motel void

MOTEL VOID: You’re based in Tokyo, Japan. How would you describe the current music scene there? Do you feel that you’re part of it?

YASU CUB (JACOB OKI AHEARN): I would describe the current music scene as vast with a lot of it unexplored. I’m constantly learning about bands that are making innovative/fresh music in every sphere of reach/influence. And within that vast world, our band exists in a specific niche that is simultaneously international and local. Within our band, two of us are from the U.S. (although I’m mixed Japanese), and two are from Japan. All of us are fairly bilingual, so we communicate in both languages. A lot of our contemporaries within the scene are similarly mixed-nationality like ours. So it’s a cool bubble that we exist in which is by no means small or limiting, since there are a lot of people who live in this city. One thing I want to do, long-term, though, is bridge the international scene with the wider Japanese scene. Those bridges already exist, but it would be cool to facilitate more cross-traffic. We are also trying to coordinate bands from abroad playing shows in Japan.

MOTEL VOID: Your favorite local venues and artists?

YASU CUB (JACOB OKI AHEARN): Ruby Room in Shibuya is one of the main centers of gravity when it comes to the international scene. It’s been around for 20 years now. That’s where I got started playing at the open mic and expanding from there, and I am definitely far from the only artist who had similar beginnings. 7th Floor, which is just a few blocks from Ruby Room, is also pretty prominent. Across the street, there are some bigger venues like Spotify O-West and O-East (where Alex G played last year), and occasionally there are some small music festivals (BiKN, Synchronicity) organized on that street with 7th Floor being one of the stages. Kagurane is a primarily Japanese-based venue that I recommend. The sound system–both for the audience and the ease of playability for the artist–is high quality. That’s where we concluded our tour with In The Valley Below, with SOMBRA and Johnnivan joining the lineup. I also recommend artists like Santa Dharma, Lotta Love, Kosmos na potolke, MOKU, 既​踏​峰 (Kitouhou), Demsky, who are all based in Tokyo.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released a beautiful new EP ‘Elevator’, I really love your sound! Could you tell us more about the recording and writing process of this record?

YASU CUB (JACOB OKI AHEARN): Thanks so much. Lately, I’ve been mentally categorizing the songs I write into pre- and post-pandemic tracks, and that period also overlaps with when I moved from San Francisco to Japan in July 2020 (debut album “Highways” was released in early 2023, but all of the songwriting/recording was done in my room in San Francisco, months/weeks before the pandemic hit).

All 4 tracks on “Elevator” were written and recorded in Japan, post-pandemic, and that was also after I met my current bandmates and started playing shows with them. So that “collective” energy going from solo artist to full band playing a bunch of shows in one of the most high-paced cities in the world also led to a change from a subdued, “foggier” sound inspired by SF to something more day-dreamy and bright. The arrangements were also more collaborative, too. The harmony vocal arrangements in “Elevator” by Shin and Sanja, some lead guitar lines crafted by Soda, Dennis’s drumming that has a lot of subtle emotive moments–I think they musically brought the project to a new level, too.

Once the recording was done, I went back to the U.S. in Spring of 2023. I stayed for about a week and a half on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. My college freshman year roommate, Rory Hoffmeister, built a studio (called Turning Reel Sound) in this cabin-like building that used to be a Buddhist monastery. So we mixed the songs together in the woods on that island, and I think some of that monastic peacefulness stuck around. And then Chris King of Moon Palace Production did the mastering. The bottom half of the EP cover art is a tree I photographed in Bainbridge, and the top half is a plum tree I photographed in Japan. So with the record, I realized it captures not only changes in seasons (with each track consecutively representing spring, summer, fall, winter) but changes in national borders, too.

MOTEL VOID: In 2023 you opened for an indie duo In The Valley Below. What was it like?

YASU CUB (JACOB OKI AHEARN): I see them as mentors in a way. It was our first time organizing a tour, so of course they guided us with the logistical side of things when we got stuck, but in terms of musicality, and–I don’t want to say “stage presence” because that implies some kind of performance or act with an element of inauthenticity–so I will just say “presence” they had really elevated my senses of what this whole thing is and means. They played all of their songs acoustically, and Jeffrey ended up borrowing my Alvarez that I had since high school and wrote a bunch of songs on over the years, so that was a trip seeing them play songs I used to hear in college dorm rooms with the guitar I had in dorm rooms.

MOTEL VOID: Your biggest inspirations right now?

YASU CUB (JACOB OKI AHEARN): I’ve been listening to a lot of Hovvdy. They also came to Tokyo not too long ago, and I was able to give them a cassette of “Highways” and talk with them a little bit. They’ve been an inspiration for awhile now.

MOTEL VOID: Your plans for 2024?

YASU CUB (JACOB OKI AHEARN): Refining and releasing old demos. I’ve held onto some of those tracks for over a decade sitting in an old external hard drive. There are about 38 tracks in total that I divided into two albums and one or possibly two EPs. Some of them are in good condition and just need a bit of mixing, others I’d like to redo completely with the band,and the rest sit somewhere in-between in terms of completion.