EP Review: Koda Kumi - De-CODE

So, before I get into the music of this EP, I feel like I have to start with the packaging of this EP as a whole.

With the industry changing, rollouts being a mess and dots between music and visuals not connecting the way in which they used to, I sometimes find it increasingly difficult to talk about the music in isolation of visual components attached to it. This is part of the reason why I started doing Dis Cover posts, where I could talk about album / single covers and visuals in detail. But sometimes it bears discussing in specific music reviews. Tying this to Kumi’s De-CODE — there is a real disconnect of what this EP actually is musically versus how Kumi and Avex chose to brand it.

Kumi’s last album release was a Best album, Live in Metaverse. So De-CODE feels like an extension of continuing with this whole online / digital theme. But it doesn’t make sense, given that De-CODE is a Summer EP to sit alongside the likes of Freaky, 3 Splash, Summer Trip and Gossip Candy. After all, this is the vibe of the De-CODE song “ChaO!” — both the song and music video, where Kumi is giving us ‘OH NA NA! Watashi wa namae wa?’. And in an interview, Kumi had said that she wanted the concept for De-CODE to be a radio station. It’s unfortunate that the regular and streaming releases of De-CODE don’t feature the interludes which carry this concept, which is another issue of how this EP is presented. But I don’t get what the term ‘De-CODE’ has to do with radio, unless it’s in the context of Mission: Impossible or a Metal Gear Solid Codec transmission. Just naming the EP De-CODE because that’s the name of a tour is lazy. Why not call the EP Summer FM? KK Radio? KKFM? Or FM De-CODE to make the radio of it all crystal clear. And why not have the cover art be Kumi as a radio host in a beach hut? Or Kumi sat on a deck chair on the beach with a radio in her lap? SELL THE CONCEPT. And also decide, you want the concept to be The Matrix or Baywatch?

Kumi’s branding has always been a bit messy, but it worked more often than not. She at least committed to a visual theme and motif when it came to albums and EPs for the most part. How you brand a release is so important — more now than ever in this era of overstimulation and short attention spans. A cover art should sell the music and the vibe in a snapshot. You saw the covers for Freaky, 3 Splash (well, two of the covers), Gossip Candy and Summer Trip, the theme was clear when you had the context. But you look at the cover arts for De-CODE and they don’t tell you anything at all on their own. And even with the context, they still don’t make sense. And for an artist who has made a career of releasing bubbly Summer EP’s which all had a very set look, De-CODE feels out of step. Given where Kumi’s career is right now, I think a throwback moment and selling the nostalgia of her earlier Summer EP’s with a very clear Summer look and branding would have gone a really long way. After all, isn’t part of the reason we got this Summer EP in the first place?

It feels like Kumi and Avex wanted to cash in on what was a bit of a tradition and something which had worked for Kumi in the past, but they kinda forgot what had made that work and what the original angle of those things were. Even down to when something like this should be released. Because why is a Summer EP releasing at the end of August? Freaky, 3 Splash, Gossip Candy and Summer Trip were released in June / July. The only thing this EP did which stuck to tradition was to throw one song in the mix which does not feel like the others. But we’ll get to that.

Koda Kumi - De-CODE | Avex Music Creative Inc.

De-CODE kicks off with “ChaO!”. Kumi has given us a bunch of these songs before and she doesn’t offer anything new here. Dare I say it, the song even sounds a bit dated. “ChaO!” is not a bad song. It’s just ‘whatever’. But it does feel Summery and it is a cute song. It would make for a great choice in a performance setlist on the approach to the encore, for a bit of jubilance and to put everybody in high spirits.

And then comes “Curry Curly Hair”. If you liked “4 More” and have always been a Kumi fan who gravitates towards her R&B songs, then this will be your jam of the EP. “CoCo Ichibanya Curly Hair” strikes a really nice balance between being chill, but still having enough of a bounce for you to shake ass and buss it open in front of a wine bottle. And the music allows Kumi to be smooth and sultry, but also playful, charming and give a lil’ rap moment — the latter of which she’s become obsessed with over the years. It’s a short song, but it manages to pack a far bit into its 2 minute runtime and give you just enough that you don’t feel completely cheated by how short it is.

“S&B Curly Hair” is a highlight on this EP. I’m gonna completely overlook the fact that Kumi does not have curly hair and has not given us curly hair in a very long time. But she’s living her Black woman with natural hair fantasy, so I’mma let it slide. It’s a shame that this song wasn’t given a music video, because I think it could have been really fun. Kumi walking around Nagoya in a 3B wig would have gotten the Internet talking if nothing else.

“Celestia” takes the vibe of “House Foods Java Curly Hair” and turns the chill dial down even further. It is basically a background song for a commercial for Koda Kumi’s contact lens brand, Loveil — which has a colour called celestia gray. But it’s still a really nice song which fits the EP, especially being sequenced after “Go Go Curly Hair”. Surprisingly, Hi-junk is involved with this song. But given that Lindgren is credited as a producer and Melanie Fontana (who also wrote “Dance in the Rain”) is credited as a writer — “Celestia” was probably a song which was shopped around and eventually landed with Kumi. She heard the song. Like it. Then re-wrote the lyrics with Hi-junk, who probably engineered Kumi’s vocals and tweaked the production. Hi-junk is capable of doing songs which don’t sound like seven dial-up modems going off as somebody sings AOL’s terms and conditions in autotune whilst the police are knocking down the front door — just listen to his productions on W Face ~Inside~. But in this instance, I do think “Celestia” was a pre-existing song and that the music in the version we hear is most of what was on the original demo, with Hi-junk credited as a producer for small changes made to the beat as part of Kumi providing him in employment.

So, the hi-junk productions which sound like fire alarms going off on the home entertainment floor of Bic-Camera store, where every TV is on full volume? This is “Cube”. If you liked “Monster”, “Black Wings”, “Vroom” and all of that noisy shit that Kumi’s husband produces for her, then you’ll like “Cube”. I really do not like these sorts of songs from Kumi. They all sound the same. It’s all just noise. I get why Kumi does them though — she’s thinking about live performances and the energy she’ll be able to give. But a song can be high energy and let you do the most in a live performance, whilst also being a good, coherent song which isn’t just noise. Beyoncé has become the queen of these types of songs. So I wish Kumi would look at her and take notes.

I used to drag Kumi a lot in the past for constantly copying doing what her peers did, but now I kinda miss when she did. When Kumi was jacking ideas, you could see how it fed into her creativity and pushed her to try different things because she liked them. I think a huge problem with Kumi now is that she is so content within her Glinda bubble, that she is losing sense of what’s good, what’s bad, what works and what doesn’t. And by no longer looking at other artists, she isn’t gaining any inspiration to do different things. Pair this with Kumi’s taste level being…not great, and it’s created a curly recipe for disaster which has resulted in her music being not only bad, but stagnant. Something else that Kumi had mentioned in an interview that part of what inspired her to title the EP De-CODE was this idea of looking at something differently and evolving — re-writing parts of herself and showing different sides of who she is. And yet, Kumi hasn’t done either of these things. To me, she certainly hasn’t. But to herself, within her bubble, Kumi really thinks she has. She’s ‘delulu’ as the kids say. Perhaps De:LULU is what she should have called the EP.

With the whole radio theme that this EP loosely had, it would have been cool if Kumi had included a self cover / reimagined one of her earlier Summer EP songs and spoke a bit about her choice of song in an interlude. Doing so would not only have been a reminder that Kumi has a legacy of Summer EP’s and that they were her kinda thing at one point, but it also would have continued a thread from Unicorn (covers) and Live in Metaverse (older material). And I’m also surprised that “Jump to the Breeze” wasn’t thrown on here, because it would have worked sonically. And Kumi could have had a whole radio MC style interlude where she introduces Tetsuya Komuro. The interludes really should have been a part of every release of this EP. Not including them on the streaming release of all releases is crazy to me. Especially given that interludes feature on a couple of Kumi’s older Summer EP’s, so it would have been another ‘HEY! NOSTALGIA!’ moment which I think would have been worthwhile. To make the interludes exclusive to the limited edition release is such a strange move. I get that Avex probably figured that the limited edition should have some exclusive content, but this should have been video related content, not audio content which is part of the theme of the EP. But what has Avex or Kumi done over the past few years which has made any actual sense?

Koda Kumi - De-CODE | Avex Music Creative Inc.

Interludes aside — De-CODE would have been a really cute EP if it had just been “ChaO!”, “S&B Golden Curly Hair” and “Celestia”. “Cube” is what fucks it up. I really wish Kumi would retire these types of songs, but I guess it wouldn’t be a Koda Kumi release of original material unless there was something to throw the vibe off and fuck up the consistency. “Cube” doesn’t ruin the entire EP by any means. It helps that it’s last, so you can just cut the EP off after “Celestia”. But it is definitely the odd-song out — included for the sake of being included, because Kumi can’t seem to fathom an album or an EP without a song which sounds like the Resident Evil chainsaw man on a NCT 127 title track being played at full volume in a drop top car as fire engines drive past with their sirens on.

De-CODE wasn’t rocket science. Packaging this very clearly as a Summer EP and making that clear in every facet from the visual branding to the music was so easy. And yet Kumi still could not do it. I just don’t know what type of artist Kumi wants to be or what her goal is creatively these days. There is no sense of direction to anything that she puts out and it’s a shame, because her talent is being wasted on these un-memorable throwaway releases. And the good songs which do feature on them, just end up falling by the wayside. And the good songs which do feature on them, they just end up falling by the wayside. “Joto Curly Hair” and “Celestia” are great songs, but watch them get side-lined in tour setlists in favour of “Cube”.

Highlights:
▪ Curly Hair 🥇
▪ Celestia 🥈