Automatic Love

Heavenly Star/Breeze (CD-only edition)

Heavenly Star/Breeze (CD+DVD edition)

“I see you, feel you, I am your creation
Everlasting affection
Life’s an endless spiral going ‘round
Yes, we are in love!”

-  from “Heavenly Star”

The above lyrics may, at first glance, come off as a typical pop construction: words crafted to fit a melody first and to carry a meaning second.  Artificial sentiment, perhaps.  But Genki Rockets, in its debut single “Heavenly Star/Breeze,” has taken things one step further: what meaning can a pop song have when sung by an artificial singer?

Genki Rockets’ Myspace would have us believe that the group is composed of just one young woman, named Lumi.  Lumi, according to the scant but colorful biography on the page, was born in outer space, has never been to Earth, and “lives in the future world.”  In actuality, Genki Rockets is produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who is a video game designer famous for the puzzle games Lumines, among other works.  But who is Lumi?  Or, if you perhaps doubt the accuracy of the official bio (shame on you), then who is the person singing the songs?  The answer is actually “no one.”  Neither the singing voice nor the girl who appears in the PV for “Heavenly Star” is real (technically, the voice we hear was assembled from several different female singers to create the final product).  In essence, then, the entirety of the Genki Rockets project is synthetic.

Personally, I find this fascinating on a couple of levels.  The most obvious is, of course, the technical achievement; many artists have experimented with computerized or otherwise processed vocals before, but the construction of a voice is no small feat.  A casual listen to “Heavenly Star” or its b-side, “Breeze,” and you might not be able to tell that Lumi is made up of samples – I was fooled at first.  While she is heavily vocodered throughout most of both the songs, the vocals themselves are consistent in tone, enough to sound like it’s one person, and frankly she still sounds more real than, say, Cher in “Believe” or the male vocalist in Daft Punk’s “One More Time.”  Granted, those are older songs, and the vocal processing was being used for dramatic effect, but regardless “Heavenly Star” is a testament to how convincing our technological illusions have become.  Major respect to Mizuguchi and his fellow producers.

But the underlying thing that really intrigues me, and has inspired me to write about this music, is how convincing Lumi is.  Huh?  Convincing?  How can an auto-tuned, quantized, and heavily processed voice (or set of voices) sing lyrics like “heavenly stars above / just believe what’s in your heart / no border between us / nothing can divide us” and, at least for a few minutes, make me believe her?  I have no idea, but somehow she manages it.  That said, my favorite moment on this single is from “Breeze.”  Coming out of the second chorus, there are a few precious seconds when the instrumentation drops away and Lumi, in a quiet mechanical stutter, sings “I’m so close to you” as if she really were right next to me.  Oh man, if only it were true.  Gackt could be standing next to me, singing that in my ear, and I wouldn’t be as thrilled… oh, all right, I won’t lie, Gackt would win out, but Lumi would come a damn close second!  There’s just something about her voice – there’s some sort of purity in it, despite it not being real, that I can’t explain.  What I can say is that I find these songs extraordinarily affecting.

Breeze

Then again, Mizuguchi seems to have tailored this entire single to aim at our pleasure centers.  “Heavenly Star” is a bright, dance-oriented song with plenty of synths and a strong club beat; “Breeze” is similar but scales back the instrumentation a bit, placing Lumi’s voice higher in the mix.  The video for “Heavenly Star,” included on the CD+DVD version of the single, is positively euphoric, filled with pastel colors, computer-generated landscapes, and stars that twinkle in time with the beat.  (I especially melt at the "No border between us!!" words on the screen when Lumi sings those particular lyrics.)  Mizuguchi, or maybe his marketing team, have also succeeded in making wallets happy: the single is packed with six remixes of “Heavenly Star” (seven if you opt for the CD-only version) plus an instrumental.  If you’re into remixes like I am, this translates into an incredible bang for your buck.

I imagine that, after all I’ve said and the samples I’ve provided, some people have probably been turned off by all the… well… genki­-ness of the whole affair.  If you’re still here, though, I’d like to say that I have been thoroughly impressed by this release and encourage you to get a copy for yourself.  I posed a question about the meaning behind these songs in my first paragraph, and I may just have to leave it as a rhetorical inquiry because I’m not sure I have an answer.  I guess maybe I’m just a romantic sap, sure.  But you know, maybe the whole concept – platitudes about love and peace sung by an automaton – is just so divorced from reality, so unabashedly artificial, that my guard is completely dropped, and these songs have a clear pathway into my heart.  Whatever it is, I have to say: well done, Lumi.  You’ve won yourself a devoted fan.