However the first time nOrikO tapped into romance à la française was her model of Jane Birkin’s “Quoi,” which seems close to the top of Melting Second. The bilingual cowl tune, which additionally attracts English lyrics from the jazz customary “All of Me,” is pushed by an omnipresent piano riff, downtempo breakbeats, string and guitar melodies, and a vocal supply so breathy it may have made Birkin blush. nOrikO’s voice is a bell on the excessive notes, capturing the doe-eyed softness and shameless romanticism that retains yé-yé divas like Catherine Ribeiro and Françoise Hardy eternally on lovers’ mixtapes.
For all its ethereal fancy, nOrikO’s romance is grounded in an actual seek for which means. On the next yr’s full-length for Columbia, Love Me (named partially for the Polnareff tune), she spends a complete tune making an attempt to outline the sensation: “Love is mild/Love is hope/Love is actual/Love is hopeless/Love is lose/Love is hate.” At occasions her craving is platonic, too: The second half of Melting Second opens with “These Had been the Days,” a tune popularized as Welsh singer Mary Hopkin’s 1968 debut single. Over a beat paying homage to UK storage, a jolly bar tune turns into full of melancholy nostalgia. nOrikO’s voice rumbles deep and drained, stirring low as she contemplates days when she and her pals “would struggle and by no means lose.” In her evaluation, the rapture and dissolution of affection and friendship can also be an apocalypse.
Melting Second appeared simply after the golden age of Western-inspired genres in Japan similar to metropolis pop and shibuya-kei, however regardless of taking inspiration from England and France, the EP’s snapshot of a wandering soul looking for absolution in big-city nightclubs was by no means a mainstream success. “In Japan, it was standard amongst younger individuals who like edgy music, but it surely didn’t resonate with most of the people who listened to J-pop,” nOrikO instructed Resident Advisor in 2024. After Melting Second, she launched just a few extra albums as POiSON GiRL FRiEND earlier than taking an prolonged break from the venture. She went on to stay in France, often DJing or performing stay, collaborating on music below the names Darkish Eyed Child and Kiss-O-Matic, and documenting her life on her weblog.
Lately, Melting Second’s borderless viewpoint and open-minded method to style has attracted a world viewers that acknowledges it as a quietly revolutionary piece of music, and its creator as an unsung digital pioneer. In 2021, “No one,” a tune from POiSON GiRL FRiEND’s 1993 launch, Shyness, was included on the well-received compilation Heisei no oto: Japanese Left-Discipline Pop From the CD Age (1989-1996), sparking renewed curiosity. In 2023, Melting Second obtained a vinyl reissue, and nOrikO’s distinctive, feather-light voice featured on “So Many Methods” by Kiss Facility, Mayah Alkhateri and Sega Bodega’s shoegaze duo. As POiSON GiRL FRiEND discovered new audiences, a world tour took nOrikO to China and the U.S. In 2025, she’s set to tour Europe, beginning with a sold-out present in Paris.
On Melting Second’s closing title monitor, nOrikO sings in English, French, and Japanese, her voice piercing as she makes peace with a relationship that’s evaporated into phrases left unsaid. The report ends with a violin solo and chic piano, a second as restorative as the daylight and breeze in your face as you exit the social gathering, physique depleted from dancing out a damaged coronary heart. Maybe what continues to attract new generations to this underground gem is its sense of fragile hope. Over ambient textures and breakbeats on “The Future Is Now,” nOrikO contemplates a crumbling world and grabs our shoulders to offer them a shake: “Why don’t we attempt/To save lots of our planet for our youngsters?” (One other easy, key exclamation: “Don’t be destructive!”) Melting Second is a small utopia, radiating human heat to withstand the fashionable world’s ever-encroaching isolation. It’s an invite to step into the current.
