world stuck with you for so long! Looking back at this project does evoke some ~Feelings~ and memories of growing pains. Next time I make another proper artbook like HeadLines, I'll use bigger fonts and/or get someone else to help me do the layouts!

[endcant]

aimless musings on subgenre, citypop, and internet subcultures

theres something very interesting about watching citypop become very mainstream in korea and watching that feed back into both western listeners’ opinions and also into the sometimes-cynical efforts of a variety of kpop producers

a lot of people in the youtube/kpop sphere talk about the growth of citypop as if it were a spontaneous wave that appeared out of nowhere with mariya takeuchi’s plastic love getting picked up by the youtube algorithm in like 2018 or whatever, but thats a very like online-ignorant view of the interaction between vintage japanese music and worldwide online EDM production. citypop has been used in future funk and vaporwave for almost a decade by now, and, as a result, a number of citypop songs took off on social media here and there before plastic love’s acceleration— dress down by kaworu akimoto is one of the big examples off the top of my head, but there’s likely many many more.

“Plastic Love” by Mariya Takeuchi (1984). if you haven’t heard this yet, you’d better listen to it now. The video that first went viral was uploaded in 2017

“Selfish High Heels” by Yung Bae, Macross 82-99, and Harrison (2014) is a popular Future Funk remixes of Dress Down by Kaoru Akimoto (1986)

people who haven’t been very aesthetically literate online over the years— musically or visually, since those things are tied in subcultures— treat things like they come from nowhere. there are ongoing subcultural conversations that lead to certain aesthetic choices, and when someone tries to cash in on a trend without understanding what the trend is, that leads people to call bullshit. calling bullshit is not meanspirited, in my opinion, because it very much is like somebody who can’t speak a language getting up in front of everybody and saying “hey, i’m fluent!” and then speaking some vaguely that-language-sounding nonsense. of course people who genuinely speak that language will be outraged instinctively. it feels like being mocked.

that’s why the difference between music producers picking up on a trend cynically and music producers picking up on a trend with earnest interest in that trend’s origins feels different, even if the producers are similarly distant from the original subculture that produced that trend.

“Lady” by Yubin (2018) committed hard to the 80s JP citypop aesthetic, musically and visually, down to the sets, all fairly early in the major resurgence.

i’m sure that anyone with a passing familiarity with citypop and kpop can ascertain that not all kpop producers know what citypop is and what makes it citypop. all they know is that it is on-trend and they have to make it. not all kpop listeners know what citypop is and what makes it citypop. all they know is their idol said citypop as a buzzword in their little prepared statement. all this results in some interesting moments for me as a Music Fan, Online.

here is where i get to the thing that spurred this post: loona “did a citypop” for their japanese comeback. it doesnt sound like citypop.

“Hula Hoop (Citypop Version)” by Loona (2021). It has very odd percussion rhythms and mixing for citypop, no real attempt at a citypop verse, and strangely sparse gestures towards citypop in the form of a few seconds of bass and some synthesized orchestral embellishments that were taken from the original mix …all in spite of a very disco-inspired melody that should have worked perfectly for citypop

this is not a very big deal, and im not mad about it or anything. when a kpop act i like gets saddled with an unfortunate B-Side track i dont tend to take it very hard. however, it did raise a little bit of musical discourse in the loona fandom— in the form of remixes.

“hula hoop if it was actually a citypop song” by loonahatetwinks and Olivia Soul on youtube. this one has an original instrumental that is spot-on for contemporary k-citypop

My most favorite one of these remixes is a futurefunk remix by ZSunder, one of the very best LOONA fan producers. The fact that ZSunder thought to make a future funk remix at all speaks more to an understanding of the mutually supportive relationship between citypop and EDM genres than most kpop citypop producers or fanmixers seem to care to know about.

“Hula Hoop (Future Funk Mix)” by ZSunder is futurefunk made and mixed with such love that it has the infectious summery energy of a polished, big-name future funk hit

in the comments of this video, some people seemed to get the citypop-future funk connection and some didnt. many did get it, don’t get me wrong! but also, its not all that surprising for some kpop-focused listeners to not know much about EDM subcultures and the reasons behind various trends among producers, since kpop as an institution tends to take influences from any genre and culture it likes and then decontextualize those influences by just having their names used as buzzwords in the blurbs the idols have to recite when variety show hosts ask them about their latest single. this isn’t a criticism of the genre or the fans really, it’s just a part of the kpop industry that is used to add shine to an endless firehose-like stream of polished pop tracks. there are some issues with using whole genres and subcultures with complex histories as buzzwords, but god help us if we ever want a pop industry to give its influences their dues.

anyway, the intention behind ZSunder’s future funk Hula Hoop remix happened to remind me me of why i love Yukika’s discography so much, especially the Soul Lady album. I’ve seen some reviews online baffled by parts of Soul Lady, because the album in general is an exploration of that relationship between citypop and modern/internet EDM. i’ve seen plenty of Soul Lady reviews especially baffled by pit-a-pet, saying something along the lines of “what’s with the modern-sounding dance track in the middle of a retro album?”, but i think that pit-a-pet is a futurefunk-inspired track, at least in the chorus. considering both that and the Chill Lo-Fi Interludes, it seems like estimate’s team put together Soul Lady for Yukika in a way that shows that they love citypop and understand the online-specific electronic music subcultures that led to citypop’s resurgence.

“pit-a-pet” by Yukika (2020). the stacatto, bass heavy chorus is futurefunk enough, but the soaring orchestral part in the final chorus seals the deal for my interpretation.

“All Flights Are Delayed (1 hour version)” by Yukika (2020). Estimate literally released an hour-long youtube mix of one of the Lo-Fi interludes on Soul Lady as part of their promotion, clearly inspired by “Lo-Fi anime beats to chill out to,” which is another example of online producers from around the world using Japanese samples as a focal point of their music

Estimate, in the end, is still a Kpop production company, just the same as BBC, so they have no inherent claim over citypop, but the way that their exploration of subgenres clearly comes from passion and interest on the part of their production staff makes it so that their work with Yukika rings true. on the other hand, i really appreciate Ryan S. Jhun’s work on LOONA’s JP comeback, as well as on Not Friends, but the citypop mix thing was so clearly an afterthought to the point where fans of Loona who like citypop seem mostly just irritated by the cynical-seeming attempt.

heres one last good modern kpop citypop MV that has nods to the internet culture that led to its revival in the form of the videography— vaporwave, future funk, lofi, and other internet genres along those lines tend to have videos consisting of looping anime and vhs clips. future funk in particular is known for this, especially since a lot of future funk music, esp early future funk, is just loops of very short, catchy segments of citypop and disco songs. it’s all about the loops

“My Type” by Yoon JongShin ft. Miyu Takeuchi (2019). This song is so dedicated to the retro JP citypop sound that it’s almost beyond my personal taste. The singer, Miyu, was a headlining act at a seoul citypop festival and sang this song as part of her act (:

this video of “Only One” by Conscious Thoughts (2015) has a looped clip as an example for comparison with My Type. it also has a pulsing sidechain compressor working in time with its drum beat in a way that is common for future funk and that i think is a good example for my pit-a-pet yukika comparison to future funk

i guess the takeaway here is that media is more and more online, and the creation and propagation of digital audio and video content has been in the hands of literally almost anybody who wants to do it for the past two decades thanks to garage band and fruityloops and audacity and tiktok and youtube and bandcamp and soundcloud and myspace and newgrounds and p2p file sharing and so on and so forth. and therefore like… as with all things, the consumer class more and more is also the creator class, and therefore every member of an audio-visual subculture will have the ability to discern what is and isnt made with knowledge of the audio-visual language of that subculture