Tomoki Kanda (神田朋樹): 「Interstellar Interlude」(2012)

Sometimes, I think we’re all in need of some kind of palette cleanser. At the cusp of summer, the urge is to find more in-between season music. It’s with this in mind, that I’m breaking one of my cardinal rules for this blog and choosing to cover music closer to our station in life. It’s to cover another persistent reminder from me: that not all “lost” music necessarily resides in a vinyl platter but that some of it is contained within a jewel case. And in my case, it’s to share one of those hidden gems, the wonderful music of Tomoki Kanda and his Interstellar Interlude.

One wonders, or at least I do, why Tomoki is now working behind the camera lens rather than behind the desk of a recording studio? Could it be that his creative passion for this mercurial thing we call “music” couldn’t outpace his desire to do something else? It’s these questions I don’t have an answer to (nor has Tomoki come out to explain) that I find answers in his music. It’s something you can hear subliminally posit this: that putting himself out there as a musical artist doesn’t come to him easily.

It was at the beginning of the ‘90s that Tomoki began his first stint as an artist, recording under the moniker “Librodisia” for a very embryonic version of Tokyo-based, Crue-L Records – future home of artists like Towa Tei, Cornelius, and Buffalo Daughter (to name precious few). It was label-head, the pioneering Japanese DJ, Kenji Takimi, that pushed Tomoki to step out from his first group, Favourite Marine, and see if he can take his kaleidoscopic influences – those of ‘60s pop, indie rock, post-punk, and soul music – and release something more contemporary-sounding. With slight trepidation, Tomoki released 1992’s “Got To Be Real” single and as soon as it was released, it sold poorly, and he resigned himself to shift into the world of music production.

As the somewhat, in-house producer and writer for Crue-L Records, it would be for well over a decade that Tomoki labored behind the scenes crafting brilliant releases by artists like Kahimi Karie and Miyako Kobayashi that ran the gamut of success but maintained a high rate of critical acclaim. It would be all that work creating quiet, underground pop hits which would (finally) prepare Tomoki to give it a go again to release music under his own name – with prodding from Kenji who promised to finance his studio time in a “proper” recording studio.

So in 2000, the product of Tomoki Kanda’s spirited effort to record something that was worthy of his name: Landscape Of Smaller’s Music. It was on that record where all those bits of post-rock, lounge, downtempo, psychedelia, ambient, and genuinely emotive singer-songwriter music would come out. Impossible to pinpoint, to paraphrase Pam (from Okonkole Y Trompa), it played “more like a pocket Sergeant Pepper than a Gympnopédie for a personal computer”. 

Tracks like opener “Safari” seem perfectly-suited for that early Y2K milieu of IDM and Buzz-bin rock, and others like “Golden Weed” experienced forward-thinking ideas gleaned from Spacemen 3, or others like “Small Music” playing like more accomplished cousin of what Badly Drawn Boy was trying to accomplish on “Once Around The Block”. Then you had songs like “A Ray Of Sunshine”, crunked-out and easy-going, mixing a bit of twee with the heaviness of deep beat-driven soul. It’s a fascinating album of stunners like “Marden Hill”, “White Bird” that have the hazy-feeling of a great Beta Band track. It was as appropriately named a record as Tomoki could have imagined.

Unfortunately, what should have been a new turning point for the Shibuya-kei scene never got the recognition it deserved. And at a point when CD sales were seriously starting to peter out, Tomoki’s touchstone album sold miserably, and what he thought was going to be a sophomore release a year or so later, petered out. Full of doubt – Was his music more “indie”? Would a major label be a better fit? – Tomoki shelved his demos and went back to doing what paid the bills.

For the next decade, Tomoki Kanda kept putting off releasing anything under his own name. He’d contribute to a few Crue-L compilations, add his touch to various remixes for others, and keep his professional, working relationship with the increasingly popular Kahimi Karie, but as for himself, nothing he did was coalescing to a fuller vision. 

It wouldn’t be until Tomoki resolved to fully flesh out his own home studio that steps were leading in the right direction. Somewhere around 2006/2007, Tomoki was asked by Kenji Takimi, Crue-L label head, to contribute something/anything to a new Crue-L compilation. What Tomoki showed up with was, “Ride A Watersmooth Silver Stallion”. Kenji asked Tomoki if he had a whole album worth of music like this. Tomoki hesitated. Tomoki wasn’t sure if he was ready for that struggle. Together they’d start a band they’d dub “Being Borings” to spark some of their creative juices and doing so furthered Tomoki’s path towards his own work.

Luckily for us, Tomoki understood that the only way to create something like Interstellar Interlude would be to feel entirely comfortable in the space he’d create within it and in the artist he wanted to be. So, rather than go out to a big studio, he’d decamp to his home studio and just have fun taking out old tracks and new ones, reimagining them as he saw fit. Unlike the past, when digital ADAT tape edits took forever and got him out of his workflow, now he was able to easily create the soundscape, atmosphere, and music he was looking for. 

Inspired by the total music of Marvin Gaye, Terry Callier, and Shuggie Ottis, and the intricate AOR of Chris Rea and Prefab Sprout, Tomoki Kanda wanted music that felt more organically-created, that had a floating feeling. Steve Miller’s “Fly Like An Eagle” was a touchpoint. To not sound like a post-modern collage of the artists he was into, like Kevin Ayers, Chad & Jeremy, and Millennium. And somewhere, his guitar, that most “traditional” instrument of rock music, was speaking to him (once again) to express himself.

Cognizant of his age, Tomoki created his first truly “adult” record. Songs like “The Stranger” had an utterly fascinating personal quality that straddled the line between singer-songwriter and glitch, as if being human isn’t something that’s easily, entirely, lost in the depth of informational technology. Others like “Horoscorpion” found a groove that is both haunting and weirdly, uptempo. Very little albums of that era (or before and after) sound like Interstellar Interlude. 

Take its most known track: “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”. Far from being a sure thing on the record, it was, perhaps, Kenji Takajima’s sole “interference”. I say this because Kenji had to prod Tomoki to cover something, to earnestly show his face behind the sonic veil. Can you cover this, seemingly, oft-heard track from Tears For Fears? What can you do with a track that you admire? What can you do to make it yours? This could be what you use to let others “in” to your inner vision.

With the album almost finished, Tomoki took umbrage at first and tried to cover it the “professional” way. Then he thought about his name. How it would be his name attached to this work. If he had to cover this song, he would not translate it but reimagine it with nuance and explore new contours. What came out would distill the contemplative essence of the original, in a way that even surprised himself. It’s that surprise of what Tomoki could achieve by simplifying and living in the moment, by feeling out his strengths and not trying to compare himself to others, Tomoki would help round out his album.

This “flowering of the spirit”, as hinted at in the album cover, is what you hear radiate on absolutely gorgeous tracks like “Frozen Forest” and “Moodswings To The Moon”. Different patterns of production led to surprising musical expressions like “Holiday” and “Open Your Eyes”. Can you imagine the dancefloors that would move to a song like the Steve Miller hat-tipping “The Knight With The Birds”? 

What you have on a decade later, in 2012, was an Interstellar Interlude to all the new possibilities Tomoki was able to unlock. What you have a new decade later, in 2023, is the possibility to (finally) give Tomoki an interstellar interlude to catch everyone else up to a new creation story.

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