You’ve put your ears through a lot. Accidental full-volume headphone blasts, the dull, droning tones of your hundred-year old professor, screeching dog whistles; it’s a lot to suffer through. It’s time you did them a solid and treated them to the masterful soundscapes created by a greatly under-appreciated musical artist, producer, and songwriter -- Kishi Bashi.
If you’ve never heard the name before, now is the perfect time to focus in and make an wonderfully insane musical discovery. Kishi Bashi, the pseudonym of Kaoru Ishibashi, is about to change the course of your future Spotify playlists forever with his new album, Sonderlust.
A mesmerizing collection of wandering vocal harmonies, otherworldly string voices, and energetic drum beats supplemented by rich underlying bass, synth, and strummed guitar, it’s a paradise that explodes with colorful sounds. It is driven by the constant ebb and flow of energetic sections that are then replaced by more reflective ideas, all folding in on one another. He uses thoughtful, yet bold, experimental lines that create a sound you don’t find on most radio stations.
If appealing to your musical tastes isn’t enough, he’s got something for your tastebuds too. He paired up with Jittery Joe’s, a coffee company, to produce a line of coffee called Royal Daark Blend. Each package contains the code for a free download of his music. Two for one deals don’t get much better than that, folks. In the realm of indie rock, this selling tactic has got to be a delicious first.
Need to see some credentials before you’ll jump on board? Ishibashi attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied Film Scoring. His classical training with the violin paired with going to school at such an musical hotspot ensures you won’t find any of four-chord pop nonsense that the top charts hypnotize listeners with. While the latter acts as the poisonous love potion of music, leaving you lulled by its hazy, semi-original formulas, the music you’ll hear on Sonderlust as well as his previous albums will awaken your mind, as energy courses through each layer of his carefully constructed masterpieces.
Forgive me for gushing praise like a lovestruck fangirl; I swear it comes from a place of genuity and not his agent’s office trying to up record sales. Don’t deprive your ears of this great privilege. Remember, they deserve this.
And look! I'll even give you a link to find him: https://soundcloud.com/kishi-bashi.
