Kaoru Dill-Ishibashi, the indie musician who tours and records as Kishi Bashi, recently revisited his 2016 album, Sonderlust, for a tenth anniversary reissue, and in the process of listening to the tracks again, he says a few of the songs on the album surprised him.
“Some of them are prog rock and kind of challenging,” he says in a recent Zoom call from his home studio in Santa Cruz, CA. He’ll support the reissue with a tour that brings him to the Beachland Ballroom on April 8. “But it’s kind of exciting to hear them. And to play them live, I have Graham Richards, a great keyboard player, with me. He’s an old college buddy of mine. He’s fantastic. He’s like [the late prog rocker] Keith Emerson with his synthesizer.”
As part of the reissue, Dill-Ishibashi also released the previously unreleased ballad “Harpsi Chords,” a song that, with its chirping strings and falsetto-like vocals, comes off as a trippy lullaby.
“I’m trying to remember why I didn’t include it,” he says of the song. “It just felt out of place. I thought it was beautiful, but I could never achieve the type of emotion I wanted with it, so I just left off. It had strings on it, so it was close.”
The reissue also includes updated artwork from Ssin Kim, the South Korean artist behind the original cover.
“Ssin Kim is a studio artist, and the first album cover was one of her pieces from a gallery,” says Dill-Ishibashi. “We licensed it. It’s called End of the Beginning. It fit the theme of the songs. It’s a dystopian vision of humanity’s end. David J. Woodruff, an art director at the Joyful Noise record label, found it. He’s a great artist too, and I trust him. He found it and said, ‘What about this?’ It was perfect. Ten years later, I love art, and I thought it was appropriate to see if there were other pieces, and so found a different piece by Kim.”
Prior to making the album, Dill-Ishibashi has said he was burned out after making 2013’s 151a and 2014’s Lighght and touring incessantly.
“It might have been when I peaked,” he laughs when asked about his mindframe at that time. “The tours were getting bigger and bigger. All these opportunities were coming in, and it was straining my relationship with my family. In many ways, it’s the artist’s dream. You’re busy, but there are also consequences. That’s when I realized it was not sustainable, and I needed to take care of myself and the people around me.”
Initially, he cut demos for Sonderlust at his home studio. He then went to Los Angeles to work with Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, who helped him whip it into shape and add sonic textures.
“Lighght was a wild exploration, but with Sonderlust, I wanted to focus on analog synthesizers and harpsichord and present a baroque pop fusion sound,” says Dill-Ishibashi. “I wanted more of a tone for the album than I have had previously. You can hear the demos on the reissue. They are pretty similar to the ones on the album. But when I went to LA., and Chris Taylor helped me find more musicians. And I worked with my drummer friend, drummer Matt Chamberlain, and recorded the strings out there too.
John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows provided the title.
“I wanted something that was poetic but maybe a little intellectual,” says Dill-Ishibashi. “When I was looking for a title, I found his dictionary. He creates these words that are not available to the English language. But the definitions are philosophical ideas. ‘Sonder’ is about the realization that everyone has a unique and deep life. It gives you a sense of humility. It’s the realization that we’re all connected. Connecting to my listeners is a beautiful connection, yet it can have its consequences. It seemed very appropriate at the time. A lot of people don’t really think about how connected we are.”
In the wake of releasing Sonderlust, Dill-Ishibashi put out 2019’s Omoiyari (a Japanese word meaning compassion for others), and its accompanying documentary, A Song Film By Kishi Bashi: Omoiyari, explores themes of minority identity and the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans. The film premiered at 2022’s SXSW Film festival; it later earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary.
As he listened back to Sonderlust, Dill-Ishibashi says he can see how his production has evolved. And he wants his production to continue to evolve too.
“Once you get older, you have that hindsight,” says Dill-Ishibashi, who just turned 50. “You can think more conceptually. It’s a snapshot of your life. Looking back, I think I did a good job of having a contained sound. For me, it’s very dark-sounding from an audio perspective. Some people like that, and I tend to make things analog-sounding, which tends to be dark.”
For the live show, however, Dill-Ishibashi says the songs come off as much brighter and more energetic.
“It’s going to be bright as fuck,” he says, adding that he’s working on ideas for new music and finding ways to incorporate a few newly acquired synths (specifically a Jupiter X and a Korg Prologue that he points to during our Zoom call). “The tempos will be faster. It’ll be a real party.”
Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter