Picopop

Picopop is a Japanese style of electronic pop that emerged around 2000 as an offshoot of Shibuya-kei. Where Shibuya-kei cultivated a mature, jazz-inflected sophistication, picopop pursues a deliberately miniature, toy-like sound: high-pitched female vocals, chiptune and video-game timbres, breakbeats and cut-up samples of 1950s and 1960s pop and jazz, assembled at frantic tempos. The music is cute, hyperactive and densely referential, issued by small Tokyo labels and independent circles. Its defining group, *Plus-Tech Squeeze Box*, released only two albums, but the style shaped Japanese electronic pop through the work of *capsule* and *Perfume*.