Interview: Kenneth Takanami Just Wants One Good Day

“There is always something… FUCK!”

It takes only 30 seconds into Kenneth Takanami’s MOLT EP for it to immediately transport you back to the early 2000s, a time when Linkin Park was on every adolescent’s Facebook/Myspace page and American Idiot was still on the charts. On the New York City-based artist’s latest project, Takanami revives emo-laden pop-punk in all of its furious forms – loudly, emotionally, and vehemently vocally against the system (“TAPE”). On other parts of the project, like on the slowed-down “RICE” and the choked-up “DROWN,” there’s just enough time there to stare into the abyss. Though it’s a short EP at only 10 minutes, it moves fast enough for the hypothetical moshpit to form and collapse just as quickly.

MOLT EP signals a change in the artist’s already-established repertoire as a producer for songs by other rising artists like Father Koi, Juliana Chahayed, and Slow Magic. Though his first few projects were mostly a dip into chill electronica, MOLT EP was a true return to form for him – tapping into a nostalgic type of music that he always wanted to make. 

I talked to Kenneth Takanami over Zoom – him in Japan and me in New York, where he had created the album. As an LA kid who was spending time in New York over the summer, I could completely understand that angst of being in the city and having things go wrong left and right. There really is always something… fuck!

Read on to hear about Kenneth Takanami’s love for Steve-O, the hyperpop music scene in New York, and why buying a Coke isn’t going to lead to world peace.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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If I’m not mistaken, you’re currently in Japan for your tour.

I am. Yeah, I’m playing a run of shows. I’m also spending a little bit of family time here. I’m actually in the childhood town where I was born and where I used to spend every summer. It’s been great.

How’s the tour been so far? I’ve been seeing snippets online. It looks fun. It looks fantastic!

It’s been really cool. The Osaka date was really fun. I had actually never been to Osaka, so it was sort of like an excuse to check out the surrounding areas. I know a lot of folks in Tokyo, but I actually don’t really know anyone in Osaka. It was really cool to experience a bit of the electronic hyperpop scene there. I was very, very inspired. I’ve never done a consistent run of shows out here before, even though I’ve come to Japan many times.

What was it like putting the tour together and also choosing who’s playing every city? What was that process like?

I’m an independent artist, so booking these run of shows was just through direct connections to promoters and the lineups were actually mostly [made up of] local acts. So the cool thing about that is a lot of them are just artists that I’d never heard of before. It’s a little bit of a mix. With regards to Father Koi, we had booked a few of these shows together and she is a very close friend of mine. We’ve worked on a ton of music together – I worked on one of her records that came out recently. The [show] in Tokyo, I’m very excited for — especially since there’s this artist, espeon, who is in a group called STARKIDS that is really cool and we’ve been making some songs together. I’m really, really excited to have her on the Tokyo show too.

I’m also doing a hometown show on September 29th with two friends who make music that is really, really special and exciting to me. The first is torr, and torr skirts that line between hyperpop, pop punk, electronic, and has such an incredible ear for catchy choruses and big explosive things. It really feels like a lot of the rock I grew up on and I’m really excited to have them on the show.

And also playing [the show] is emotegi, who’s another legend… just one of the best voices in the scene. Their new live show is mixing up a lot Midwest emo kind of sounds with electronic stuff. They’re both two of my favorite human beings in the whole world, and I’m really, really glad that we’re doing the show together. I’m very looking forward to [it]. 

When I first came across your music, it was through the more pop punk-oriented, alternative stuff. And then I went back and listened to your project, Two Dreamers. I was like, “This is completely different!”

Yeah, that [project] was originally released under a different pseudonym too, and I might end up putting it just back under that pseudonym because it’s a little bit of a whiplash — the different sounds.

I was curious if you were even playing any of these earlier songs on this tour, or if it’s mostly focused on this EP.

It’s all the new stuff. The old stuff… I think there was a period where it was a little bit of both, but this run of shows has been pretty much 100% new stuff and maybe an unreleased song or two. This kind of sound – this kind of chapter – is just mostly what I’m focusing on now.

What was the inspiration behind the sound of the EP? Was it a return to form for you, or were you exploring completely new different sounds on the new record?

This record was, in a lot of ways, the music I’ve always really wanted to make. I think it took a lot of [assorted difficulties] happening in my personal life to kind of get there. My relationship to music really changed during that period, where I think for a long time, I saw music as an outlet to obviously express my feelings… my identity. But there was this real impulse to get very personal with this new record. I think with older stuff, I hadn’t done vocals as much and this is my first full release that I sang and wrote on every single track. [I took] that opportunity to express a lot of the grief, rage, and sadness that I’ve been feeling, so it became this opportunity to embrace a lot of sounds that I grew up with.

I loved a lot of emo, rock and pop punk. But I was also an early 2000s internet kid, so I was really into acts like Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, and Fatboy Slim. A lot of 2000s internet culture loved that kind of music, so if you watch any Flash video, any soundtrack to a movie from back then — that’s mostly what was on it. I wanted to bring all of that together with a lot of the emotional state that I was in. The resulting product is MOLT. My hope is that it’s a personal record but it’s talking about themes that are pretty universal that I hope audiences can relate to them as well.

The music videos that you put out for this project really harken back to that VHS/early 2000s era. It reminds me of a lot of skateboarding videos growing up or even that, “You wouldn’t download…” commercial. 

If you think about it, that campaign was the beginning of the end of everything because that led to streaming!

Yeah! The visuals that you have are very coded to that era. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your choice in creating these visuals. I know you’ve directed a few videos for your EP and I’d love to hear more about the process of deciding what that would look like.

I give a lot of credit to my collaborators. In particular, two of the videos for this release were directed by my very good friend, Hassan (@by.hassan). I also produced some of the visualizer footage for this release, akin to wanting to hark back to a lot of my roots in that kind of music. I also really obsessed and pored over music videos from back then. It was as integral to listening to CDs as it was to buying the bonus DVD and watching the music videos. It’s interesting, especially… so I’m in Japan right now, right? So every summer, as I understood it, a lot of early to mid 2000s rock bands didn’t tour in Japan as often. They weren’t on the Japanese programs as much, so to get a lot of exposure to the artists’ visuals and live performances, the DVD market in Japan for a lot of these artists was really big. I used to buy the Linkin Park bonus DVDs and the Blink-182 bonus DVDs. That was my entrance to loving those sort of old 90s/2000s sort of visuals, from like the handheld DV and VHS look to the fisheye to the sort of frenetic editing style.

That was sort of the beginning, but then I obviously got into… I was not very good at skating, but I actually really wanted to be the video person. I was really into skate videos, but I was more fascinated by the editing side. I like those old Jason Lee videos and whatnot. And then I was a big, big Jackass kid. I loved Jackass. I watched Jackass, Viva La Bam – I’m blanking on the name of Steve-O and Chris Pontius’ other show – and Steve-O’s Don’t Try This At Home videos. That was always a big inspiration.

So it was those and music videos by the greats. I love Linkin Park videos; I love Sum-41’s old music videos. I loved even just nu-metal stuff, like Limp Bizkit, Korn, System of a Down… all of that stuff was on the mood boards. I feel like back then record companies invested in the visual side of stuff a lot more, building a great identity, so all of that was super inspiring.

The main inspiration for both “ONE GOOD DAY” the song and the video was Beef. Another theme of this record that maybe wouldn’t seem like a through line from the older stuff is I love the way Beef tackled Asian rage and bottling up decades of alienation and feeling different in America. I love the way that [it’s] sort of less about the experience and more ember to the fire of what it means to be an American, you know? And that’s something I wanted to capture with both that song and the music video — the uniquely American thing of just never catching a break in an endlessly relentless capitalist system coupled with the feelings of rage that you can feel as an Asian person here as well.

That’s something I loved about the show. That’s something that really inspired that song, and in turn, also really inspired the video and the direction that we wanted to take for it. That video is a lot about being overwhelmed and inundated and wanting to get away, but ultimately the video is just another ad for a product — uniquely for-profit, American shit, you know?

That makes a lot of sense, especially with that soda brand shout-out at the end. What was that inspired by?

We watched a lot of pharmaceutical ads and the sort of one-trick cure for being depressed and overworked in America. There was something even more pervasive and gross about it being a soda ad. It was also inspired by Coke jingles, like “I’d like to buy the world a coke.” That ad campaign came out at the height of Vietnam, and that idea that world peace is just buying a Coca-Cola… that was sort of the inspiration for this too.

Could you tell me a bit about the album artwork and what you’re holding on it?

They’re cicada molts. The cicada is such a Japanese image. The idea of molts was sort of born as I was working on visual identity stuff. The designer and I worked out that we were really inspired by a lot of bug-related imagery from the 2000s. [We were] inspired by things like The Prodigy and Papa Roach and what Linkin Park were doing. I love the idea of a cicada and the idea of molting really spoke to me as I was working on this record because in a lot of ways the emotions on this album on this EP like rage, grief, guilt, frustration… they’re all things I needed to get out of my system. And they are things I just wanted to put into the music and heal and move on from.

I love the idea that like this record itself is a molt. I’m shedding that skin and I’m moving on. People thought it was like a cockroach or something. I’m like, no, no, no. I’m not that much of a New Yorker.

Who did you look up to in the music scene when you were younger? Did your identity as a Japanese American affect your pursuit of music?

I definitely experienced a lot of alienation and feeling othered growing up and music was always just such a solace. I felt like where maybe I lacked in connecting to others, I could really connect to bands and I could really connect to music and I could connect to records. A lot of the music that I loved growing up just kind of spoke to that undeveloped sad brain of mine that felt like it had a home and a place. Linkin Park was one of those bands… you know, they had two Asian American members — one was also half Japanese like me. They had fully, utterly embraced the Japanese influence on their records both visually and sonically. I think maybe I didn’t consciously realize that they were doing it, but I love that they unabashedly embraced that side of themselves.

It was bands like that that really inspired me to just want to make music. And what’s cool now is that I can definitely tell that younger kids have a lot more Asian artists that they can look up to. I’m definitely also inspired by other Asian artists that led the way and created that platform where I could go by the name Kenneth Takanami and it wouldn’t really turn people off. I think Asian American music is in an interesting place right now because I think a few years ago you really started to see a breakthrough in a lot of these acts. I’m always wary of inflating things that are happening in Asian America with things that are happening in Asia, and those are not the same thing. I think people tend to flatten a lot of music out there as one thing because it’s all Asians. There are a lot of voices out there, and I hope to be one that channels something very specific.

What is the music scene in New York like?

Yeah, the New York music scene is really cool. I feel like there’s much more of a DIY spirit here. People organize their own shows and have sessions in their bedrooms. It’s cool. It feels like a lot of different, interesting, unique things are happening. And my contrast to that is going to LA, which I’ve been to a few times to do writing sessions and stuff. LA feels a lot more like… “We’re here to make pop records, we’re here to sort of break out into the music industry.”

A lot of people in New York doing music — they’re happy to do DJ gigs at little Bushwick dives and whatnot. I’m always meeting new people doing interesting things. And it’s fun playing shows out here! I get put on like a very big variety of acts because I sort of skirt that line between rock and electronic stuff. The hyperpop scene here is really exciting and cool, and it doesn’t get enough credit as the origin of a lot of stuff happening in that genre. Really, so much of it is from people doing stuff in New York.

I did a show with some punk bands recently too. That was really inspiring because there’s a lot of people who come here for the music schools and a lot of people come here for the deep bench of music history because so many awesome, important influential bands came from New York. I think there’s a really cool and exciting scene out here and it just feels big. It feels sort of like you’re digging for gold and you never stop digging.

I’m in Tokyo right now and the music scene here is also incredible, inspiring and awesome, but it definitely feels smaller. Like it’s a kind of thing where when I’m in Tokyo, I’ll meet an artist and they’ll know everyone else I already know, you know? So yeah, I love New York.

Do you have any new music on the horizon?

I have a new single coming out after this! I’m working on the music video right now; I haven’t announced the song yet. I’m very excited for this one to come out. It’s a little different. I’ve been writing a lot more gentle and more poppy stuff. I’m excited for the world to hear this one.

Since you’re based in New York, I was wondering if you could tell me what your ideal day in New York would be?

My one good day?

Yes, exactly! Your one good day.

For me, my one good day in New York would be waking up and honestly… I love going to Flushing, Queens. I love that it’s just sort of like a big Asian theme park right in New York City. It’s pretty far to get to, but I love going and my first stop would be going to New World Mall, getting a snack there — getting like beef noodle soup or some dumplings — and then going over to Tangram and going to the arcade and just walking around that mall there. Then, [I’d go] to Anime Claw across the street. There’s a bunch of little stores and shops all selling figurines and fun stuff… and then I’d end the day at Spring Shabu-Shabu. That to me is a perfect day in New York.

What are you watching right now and what you’re listening to right now? And if you have any video games with you on the road, what are you playing right now?

I am catching up on House of the Dragon. I’m in Japan and I’m a musician, so naturally I started to watch Bocchi the Rock!, which is a very, very wholesome, very sweet anime.

In terms of what I’ve been listening to, there’s a group — I’m friends with a few of them — they’re called STARKIDS and they’re really blowing up. I’ve been listening to them so much out here. In terms of what I’ve been playing, so I’m not a huge gamer, but I do have a Switch and the honest truth is that I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Knight on my Switch a lot. It’s great for long train rides where I just sort of need to zone out.

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MOLT EP is out now. Catch Kenneth Takanami, torr, and emotegi at Heaven Can Wait on Sunday, September 29 2024 in Manhattan.

This interview was conducted over Zoom on August 14th, 2024 by Li-Wei Chu.

Artist pages: Instagram | Spotify | YouTube