Japanese pop culture expert Patrick Macias takes you on a illustrated tour of astonishing people, places, and things found inside Tokyo's underground art, music, fashion, and otaku scenes.
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It's cold and rainy, both in San Francisco *and* Tokyo today, so these images of singer-songwriter KIRIA standing in the freshly fallen and freezing snow in Ebisu in Feb. 2014 are somewhere on my mind...
I met KIRIA through Shigetora Franck, formerly of pioneering Japanese nerdcore unit Leopaldon, and now of the cyberpunk anime-inspired electro project Valkilly.
KIRIA is a real-deal goth girl (who faithfully posts the words "dark morning" daily on Twitter) who has recorded a few LPs now of her music in addition to writing lyrics for a few other musical acts. She's also done some modeling for KERA magazine if memory serves... When we meet, Franck is usually there, and conversation revolves around the latest anime she's faithfully watching. She's a very different animal onstage...
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Her music veers into J-rock, electro, and points in-between, although I prefer her moody and intimate unplugged cuts, just acoustic guitar (which she plays) and vocals, which have echoes of previous impossibly cool chicks like Carmen Maki to them, revealing their souls in some dark place on the installment plan at 4am.
KIRIA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KIRIAnoir
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