SHINBANGUMI by Ginger Root

Review by windowsxrhi

Adorned in TV static and groovy, lo-fi beats, SHINBANGUMI (which translates to “a new season of a show”) injects roots of Japanese City Pop and 70s/80s music from the West into this playful narrative about a character named Ginger Root, who starts his own TV production company after being fired from another television network. As soon as you hit play on this concept record, you’re immediately transported to a world of aged commercialism enriched with shimmering bass-lines and catchy lyrics. The name behind this technicolor world is Cameron Lew, an editor, musician, graphic designer, and a jack-of-all-trades in the creative industry. Lew earns himself many titles with the authentic world building within this album, both inside and outside of it.

The album starts with Welcome, which is a 40 second track that sounds like I’m being transported through different TV channels. It’s short, sweet, and hypnotizing enough to make me wonder what channel we’re going to be watching. It then segues into No Problems, a track that infuses all the “sonic logos” of Ginger Root, in the words of Lew himself. The track itself is about our main character Ginger Root creating his own production company, Ginger Root Productions after he gets fired from Juban TV.

Better Than Monday is about the team troubleshooting and the antics that come with trying to get Ginger Root Productions on the air. I particularly enjoy the muffled vocals with the hi-fi melodies; it makes it feel like a dreary day; it gives the typical feeling of what a bad day can feel like, but even then, it still doesn’t compare to that dreaded Monday.

There Was A Time immediately transports the listener to an elevator with the smooth jazz rhythms. Although the elevators I’ve been in don’t play music, I always remember the media that I grew up watching that showed the limbo of waiting for the next floor. We can attach this metaphor to Ginger Root waiting for his network to take off. However, as the song takes off, it jumps right back into the synth-y, bass-y goodness that makes me feel optimistic for our character Ginger Root.

Jumping into All Night, I finally hear the swanky, 70s inspiration that makes me feel like I’m having a night out under the influence. The guitar riffs, the bass, the whomping of the backtracks, and the nature of the song itself is such a fun listening experience.

CM is an intermission track that’s spoken in Japanese. It’s made to sound like an old commercial break in all its cheesy goodness. While I don’t inherently understand what is being said, the static and dissonance of the music playing in the background of their talk break is so comfy and reminiscent of even old radio jingles I’d hear on my grandpa’s radio.

Being one of Lew’s on-the-nose attempts at City Pop, Only You immediately reminded me of the City Pop track called One Hot Love by Makoto Matsushita. It’s ambient, upbeat, and has a hint of romanticism that makes you want to daydream about a lover, which I think is the perfect cocktail for a City Pop song. Within the storyline, the CEO of Juban TV wants to make a business deal with Ginger Root, which sends him on a spiral of what could be and what currently is within his career. The ambience makes this the perfect song for introspection in a narrative-sense.

The second half of SHINBANGUMI has yet to be serialized into this concept narrative, but the songs Kaze, Giddy Up, Think Cool, Show 10, and Take Me Back (Okaware No Jikan) all feed into the same themes of perseverance, self-confidence, and taking chances. Lyrics like, “We watching Show 10 tonight / ‘Cause I’ma show them right / I’m at the Show 10 tonight / You better show them right” from Show 10 is a reference to Lew’s journey with tour fatigue, but takes the proactive themes of Giddy Up and decides he still wants to show out for his fans.

Kaze is the only song on the track besides CM that’s in full Japanese, and this track truly feels like I could hear it in something like Sailor Moon or some old shoujo anime, which is really neat. Think Cool being a jazzy instrumental, and Take Me Back being a love letter to the past, creates a melancholic, but sweet nostalgia that I look for in music. Overall, the second half of the record really ties the themes and aesthetics together in a perfect bow.

As someone who finds my own artistic inspiration in vintage ads, shows, and movies, this album really hit the mark on the niche. It feels as though I’m sitting in front of a 27” silver screen watching a sit-com with tracks like Better Than Monday and All Night, even being given a commercial break in the middle of the show with the track CM. I think a problem that artists in both the music industry and tv/film industry run into is not making the immersiveness of another decade feel real. We clearly see that Lew is taking inspiration from specific decades like the 80s with the effervescent mixture of jazz, synths, drums, and other a la carte sounds that mesh into a perfect formula for nostalgia and euphoria. This can also be seen in the music videos for No Problems, Better Than Monday, All Night, and Only You with the costume design, set design, all the way down to the video editing. It’s truly a masterpiece, and he’s one of few creators I can think of to truly nail down that authentic vintage feeling.

It is refreshing to see an artist within the independent music genre so dedicated to the craft without coming off as only having a facade of “quirky and different.” Many in the indie genre tend to piggyback off each other with wanting to sound vintage, but Ginger Root takes it a step further and does his research as to where those sounds come from, and how he can make it his own. As a graphic designer and having taken an Art Direction class, the teamwork this narrative took for the album is probably unimaginable, and it takes a true artist to make something like this come together. As this is an ongoing project, I’m excited to see where Cameron Lew takes Ginger Root and all the lore that makes up this incredibly immersive world.