Here is an interview with MONO NO AWARE members Tamaoki Shukei and Kato Seijun. The interview focuses on how the pair first met, as well as on the band’s sophomore album. Enjoy!

Interview & text: Miyake Shoichi (Japanese text)
English translation: Henkka
MONO NO AWARE links: Website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Note: You can buy AHA on CDJapan.

MONO NO AWARE
(L-R) Takeda Ayako, Tamaoki Shukei, Kato Seijun, Yanagisawa Yutaka

MONO NO AWARE have just completed their second album, AHA.

Ever since the band’s beginnings, there has been no one else like them when it comes to musical expression. “This part is rock, this part is pop“—there are no such borderlines in their music. And yet, their musical imagery carries with it a contemporaneity which organically reminds the listener of all kinds of different cultures, along with a synchronicity which makes it feel like you’re tripping between reality and some parallel world.

Those aspects of the band’s music become even more vivid on this work, with the evolution in their sound production and songwriting making one’s earliest childhood memories rise to the surface.

Having accompanied the band for the filming of their music video for this album’s lead song, “Tokyo,” we then conducted an interview with their songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Tamaoki Shukei and guitarist Kato Seijun.

We visited their hometown of Hachijojima, Tokyo—a 55-minute direct flight from Haneda Airport. While the town is actually still a part of Tokyo, that sense of travel I got from going down there and standing in that environment, surrounded by nature, it gave me flashbacks of that peculiar feeling one experiences when listening to MONO NO AWARE—a sense of, “It’s my first time here, and yet somehow it’s like I know this place.”

Continue reading →

Here is an interview with the cool youngsters of MONO NO AWARE. The interview focuses on the history of the band’s formation, as well as on their debut album. Enjoy!

Interview & text: Kaneko Atsutake (Japanese text)
English translation: Henkka
MONO NO AWARE links: Website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Note: You can buy Jinsei, Yamaori Taniori on CDJapan.

MONO NO AWARE
(L-R) Tamaoki Shukei, Yanagisawa Yutaka, Takeda Ayako, Kato Seijun

MONO NO AWARE, a four-piece band who derive their name from the concept of mono no aware—the natural transience of things and feelings experienced with respect to life’s subtleties—have released their debut album, Jinsei, Yamaori Taniori.

With overseas garage rock and post-punk as the backdrop, their music can be quite volatile, with daring changes that can occur even within individual songs. Another characteristic of the band—also apparent in the album’s title—is their wordplay, always causing involuntary smiles. While their music has some similarities with the currently trending psychedelic pop of the Tokyo indie scene (as showcased at the “BEACH TOMATO NOODLE” party co-hosted by Tempalay and domico), the band neatly avoids categorization, with their easygoing feel giving them a unique personality.

At the core of the band are its two Hachijojima natives: songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Tamaoki Shukei, and guitarist Kato Seijun. Tamaoki, the intuitive humanities type, and Kato, the research-oriented sciences type, complement each other nicely in their search for musical freedom, their aims simply set for “somewhere other than here.” Led by this duo—somehow reminiscent of Natsume Tomoyuki and Sugawara Shinichi of the Siamese Cats—now that they are “out of the well,” so to speak, what kinds of different worlds will this group be showing us next?

Continue reading →