ArtistInfo

Kumisolo

voc, *1979 FR, Chiba Prefecture
Singer of Pop and Electronic
A.k.a. Kumi Okamoto

Place of Birth: Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, Japan. Place of residency : Paris, France. Occupations: singer, songwriter, film director. One third of girl band The Konki Duet. -------------- First contact with music: started shamisen at the age of 3, accompanying her mother on the taiko; started going to dance clubs with her mother around the same period; piano from the age of 7, with a private (and rigorous) teacher. Second First contact with music : started playing the trumpet at 9, in her grammarﾕs schoolﾕs brass band. First public performance in the street during the "Tsutsuji Matsuri " parade; soon became head of the brass section of her junior highﾕs school; won a competition playing Stravinsky's Firebird. First contact with pop music: elected ﾒmost popular girlﾓ of the Ueno High School thanks to her multiple activities (she was still playing the trumpet but also made her first steps as a singer in a pop band club where she covers songs by Swedish band The Cardigans). Early professional experience: part-time assistant in a dental clinic (enabling her to film her very first 8 mm short film in the clinic one evening): at University, met Saori Chan with whom she formed her first pop band, under the influence of French chanson and Japanese Shibuya Kei. The name was 'No Future', but Channel-Proﾕs label manager accepts to release a record only if the change name. Mike Always, of El Records fame, came up with the name "Crazy Curl" and it fit. Released "Bonjour Journal", Kumi's first official record. Other, late professional experience: now a resident in Paris, she founded the Konki Duet with Zoe Wolf, ex My Own, and started collaborating with many Paris based musicians: Toog, Momus, Orval Carlos Sibelius, Shoboshobo, O.Lammﾉ After two albums and many tours with The Konki Duet, started recording solo songs and covers (of songs by The Supremes and many long forgotten J-Pop units) on her 4-track recorder: Kumi became Kumisolo little by little, with impromptu concerts in art galleries and recording sessions in her friends' studios, mostly from the Active Suspension Constellation in Paris (O.Lamm, Hypo, Domotic). -------------- Now, now, the album tumbles. My Love For You Is A Cheap Pop Song is a lo-fi tender missive composed with two hands on a small casio keyboard turned a big electro pop affair in basements and home-studios, a rainbow-like spectrum of desires, moods and tempos, polished in laptops and tape-delay and feeding on all periods , from the 60's to the future. And it contains marvels : restless poppy house music (ﾇ Danse Music ﾈ), self-assembly j-pop ( "Cheap Pop Song", "Nasty Boy" ), distorted echoes of the 80s ("Satellite Song", "I Know What Boys Like", "Vodka"), super emotional ballads ("Earth", "Piano Song"), or sixties delicacies ("Triangle", "Welson"). No doubt, Kumisolo's universe is as large as her heroes', Cornelius or Stereolab. Most of all, Kumi tells us (and in all languages, English, French and Japanese) about Love from all angles, and through many more shades of grey than a E-major chord can offer: you can dance to it intoxicated in nerdy parties where people talk about music, lose yourself in the labyrinths of infidelity, express your love while floating in the air in a space station, love too much, care too much, doubt too much ﾐ in any case, My Love For You Is A Cheap Pop Song is as dense as true love stories, experienced in real-time, and displays almost as many colors as life itself.

Genres

• Pop
• Electronic
• Rock
• R&B/Soul