Kyoto-based electronic trio Sawa Angstrom sing about the moments when we feel as solitary as if we were in outer space, in “Tape Loop”, the first single off their first EP “DdTPt”.

This cosmic music video was directed by Jun Hamada who is member of Sawa Angstrom Lainy J Groove and YeYe band. That’s how he explains the concept of this video:

“We tried to make a unique movie. This video’s theme is outer space which is contrary to this song’s common lyrics. In this video, the heroine is searching for the Earth while warping with a half-broken spaceship. But at the end, her spaceship was completely broken. It is a sad story.”

“The highlight of this video is that we expressed the universe with common things such as water and paints, using computer graphics as little as possible.”

“The universe also exists in our daily life, and it links to the values of the lyrics. The universe and our daily life are distant but same time connected. However, she can’t return to the Earth.”

Satoshi Yoshioka (also from Llama) is Sawa Angstrom’s male singer and sound engineer. He told us about the way they made their debut EP “DdTPt” sound:

“Our sound was made by software except for our voices. There are no rules for us to compose, write, and arrange. We shared a lot of time to understand each person’s advantages and sensitivity.”

“Our beats are minimal but we carefully created each and every tone. We avoided excessive compression, but we emphasized sense of speed and transient. By doing so, I think that we were able to express syncopation pleasantly.”

“The tone of the synthesizer was made from the simple oscillator. Even Alias noises generated by lowering the sampling rate also helped to “DdTPt” sound the way it sounds.”

“We were not bound by the rhythm and pitch. We often cut and pasted freely read nouns and conjunctions to make songs. All process was done by Pro Tools, and we kept the mixing clear and roomy.”

The band’s female singer and solo singer-songwriter Marina Kodama said:

“Sawa Angstrom is a producer team that can create works that combine video and music. We actually do such production works as well.”

“We all can write, compose and sing songs. So we always make songs with a very exciting relationship. We make the wide range of music from pop songs to experimental tracks.”

“It is the same during our gigs, we can play in various venues such as cafes, nightclubs and outdoor events.　However, we cannot do anything without electricity, haha.”

In the music video for “Tape Loop”, Marina is floating and turning in a spaceship. But of course, they are not in outer space. They toured not only in Japan, but also in EU and Taiwan last year. And they plan more tours in other countries. Hopefully, you’ll also get a chance to see them live in your city.

Stream “DdTPt” EP on Spotify.

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Sawa Angstrom on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: Jun Hamada, Satoshi Yoshioka, Marina Kodama.