Sasuke Haraguchi is in high demand, and he’s not sure how he’s able to manage it.
“I always just get things done before they’re due,” the 21-year-old electronic artist tells The Japan Times from a cafe underneath his apartment near Yoyogi Station, a spot he comes to when he needs a change of scenery. On this rainy afternoon in early April, he has 10 imminent deadlines.
“I don’t know when I started getting busy ... but I do remember the times I wasn’t busy,” he says with a laugh.
Once a precocious upbeat pop act going by his first name under Warner Music Japan, he pivoted toward a fragmented, experimental electronic sound on two albums in 2023 — “Acetone” and “Screen II” — falling somewhere between America’s Brainfeeder label and the depths of Japan’s Nico Nico Douga online music scene.
That same year, he began using the singing-synthesizer technology Vocaloid and created “Hito Mania,” a disorienting scream-filled dance-pop track that went viral.
Since then, he has been a presence across the entire Japanese sonic spectrum. He continues to release dizzying Vocaloid cuts — some independently, others serving as tie-ups with Pokemon or China’s bilibili video platform, where he’s become a favorite. He has also become a go-to producer for emerging J-pop performer Yuri.
Last month alone he paired up with virtual YouTubers, acts associated with experimental website Avyss and electronic legend Towa Tei. His hectic schedule also includes DJ gigs and a special performance honoring Yellow Magic Orchestra scheduled for May 20 in Kyoto.
So when Haraguchi says he’s busy, he means it.
However, this is how you play the game when you want to be Japan’s next big producer. If YMO represented the dawn of commercial electronic music via synthesizers, and Yasutaka Nakata signaled an era powered by personal computers and desktop audio workstations, Haraguchi offers J-pop’s first truly internet-shaped era, with artists who grew up alongside the web, which influenced the direction of both mainstream and online-centric music.
Haraguchi, however, received it all and connects dots between disparate online scenes. His fractured melodies and sample-spiked works draw from Japan’s online history, while also embracing global developments a click away, helping to create something new.
“His sound is provocative, pure and decadent, which is what draws me in the most,” says electronic artist De De Mouse, who first met Haraguchi in 2019 and has worked with him on a variety of city-pop-flavored collaborative songs and a musical group called FM Towns over the years.
Even before all this, Haraguchi says he was a busy kid. He first began fiddling around with Garageband on his father’s computer at age 5, taking a particular interest in Apple’s preset loops. This, coupled with a household frequently playing the works of Towa Tei and Ryuichi Sakamoto (who Haraguchi appears to fashion himself after, appearance-wise), sparked an interest in music. Haraguchi says he also danced, even winning an amateur competition held at New York’s historic Apollo Theater.
“I was actually just there to see the show,” he recalls. “I was dancing in a hallway during a break, and staff saw me and told me I should take part in it.”
His real focus was music, though. He soon became a teenage MPC wiz, playing his hardware on Tokyo’s streets. This led to a deal with Warner Music Japan that saw Haraguchi, performing simply as “Sasuke,” taking a stab at upbeat J-pop via self-aware songs such as “J-pop wa Owaranai” (“J-pop Never End”), and working on commercial jingles.
“It was a three-year deal with Warner, and by the end I thought I had done everything I needed to do with them. There was no reason to prolong it. I was good to go,” Haraguchi says of his decision to go independent in January 2021, though he admits the experience gave him a crash course in the industry.
The commercial side of Haraguchi’s freelance life was going well, as he was scoring commercials and even performed at the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Paralympics.
“But after becoming independent, I had a year-long period of writer’s block, where I couldn’t write my own music,” he says. “It was like a blank canvas.”
Haraguchi went as far as to force himself to appear on an Abema TV dating show to try to shake things up. “That didn’t do anything,” he says, adding that he then came close to giving up. “Maybe I’d work at a ramen shop, or write about music based on my experience. But I decided to be on my own, and not force myself and just express myself as is.”
This new outlook caused him to give up the use of a moniker and opt instead to use his real name when releasing music, so others would focus on his art instead of his image and identity.
In the end, his breakthrough came from simply listening to music. Haraguchi got deep into internet-centric genres such as hyperpop, “dariacore” (a mash-up-style pioneered by American artist Jane Remover) and a variety of other online microgenres (“a lot of nantoka-core”). He also became fascinated by Japanese memes, specifically the mash-up-like “Oto Mad” videos that have been a staple of the country’s internet since the start of Nico Nico Douga. The videos involve users taking existing media and splicing it into a goofy, at times overbearing, song.
“I love to take things out of their original context and slice them up,” he says. “There’s plenty of sample packs for drums, but I’ve always wanted to make something better and original. That’s why I got so into learning about cutting samples and editing them together.”
It was this approach — mixing a barrage of diced-up samples alongside Haraguchi’s own vocals — that shaped his 2023 albums.
Meanwhile, his interest in Vocaloid only increased. “It was something that felt familiar to me,” he says, noting he first encountered the tool on SoundCloud via artists such as kz. He decided to make music using singing-synthesizer software, but one question remained ... which voice to use?
“A friend introduced me to Kasane Teto ... very, very energetically,” he says, referring to a fan-made character and voicebank originally created as an April Fool’s gag in 2008. “This was the voice I wanted my songs to be sung by. It’s a little bit twisted, and she’s 31. I thought that would be an age where a character could be able to look at the bigger picture of things.”
Teto’s voice has become central to much of Haraguchi’s solo releases, including the track “Hito Mania” and his similarly well-received “Igaku.” It’s one of his favorite sounds, joining the likes of rin bells and screaming samples (“There are times in your life you want to scream right? In a two to three minute song, the amount of screams I put in is how long I’d want to scream during the day”).
It’s an unlikely sonic palette, but one reflecting the chaotic nature of modern online life that Haraguchi has been able to corral into his own production style.
“I think ‘Hito Mania’ signals the dawn of the postmodern era of internet culture,” De De Mouse says. “I think that we may be entering an era where we can express ourselves using sounds and words that may seem unnecessary at first glance, like the design of postmodern architecture.”
The Japanese music industry at large seems to want to tap into this postmodern sound. Haraguchi’s work has begun to appear everywhere, whether it’s via one-off tracks or his work with Yuri, whose manager contacted him looking to do something different in the pop sphere. Haraguchi simply suggested they make songs that could fit onto Spotify Japan’s “Gacha Pop” playlist (which he likens to a Village Vanguard secondhand clothes store ... a place to find scattered, interesting items that might not always connect).
The result has been some of the most exciting music Japan’s got going, head-spinning and catchy in its use of short bursts of sounds and vocals.
“At the start of the month, I ask Yuri to give me 100 words to work with,” says Haraguchi. “From there, I start working on songs.”
Given the amount of work he has on his plate (in the course of producing this article, Haraguchi released five new tracks from an assortment of projects, including one from himself), is he at risk of burnout?
The producer himself is aware that things are constantly on the move, and admits this may just be the pace of a digital native.
“I want things, including J-pop, to always keep evolving,” he says. “So nothing ever settles.”
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