Start Listening To: Kuunatic

The Japanese tribal trio, Kuunatic, have finally left their fantasy planet and returned to reality. It’s about time that they let us in ‘Gate of Klüna’. Get ready to chant in the rain and explore another realm.

Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

We are KUUNATIC. We are from Japan. We make tribal dreamy tale music. We all sing, and Fumie plays keyboard, Yuko plays drums, and Shoko plays bass.

How does living in Tokyo influence you as a band?

Living in Tokyo helped us to form KUUNATIC in a way.

We all met via musician friends in Tokyo. Fumie and Yuko met in 2016 and started playing music together. Shoko, who we‘ve known through different friends, joined us later and here we are now. Before the pandemic happened, there had always been events happening in Tokyo and, even though we have different tastes in music, styles and interests always cross over so it wasn’t difficult to connect with each other. Tokyo is very exciting but also very busy and sometimes frustrating. We think that kind of environment helped us to get creative to compose music. 

What is your creative process like?

We love to create fantasy stories with music. We are a band living in this present time, but we always want to evoke our primitive senses and reflect them into music. The music each of us is influenced by: Fumie — psychedelic rock and progressive rock, Yuko — electro and hardcore music, Shoko — post-punk and ambient music; these are diverse but we try to extract each other’s human instinct by playing music. Our fantasy planet Kuurandia, which is a name of our previous EP and extended concept of our new album, is our utopia inspired by ancient myths. It’s still a new planet and we don’t have high technologies yet, so we pray for rain, chant to calm a volcano, and use mystic ways to bring prosperity to the world. This is our theme to play music: to tell stories.

How was Gate of Klüna produced?

It was very fun to develop ideas for the album while we toured in Europe in 2018 and 2019.  We spent lots of time together, the time we could share inspirations and expand our view of the world more vividly and epicly. For instance, we saw the news of the Kīlauea volcano eruption when we were on tour. Japan also has lots of volcanoes and earthquakes,  so we thought we should make a prayer song for them and that’s how our song ‘Lava Naksh’ was born. Lava Naksh is a volcano in Kuurandia, and we sing in our own Kuurandish language and Hawaiian language. The 8th track of the album ‘Para Bennyà’ was recorded during our Europe tour in 2019. One day we had a day off in Sweden. There were percussions at a house we were staying at, so we jammed and recorded a session with E-Da Kazuhisa (Seefeel, ex.Boredoms) who was touring with us that time. After that, we wrote stories of things happening in Kuurandia and created mantras, inspired by sceneries we saw throughout the journey, and eventually finished the song in London.

What was it like working with Tim DeWit?

We were very lucky to work with Tim. Fumie met him at a festival in Taiwan. He was very interested in our music when she told him about KUUNATIC. He liked our view of the world. Like Gang Gang Dance and Animal Collective, he was one of the artists who led the avant-garde NY music scene and we had a good feeling about working with him on our album as we also love to experiment and invent something new.  But sometimes we are too synchronized and become like identical triplets. Having the same opinions is sometimes not encouraging and you cannot see things through subjectivity.  So it was really stimulating to have Tim as the third party who has different points of view. He precisely came up with what we needed and helped our too-primitive ideas become more musical.  It was a pity that we didn’t have enough time to do everything in the studio because it was during our short Taiwan tour, and it took a very long time to complete because the pandemic started later on so we had to discuss and work online. But somehow we managed!    

Who were some of your biggest influences on the album?

Basic ideas and stories came from our previous EP Kuurandia and our imaginations. But we might have been inspired by the works of SF writers Osamu Tezuka and Arthur C. Clark as well.

We love your video for ‘Tītián’. How involved in creating the video were you?

Thank you! We are glad that you like the video, we love it too. We worked with an animation artist Momo Lee, whom Shoko became friends with when they were art university students. The story of ‘Tītián’ is: “The harvesting time of rich yields on planet Kuurandia. Green and golden fields. The sun, rain, wind and the moon. This peaceful tale will last forever, or......”. Fumie found a perfect place called Yehliu in Taiwan, its scenery was so matching with Kuunatic’s interpretation of the planet so we did photoshoots there during our Taiwan tour and recording.  We are actually all living in different locations right now, Yuko is in Japan, Fumie is in Taiwan and Shoko is in the UK and we’ve been unable to meet up since the pandemic started, so we asked Momo to use our photos in animation. Based on Tītián's story, she cut images of rice, cracker and leaf which are offerings for gods and perfectly compiled a photo collage video of our planet gradually growing. 

Do you have a favourite song from the new album?

Yuko: ‘Desert Empress Pt. 2’.

Fumie: ‘Tītián’.

Shoko: ‘Lava Naksh’.

What do you hate right now?

Yuko: Summer.

Fumie: Not being able to visit other countries.

Shoko: Less physical strength after lockdown and Covid-19 I got last year.

What do you love right now?

Yuko: Reading Manga.

Fumie: Watching documentaries.

Shoko: I'm still alive and I'm surrounded by people I love.

How are you feeling about coming to the UK/EU to perform in 2022?

We really can’t wait to tour again! We are very much looking forward to witnessing how cities, people and music scenes have changed since we toured in 2019. We are also going to visit new places we’ve never been to, so super excited to meet new people and have new experiences too!

Is there any new music from 2021 you’re enjoying?

Yuko: Knoll — an American experimental deathgrind band. I discovered them at Roadburn online festival 2021.

Fumie: Les Filles Illighadad At Pioneer Works. This was recorded in 2019 but released this year. A brilliant live-recording album.

Shoko: Field sounds.

Is there anything else you would like to add? Thank you for speaking with us!

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed it! Gate of Kluna is coming out on 29th October from Glitterbeat Records — hope you come to join our new planet! And please come to see us when we are playing in your town on our UK/EU tour in late spring 2022!