Language Barriers Do Little To Exit This Dream

I’ve only ever seen Tokyo in movies, and it’s always portrayed as this exotic, excessively developed wonderland that resembles what the rest of the world will look like in thirty years or so, whenever we catch up. I’m not sure what hollywood has been selling me, or anime juice I may have subscribed to but that is obviously not the Tokyo that Shugo Tokumaru comes from.

Exit is a collection of his stories told in the native tongue, but has a heart that transcends waters and languages allowing the listener to meditate their own narrative. If I actually understood Japanese, Tokumaru’s Exit would probably be a very different album for me.

Shugo Tokumaru has assembled an album inspired by some fantastically pastoral countryside, where myths walk around with their zippers down and whose denizens hum wherever they go. I refuse to believe that this is not the place where Tokumaru birthed this album. For all I know Exit could be a concept album based on the first season of TJ Hooker, but since all I have to go on is the bizarrely lush sound of Exit’s instrumentation, coupled with Tokumaru’s sing-song delivery, I’ll go ahead and conclude that Exit sound like something alien and wonderful. Bounding from the dizzyingly frenetic on ‘Parachute’ and ‘D.P.O.,’ to wistful tracks like ‘Button’ and ‘La La Radio,’ it’s kind of surprising that Exit manages to feel like one complete, uniform release, but equally the reason behind its enjoyable nature. Like the surprise of finding out that the dissonance coming out of your broken music box is more pleasant than the lullaby it no longer plays - Shugo Tokamaru is our new daydream.

Matthew Richardson