ハコいりせがれ

- Kitune Akimoto

Im so confused!!! Is it an anime? Is it a children’s show? Is it an album? A book? A playstation game?

There is a music book for it on the apple book store. There is also a lot of animated music videos for the songs of Kitune Akimoto. And there seems to be a playstation game but I cannot find a lot of information about it.

Kitune Akimoto, the “artist” behind it passed away in 2014 and seems to mostly be known for his creations in the VIDEO GAME SECTOR

Ok so considering this site, it seems that Akimotos works very often used that guy with the arrow as a head. He made two TV series, multiple childrens books and a game with this character.

Shun is another project by P-Model member Susumu Hirasawa

“It’s like a compilation of all the things I’ve done in my teens and twenties, [...] I’ve always wanted to achieve some kind of success by the time I’m 30, so I’m happy for now.”

After further reading of Shuns japanese Wikipedia page it appears that 1778-1985 was created for Shun first and covered with P-Model

Shun have been a very early band to adopt sampling in Japan. Apparently Hirasawa had built his own sampler from tape and a misused digital delay unit.

He created his own sampler which he called the

heavenizer

The two later albums of Shun use fractal sounds which were incorporating CGI Software for fractals into the music.

According to YouTuber TongkouYoungxian the cover is showing a topographic map of planet Venus.

So apparently this game was inspired by a CGI video made by Kitune featuring a cow with a human head... It is listed on Japanese Wikipedia as being part of the “silly game” genre. I never heard of this category before and I love it.

My Little Airport

A Hong Kong based band founded by two Journalists in 2004 and creating a very sweet indie rock and DIY sound with lyrics often in English and Cantonese.

The graphic design of Shun albums are really great too!

They have many many albums out and are very prolific until today. (Their last album was released in 2024) They also have their own label called: Harbour Records. I am not sure if that is still active though.

The band is very political and has been part of Hong-Kong activist movements like the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Their Music is banned from Mainland Chinas music market as well as on Chinas most used social networks since 2019.

Segare Ijiri translates to “Teasing My Son”

A trained pianist who had turned to electronic music after she discoverd the Roland MC-505 drum machine and released her first album as Kyoka called UFUNFUNFUFU (which is great). She moved to Raster Noton after some releases and via this you can probably imagine what her music sounds like....

Akimoto also sang backing vocals on a song by Susumu Hirasawa, which is very fitting considering his own style which is very similar to Hirasawa and P-Model of which Hirasawa was a member.

Especially the first releases feature cut up glitches of sampled Rock and “guitar music” recordings (maybe also Jazz, Swing, etc...) and make something completely new from them.

Note how they are really noisy but still have so much depth and story telling and do not hit a wall after a few minutes of listening

Japanese Singer, making music since ’95. She has worked together with a member of my favourite japanese Synthpop Band Denki Groove, as well as Adrian Sherwood, Tricky, Múm(Postrock Band from Iceland) and Aoki Takamasa.

She releases mostly on the Sony sublable Kyuun/Ki-oon which apparently took the name from the German word “kühn” (brave, fierce).

Ki/oon has released quite a lot of interesting music and is definitely worth checking out.

Very interesting and noisy experimental noise/techno/synth-pop artist. She seems to have been in an idol group before. Her change in style interests me a lot. But even without this backstory Tentenkos music is really really special!

ACO has also moved to Germany for around one year but it seems that things didn’t work out so well and she moved back to Japan pretty quickly.

She has started with self-released albums on her own label which she called TenTen records. Her latest two releases have been released in Germany by TAL records (an antworten) and Couldn’t Care More (The Soft Cave). Second Label is based in my hometown Hamburg which makes me quite happy.

She is very much into DIY culture. Here is a YouTube interview of her (and other great FLINTA artists like KOPY) talking about DIY

This also shows her international success over the years. She has released quite a lot very consistently and I believe she really deservers to be heard more and could easily play the global electronic festival circle.

3D Museum Soundtrack

I am so glad I found this album thanks to this great YouTube channel linked to the right.

OK so apparently BiS was more of an Anti Idol Group. See this video for more info:

It’s a soundtrack to a “game” more aking to a virtual exhibition for the Sega Mega LD video game console.

The Sega Mega LD was an addon for the Sega Mega which allowed you to play LaserDisc with the Sega Mega. What’s a laser disc you ask?

Seemingly BIS was also already very much all in about DIY culture and tried to organize a professional idol group by themselves.

We’re slowly moving into dweeb territory here so I’ll leave it at that. The video is not majorly interesting and in the end it’s mostly about one cis man figure in the idol business making them do very extra PR stunts. Still this seems to be a pretty crazy background to be coming from.

Those were huge CD like discs the size of a vinyl record. The games developed to be played from LaserDisc are pretty obscure and rare. Here is another example from the game Goku

It’s also got a really good soundtrack and is proper hypnagogic/vaporwave material.

So why are we talking about this? 3D Museum for the Sega Mega LD had an amazing soundtrack too. It even has multiple songs by Harumi Hosono as well as many other great japanese experimental artists.

Music Recommendations By

網守将平 (Shohei Amimori)

In Oto #4 I play a composition by Shohei Amimori a well studied classical composer who turned to electronic music production and who is well versed in playing piano as well as performing on a laptop.

Here are some of his listed influences for you to check out for some (neo-)classical gold. (these might very well be the standards for people knowledgable in this field, but theyre pretty new to me)

Most notable of Amimori and worthy of sharing I find Amimoris influences which can be found on his japanese Wikipedia article.

He also is very much into the electronic music label

Editions Mego

The scores for these look absolutely terrifying

And he seems to like berlin artist

M.E.S.H.

WATER MELON GROUP

This is a fun one. Water Melon Group, also sometimes performing as Melon or Water Melon is a group of Toshio Nakanishi and others. For a while they were joined by Yann Tomita who on his own is already pretty amazing and is credited on japanese Wikipedia for producing Japans very first hiphop album.

MELONs debut album also featured Harumi Hosono.

This song from the later album “Cool Music” has a very interesting version on YouTube which is pretty funny.

A later member of the group, Gota Yashiki, moved to the UK after the band disbanded and actually joined the UK band Simply Red lol