At11 — Manami Kakudo’s "Contact"

TOKYO | “How would my younger self feel listening to this?”

WORDS BY MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ITTETSU MATSUOKA

---

Manami Kakudo’s musicality is an intractable melange of tenderness and mischievous experimentation, wrapped in a cinematic appeal. The contours of her style are elusive, not because of a carefully calibrated aesthetic that aims to escape every attempt at categorization, but as a coincidental byproduct of an expressive sense of creative freedom unperturbed by the listener’s expectations. Born in Nagasaki, Kakudo graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in the Department of Instrumental Music, with percussions as her instrumental family of choice. A prolific artist with various outlets of creation that are interlaced by her penchant for multimedia collaborations, Kakudo has released three studio albums over the last six years, the latest being 2024’s Contact. 

There are only a few English-language titles on this album and, despite its title, it is a proudly Japanese album. Yet, Contact feels universal in its scope, and communicates something to the attentive listener, regardless of language. Its atmosphere is coloured by a surreal climate: bright blue skies that describe a Japanese alt-pop ethos are fragmented by the interjections of dissonant electronic effects and the occasional overcast of gloomy folk melodies. On the whole, Contact manages to not lose itself in its own expanse, even tracing something of a narrative arc through its 62 minutes of music. The album ends with “Hitosara”, an uncharacteristically jovial number that plays out on harmonica, a tropically flavoured acoustic guitar, and a smattering of percussive instruments fit for the closing act of a carnival procession. All this is in contrast to the audible sound of a character being submerged underwater in the opening frames of the album, only to emerge but this tub at the end “theatre”, the ninth song on the album. Everything after “theatre” blooms like a drenched field meeting the sun for the first time after a storm. In conversation with Cannopy, Kakudo tries to trace the roots of this album’s many branches and recommend some further like-minded listening. 

• Find this and more in our latest print edition — Issue No. 13: