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Before Sunrise

by Nana Yamato

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Nathaniel Edmiston
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Nathaniel Edmiston Great for daydreaming and romanticizing life Favorite track: The Day Song.
m_t_signifier
m_t_signifier thumbnail
m_t_signifier Favorite track: Fantasy. Beatles-esque is only the half of it.
 thumbnail
Liked this immediately. Sorry I missed out on the vinyl!
sssswwww
sssswwww thumbnail
sssswwww bruh this girl's lore section is peak cringe lmao
"a secret hidden in the late-night glow of a young girl’s bedroom, created in the precious witching hours of the teenage heart" LOOOOOOLLLL
good album, but goddamn lmao get yourself a new lore writer, this one weird af Favorite track: Under the Cherry Moon.
badgerworld
badgerworld thumbnail
badgerworld It's got a very DIY production style, and some really interesting ideas to go with it, and I think that lack of slickness gives it a real charm, but what's really great about this is the choice of chord progressions. They're subtle, but pretty much every song is "ah, she's not going to top the last one", and then the song just subtly goes somewhere unexpected, and it's just "Oh, I *like* that!"

I hope this is not Nana's only outing, because I will happily buy more of this. Favorite track: Under the Cherry Moon.
tomtomrobin
tomtomrobin thumbnail
tomtomrobin This song brings me back precious memories of the distant past that I had forgotten.
And then, it also gives me the power to face the future. Favorite track: Under the Cherry Moon.
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    “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.
    ... more
    ships out within 5 days

      $20 USD or more 

     

1.
Do You Wanna 03:57
2.
If 02:41 video
3.
4.
Gaito 03:03
5.
6.
Fantasy 03:13
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
The Day Song 03:03

about

“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.

Nana’s debut LP, much like her previous 7” records released under the ANNA moniker, is a strictly DIY affair. Yamato sings and plays guitar, creates beats and MIDI melodies, in addition to creating the drawings and design of the LP itself. Produced by P.E.’s Jonathan Schenke, who has worked with Parquet Courts, Liars, and Surfbort, among others, Before Sunrise marks the arrival of an artist who has found her voice. She is not just the pupil of the new arrivals bin, but a life spent as a defiant dreamer, in the secret world that begins after childhood and before sunrise.

credits

released February 5, 2021

All songs written and performed by Nana Yamato
Mixed and produced by Jonathan Schenke

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Nana Yamato Tokyo, Japan

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