December, 2022

Though this webpage has been up for quite a while now, I haven’t actually written anything for it. That was because I wanted to write about a band that’s… kinda difficult to write about! And it took me a while to do this. So I’m sorry about that. Anyway…
For the first article to be featured on my music blog, I figured I should write about the band that ignited my love for weird 80’s Japanese music: Picky Picnic.

Picky Picnic was a 1980’s Japanese band that has always haunted me. Although I have them to thank for being my first introduction to weird, wonderful, and obscure Japanese music, I also dislike that fact.
Recently I sat down to listen to Picky Picnic’s Picnic Land, and something about it made me ask myself “How did I listen to this stuff all the time, like, 6 months ago?”. I literally have no idea what made me like them so much!

Okay, so information on Picky Picnic is pretty scarce, so I’ll do my best to inform you about who exactly these people were before I talk more about their music. Nobody’s too sure when they first formed, but Picky Picnic was made up of Kaoru Todoroki and Yuji Asuka, and they were only really a thing during the 80’s. The two had made/would make music with other groups and on their own, but I won’t really get into that. Other than rumours of Picky Picnic disbanding because one of the members went to prison for drug charges (a theory that seems pretty plausible seeing as how Picky Picnic’s music is so… Whatever, I’ll get to that soon!) there isn’t much else to say about the members themselves. Unlike, say, Ten Chiyumi from Kidorikko, neither Kaoru nor Yuji got interviewed by magazines or anything, meaning that there’s barely anything known about these two.

Picky Picnic released 3 albums (Picnic Land, Ha! Ha! Tarachine, and Kuru Kuru World) and 3 EP’s (Aischu no Melody, Cynical Hysteria World, and Lovely Water Peaceful). Their songs are characterised by distorted sounds and vocals, elements of children’s music, and, according to their Last.fm page,
“They made a specialty of "family" choruses, as if recorded in their kitchen at lunch time.”
I’ve heard that the two would create their own choirs, doing multiple recordings of them singing, and then changing the pitch and overlaying the audio. The best example of this is in the song “Sume Ba Miyako (Happy Family)” from Ha! Ha! Tarachine, where the verse abruptly stops to begin the chorus that sounds almost exactly like a family singing together.

As well as sounding childish, Picky Picnic’s music is also scary and uncomfortable. Like, whenever I listen to Picnic Land I feel really gross afterwards. The reason I said that the rumours about a member going to prison for drug charges seemed true was because everything about their music is chaotic and deranged and wrong. It’s playful and childish, but also distorted and weird. I hated listening to the song “Influenza” for the first time. For context, the entire song is just this looping melody, with water gurgling sounds that fade in and out. I told myself “Dude, you can’t call yourself a Picky Picnic fan if you haven’t listened to Picnic Land all the way through” so I just sat down and listened to it. 10 minutes in, Influenza began, and I was terrified that some other yucky sound effect would play, but nope! Just water gurgling and slightly distorted piano for 2 straight minutes. Why?

“My Toast Time” (something I will always reference whenever anyone brings up anything toast related lol) is atmospheric and feels like you’re sitting in a busy cafe, but you’re also the only one there, since the vocal samples are all strange and out of context.
The song “Anima” has high-pitched vocals and various different silly animal sound effects, but it sounds sad and lonely (not to mention the weird segment in the Ha! Ha! Tarachine version that sounds like a guy desperately running through the forest, out of breath).
“Was Ich Haben Will” sounds like a song in the background of a movie you watched as a kid.
“Aishu no Melody (The Setting Sun in Africa)” just sounds mournful and painful, and I avoid listening to it because of how sad it makes me feel.
“Kottankorokle - Funfunddreissigste Fruhling” makes you feel like you’re stuck in a never-ending nightmare.
And I can go on and on about how this band’s music feels so scary and weird to me.

I love the mystery surrounding this band. I’ve already mentioned how nobody knows anything about the two people that started Picky Picnic, but I wanted to touch on another thing. See, I’ve read more than one comment comparing Picky Picnic’s music to “music aliens might make”. If you think about it, it’s a cool idea. The titles that are in either broken English or some made-up gibberish language entirely, the distorted vocals and other sounds in almost every song, the attempt to make something child-friendly and failing horribly, etc. I’m not at all saying I think Picky Picnic was made up of 2 aliens, god no, but it’s an interesting thing to think about.

I gotta say that you really have to be in the right mood to listen to Picky Picnic. As someone who listens to a lot of weird music in their free time, Picky Picnic can even be a bit much for me at times. They aren’t afraid to use their music to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible. There are loud sounds, odd instruments and vocals, and their music has got such a creepy vibe to it. I definitely would not recommend you listen to them while you do your homework, that’s for sure.

With that out of the way, here’s some of their music for you to listen to, if you’d like!

Yeah, I have pretty mixed feelings about Picky Picnic. But they unsettle me in a way that no other piece of music or other media has, and I respect them for it.