Named for a kanji compound meaning “beauty, mind, body”, the first LP from the Tokyo Metropolis electronica entity UNKNOWN ME will be release on Not Not Fun Records in late April. Bishintai is a “sublime synthetic suite of cosmic wellness transmissions exploring ‘the unknown beauty of your mind and body’.” The album features a wide array of instruments including software, synthesizer, steel drum, rhythm boxes, and robotic voice by the core quartet of Yakenohara, P-RUFF, H. Takahashi, and Osawa Yudai. The album unfolds like a holographic guided meditation, soothing but cybernetic, framed by subways and sky malls.
Bishintai features numerous international collaborators, including psychedelic footwork riddler foodman to the great Jim O'Rourke to Japanese underground shape-shifters MC.Sirafu and Lisa Nakagawa. The group claims the music was “made for the maintenance of the minds of city dwellers,” but Bishintai also offers “music of utopia and nowhere, channeling worlds within worlds, birthed from a sonic ethos as simple as it is sacred: ‘in pursuit of beautiful tones’.”
