“I didn't trust anyone adult,” claims Nana Yamato, “even my parents”. The 20-year old walks the streets of Tokyo like a superhero incognito. By day, Yamato is an ordinary girl who marches anonymously between her flat, her school and her job. But by night, when the world gets quiet, and the demands of education and employment have subsided, she becomes something else — a young artist whose urge for connection and expression has created one of the best underground pop records to come out of Japan, and elsewhere for that matter. “They thought I was a bad girl who went into weird stores,” says Nana, explaining her schoolmates’ impression of her as a teenage record collector. “In high school I had no friends to talk to or spend time with. But, somehow, my teachers and classmates knew what I was doing after school.” Her calling was found when one day she entered Big Love Records in Harajuku, Tokyo to buy an Iceage album. She then began going there everyday after school, where her studies shifted to the week’s latest indie rock releases. “Everything in my life started there.”
Nana Yamato’s brilliance lies in a profound imagination that confronts the isolation and claustrophobia of Tokyo life, without losing grasp of the whimsy and romance of girlhood. “I think Tokyo is a lonely city,” says Nana. “It's more like an empty city. It's like there's nothing in it but buildings. A big stadium was built, but the Olympics were postponed. It's empty.” Yet it's hard to ignore the romance the artist has with the streets that she walks; Japanese and English vocals sing about the lights and sounds of the city, as if there’s no place else she could exist. Each song on Before Sunrise, her debut album, is a secret hidden in the late-night glow of a young girl’s bedroom, created in the precious witching hours of the teenage heart, before dawn returns with the tedious demands of adulthood. The self-expression that was not nurtured in school or in her family is finally set free on opening track “Do You Wanna”: “Dreams are gone far away from reality / I climb up the hill, that tumbles to the ground, every time I try”. Dreams, and the language of living inside one’s imagination, are the prevailing theme of Before Sunrise. Yamato describes her style as “critical fantasy”, a fitting label for a sound that exists as much in a carefree daydream as they do in a crowded subway.
Out February 5th, 2021 on Dull Tools.
Includes unlimited streaming of Before Sunrise
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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supported by 62 fans who also own “Under the Cherry Moon”
I think it's difficult to write songs about something other than romantic love, and still be able to communicate the intensity with which those feelings can hit a person. Some of the entries on this album are fantastic examples of this niche. dani_bloop
Take a trip around the world with the album of sophisticated acoustic pop from Aya Nakano and a changing line-up of musicians. Bandcamp New & Notable May 4, 2023
supported by 51 fans who also own “Under the Cherry Moon”
Like so many others, this came like a bolt out of the blue and, even though it's well before payday, I had to have this astonishing album on vinyl to prove it exists. The feel of the tunes makes me feel like the Impressions do, Curtis Mayfield, the big spaces and instinctive horns and stuff drifting in and out. Great grooves and I can see lots of ghosts nodding along to this with big smiles on their faces. At last! Anthony Cottrell