Mei Semones
Kabutomushi

THE REVIEW

Mei Semones is a Japanese-American artist, born in Michigan and (musically) raised in New York.

Mei fell in love with the guitar after seeing Marty McFly play Johnny B. Goode in "Back to the Future" (do I need to say more?!?), from there she moved through a love for rock during her adolescence (from Led Zeppelin to Red Hot Chili Peppers), and then approached jazz during high school years.

In New York, after graduating from Berklee College of Music, she turned her passion into work, alternating recording sessions with working as an educator in a kindergarten. However, the real results came later, only when she decided to incorporate Japanese language and her origins into her pieces. "My songs began to appeal to me only when I started using both Japanese and English," she explains. "Before starting college, I had never tried writing in Japanese, but then I realized that was my path."

"Kabutomushi" is her third EP and it means "treasure" in Japanese; her music presents influences ranging from indie pop to jazz, from bossa nova to J-POP, with guitar usage that reminds me of certain math rock. It was recorded with the band of musicians she assembled with her Berklee classmates: Noah Leong on viola, violinist Claudius Agrippa, bassist Jaden Raso, and drummer Ransom McCafferty. The Japanese singing on certain genres closely reminds me of Satomi Matsuzaki (Deerhoof) and Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead).

If these are the premises: let the countdown for the debut album begin!