Formed in 2021, downt, a three-piece band predominantly active in Tokyo’s live music scene, stirred nostalgic recollections of my youth upon my initial encounter with their music. This fusion of vulnerability teetering on collapse and resolute determination was palpable.
Their debut full-length album, “Underlight & Aftertime,” unveiled on March 6th, showcases 11 tracks, encompassing both reworked pieces refined through live performances and fresh compositions unveiling novel perspectives. Serving as a culmination of their three-year journey since inception, the album unveils a new facet of their musical identity.
In conversation with the trio comprising Yui Tomigashi (Vo & Gt), Takaki Kawai (Ba), and Teneil Kenrobert (Dr), we delved not only into the intricacies of their latest release, “Underlight & Aftertime,” but also explored their origins, the apprehensions inherent in band formation, and the evolution evident in their previous works. Through our dialogue, it became evident that the creative process encompasses both struggle and profound joy.
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Formed in 2021, downt is comprised of Yui Tomigashi (Vo, & Gt), Takaki Kawai (Ba), and Tener Ken Robert (Dr). Based in Tokyo, the trio delivers intense yet delicate and bold performances, characterized by exceptional melodic sensibilities and emotive lyrics. Their expression, akin to a gentle and refreshing breeze, at times transforms into a sharp and fervent vocal delivery. Crossing genre boundaries with ease, their artistic realm continues to expand. In October of the same year, they swiftly gained attention with the release of their debut album “downt” through ungulates. It quickly became a topic of discussion in record shops and distribution channels such as FLAKE RECORDS and HOLIDAY!, catapulting them into the spotlight of the emo and alternative live house scenes.
Unconventional Introduction: “Formerly Declared Hatred for Music” (Kawai)
– I feel that -downt’s music is fragile, as if it could end at any moment, and yet it has the strength to stand tall and dignified. I would like to ask you about that today. First of all, please tell us about your first encounter with music.
Togashi (Vo&Gt): My first encounter with music was when I was a child taking piano lessons. My older brother liked Western music, so there was always music playing in the house. However, it took me a while to get to know the band. When I was in junior high school, I saw some seniors playing in a band at a school festival, and I decided I wanted to try it too, so I bought an instrument when I entered high school.
-So you chose guitar from the beginning?
Togashi: Yes, I did. I played guitar for four years in a college club, but when I started working, I stopped playing the instrument for a while. One day, I decided I wanted to throw it all away and moved to Tokyo to start a band, and downt was born.
Robert (Dr.): I think my mother listened to Noriyuki Makihara and Hikaru Utada, and that’s how I got started. I didn’t start playing an instrument in junior high or high school, but Bump of Chicken, which I listened to when I was around junior high school age, may have been what made me fall in love with the band.
-What made you start playing in a band?
Robert: I liked LINKIN PARK when I entered high school and made friends through music. From there I became interested in musical instruments and started playing drums when I entered college. From there, I played in various copy bands, and when I became an adult, I started an original band and met Kawai-san.
Kawai (Ba): I was playing the electone by the time I can remember.
-Is that something you learned?
Kawai : Yes, that’s right. I was in the countryside, so I had no choice but to take lessons from my cousin, but it was boring. At the time, I introduced myself by saying, “I hate music.
-What was the catalyst for your shift from such strong dislike to an interest in music?
Togashi: I liked games and anime, so it was game music that got me started. We didn’t have CD stores in the countryside, and it wasn’t the era of listening to music on the Internet, so I used game consoles to listen to music.
-I guess game music and bands were different in some ways.
Kawai: My high school dorm friends taught me about Hi-STANDARD, GOING STEADY, Metallica, and other bands, and I fell in love with them a little. I played bass with a keyboard at a school festival, but I wanted to play properly, so I started playing guitar.
-Do you feel that you are reconstructing the roots you just mentioned through “downt”? Or are you adding something that is not on your own axis?
Robert: I have a strong sense that I am beginning to touch new things that are outside of my consciousness. I don’t take what I have been listening to and consciously change it.
Kawai: I think that I can only do what moves me, so I try to express in my own way what I find good in live performances and sound sources. If we try to create something “original” from scratch, we end up with something safe or with a unique “atmosphere. And that’s not just with music.
Togashi: I don’t originally use what I hear as a reference. I often started by trying to incorporate abstract things like the flow of waves into guitar phrases. I think it is similar to the feeling of drawing a picture in my mind.
Kawai: If you try to neatly trace a template that already exists, you may want to change it without permission in the middle of the process, and the final result will be slightly different. It is just like cooking.
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downt’s Journey: An Anxious Start in Member Recruitment
-What was it that made you stick to the band format and recruit members when there were other ways to do it, such as playing as a soloist?
Kawai: Why indeed?
Togashi: During the blank period after I graduated from the circle, my friends around me formed their own bands and played original music. I probably watched them and envied them. I wanted to try it myself, but I couldn’t write songs and there was no one to call on. I think I had a bittersweet regret.
-I think it was because of these regrets that you chose to be in a band. It must have been a big decision to move from Kyoto to Tokyo by yourself for the band.
Togashi: I had a lot of hope to be able to form a band, but I think I was more anxious. We didn’t know what kind of people would come to the band from online recruiting, and they might not show up at the studio. I was full of anxiety, but I kept telling myself, “It will be okay. It’s going to be okay.
– Kawai, you contacted her after seeing Togashi’s announcement.
Kawai: I was simply looking for a band, as there was no band I was a member of at the time. So I sent him a message, and after going through the studio, we just happened to decide to work together.
-Was there any aspect of the music that resonated with you?
Kawai: Honestly, not so much the songs. I thought they probably had never played in a band before, but I thought we could just barely make it work.
-Do you mean it can be materialized?
Kawai: No, I felt that I could put my own essence into it. If it had been different from my direction, I would have said, “Why don’t you have someone else do it? If it was different from my direction, I would have said, “Why don’t you use someone else?
-So you had something in common with yourself.
Kawai: That’s right. The melody was beautiful, but there were some incomprehensible fill-ins.
Togashi: It sounds terrible now, doesn’t it?
Kawai: No, it was good. In the end, we had to cut it down, but I could tell that what he wanted to do was “punk,” so I thought we could work together.
-Robert, you were invited to the studio by Kawai. Did you feel that you could put in what you wanted to do?
Robert: I had a strong sense that it would be interesting because I had never done it before. I wanted to play the drums more, and the timing was such that I wanted to spend more time on the drums with a lot of bands. I also wanted to work with Kawai-san, and “111511” that was sent to me had parts that made me think, “Can a person play drums? I was excited that something fun was going to happen, even though there were parts that made me wonder if people could play it.
-I think Kawai and Robert sometimes play with bands other than downt. Do you feel that there is a difference in your position or role in other bands and in DOWNT?
Kawai: I am not particularly conscious of it. But rather than wanting to focus on a particular band, I would rather play in a band with people who want to live their lives around music. I may make different choices for each band, and I may say different things to each band, but basically, I am centered on music.
Robert: We utilize what we’ve noticed in each band, but we don’t change our standing or roles.
-In the course of being in a band, I believe that besides musical direction, personality compatibility is also crucial. Was there a sense of resonance on a personal level from the beginning of your encounter?
Togashi: I have no idea why at all, but when I first entered the studio with Kawai-san, we had the same smell.
-Was that intuitive?
Togashi: Yes, that’s right. So I thought I wanted to be in a band with him without any doubts. I thought Robert-san is a solid person and there would be no problems.
Kawai: I also thought Togashi was a solid and serious person, but he was working as a full-time employee, and then suddenly in the second studio he said he quit his job to do what he wanted to do, and I thought he was a crazy guy. I thought it was a weekend drinking kind of band.
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“Reflecting on Three Past Albums
-This is how you came to be formed in March 2021 and released your first self-titled album “downt” in October of the same year. I think it was an important start in terms of presenting your worldview and direction.
Kawai: We just put it out to record first. Personally, there was a point where I was questioning the trend of mainstream singles at the time, and since it was the Corona pandemic, I thought it would be better to pop it out. There are many bands that I love even if their first album is not good, so my priority was to release it as an album first.
-I think there was also great joy in the fact that you wanted to make a work of art, recruited members, and were finally able to give birth to it in the world.
Togashi: I was already overflowing with emotion. It was my first time recording a song, and I didn’t even know what pre-production was, but through the arrangement, the song became many times better than the one I had written myself. I experienced the fun of giving shape to the song.
Kawai: It was a joy for me, too, but I don’t think I did anything new. It was just a feeling that I had packed in the essence of what I had learned in my previous bands, so it felt like I was just doing the usual things that are usually done.
-The second album, “SAKANA e.p.” (released in June 2022), seems to have had a more particular theme and focus as a band than “downt,” which was produced right after the formation of the band.
Togashi: I had never had any EMO in my roots before, so I was taught a lot of things and got into irregular tuning. From the second album, there were people checking out the recordings, and we recorded at Tsubame Studio, which we also used for this album, so I think we were able to experiment with the sound.
Kawai： There was a fish jacket that was used for the record first.
-There was a fish jacket that was used for a record earlier, “ANTHOLOGY” (an edited LP released in 2022).
Kawai： Yes. I decided to use that photo, which I liked, for the jacket. At the time, we were doing live shows with Kudaranai 1 Day, ANORAK!, and Togaru, and Togaru was influenced by them, and Togashi said he wanted to try it with irregular tuning, so we started making it. In the end, the fish jackets ended up on the record instead of the EP, which complicated things.
Personally, I didn’t really want to evolve. We were a band that came together to make a soundtrack, so from an atmospheric standpoint, I felt as if we had finished once when we released “downt”. As we challenged ourselves to come up with more things we wanted to do, phrases like “EMO’s superlatives” started coming from Togashi, and we had a hard time matching them.
-I guess you mean that the album is like the first episode of the second chapter.
Kawai: Let’s call it that.
-This is connected to the second chapter, but after the release of “SAKANA e.p.,” activities other than just creating works have expanded, such as the “Look a Ghost Tour” in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka and the appearance at “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL ’22, I think you had some challenges and visions.
Kawai: There were none.
-You mean you continued to do what you wanted to do, the feeling you had at the time of the formation of the group?
Kawai： After “SAKANA e.p.,” I was getting tired of EMO and pirouetting songs. There were songs I wanted to create with that sense, but I couldn’t share the same image, so I struggled before and after “III” (released in June 2023).
Togashi: I couldn’t figure out what was different. I was always struggling with it.
Kawai: We wanted to spend a lot of time on “13th Moon” and one other song to build up the band’s style, but we couldn’t do it well. I thought it was too narrow to say, “This is our style. So, I don’t really want to do this with the band. We have always had the same desire to create works of art.
-Is that still the case today?
Kawai: The reason we focus on creating works is because it is easier for us to be active. Until now, I used to think that if I had time to think about other bands and the scene, I would write songs, but recently I’ve been thinking that if thinking about it makes my activities more interesting, then I might as well think about it.
-How about you, Robert?
Robert: Of course I am doing what I want to do, but compared to the two of you, I feel that I have less of a strong “this is what I want to do” feeling.
I think I’m going in the right direction, but I can’t articulate it clearly, so I feel like I need to pursue it more in the process of making “13th Moon.
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Expressing the Essence of Albums and Music
-The first full-length album “Underlight & Aftertime” features re-recorded songs such as “111511” and “mizu ni naru,” as well as “Purgatory,” which has a heavy sound. I felt that it is a piece that shows the path that the band has taken since its formation and the path that it will take in the future. How do you feel the completion of your first full-length album?
Kawai: I feel that it is not the culmination of three years of work.
Togashi: We wanted to start many new things.
Kawai: I wanted to break away from categorization as EMO or indie rock. We were conscious of how close we were to music.
-What do you mean by “getting closer to music”?
Kawai: It’s very difficult, but I wanted to express the impression that “this is the album, this is the music,” not about real EMO or hardcore. We thought it would be good for the three of us to keep talking about whether we were having fun or not.
-You have been consistent in your approach to creating what you want to create. Is there anything that you feel has changed from the previous albums?
Togashi: I have more time to work on each song. Before, I didn’t understand the balance between the guitar and the song when it was pointed out to me. This time, I think that by giving myself time to think about why something was pointed out, I was able to see the whole picture rather than just the individual instruments or songs.
Robert: This may be connected to what you just said, but in this production, I felt that drums are an instrument that tends to sound unconsciously. While they make a sound just by hitting the stick, I had to think about why I was making that sound. I felt that playing unconsciously truncates a lot of things, so I tried to be aware of my surroundings because of the simplicity of the instrument.
Kawai: For example, “Whale” originally had a catchier melody. The melody itself was very good, but I didn’t feel it was interesting as a song, so I thought it would be better to play it as a narrative. So we decided to cut out the song, and the song was completed, and I think we grew as a band.
