Kishi Bashi is the pseudonym for violin virtuoso Kaoru Ishibashi. Having recorded, toured, and collaborated with diverse artists such as Regina Spektor, Sondre Lerche, and of Montreal, Kishi Bashi released his first full-length album151avia Joyful Noise in 2012, which received high praise and the title of NPR's "Best New Artist Of The Year". K's follow-up album Lighght expanded his palette to include more diverse and nuanced instrumentation, flirting with Eastern-tinged arrangements, Philip Glass inspired improvisations, and 70s prog. With 2016’s Sonderlust, K’s work became more intensely personal and artistically adventurous with the help of producer Chris Taylor, engineer Pat Dillet, and drummer Matt Chamberlain.
After Sonderlust, K traveled frequently to Montana and Wyoming to work on a “song film”, about Japanese internment during WWII. Kishi Bashi’s fourth album, Omoiyari, is a studio album written during those six intense years of travel, research, and filming for the movie Omoiyari: A Song Film, which premiered at South by Southwest 2022, and is screening at several film festivals in Fall of 2023. It will then be available to stream on Paramount+.
Music from the Song Film: Omoiyari is Kishi Bashi’s fifth album, and it collects on-site improvisations, new versions of songs from the Kishi Bashi catalog, and unreleased songs and demos that appear in the film.
The latest full-length from Kishi Bashi, Kantos,is a work of exquisite duality: a party album about the possible end of humanity as we know it, at turns deeply unsettling and sublimely joyful. It encompasses everything from Brazilian jazz and ’70s funk to orchestral rock and city pop (a Japanese genre that peaked in the mid-’80s). Informed by an equally kaleidoscopic mix of inspirations—the cult-classic sci-fi novel series Hyperion Cantos, the writings of 18th century enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, a revelatory trip to ancient ruins on the island of Crete—Kantos ultimately serves as an unbridled exaltation of the human spirit and all its wild complexities.
