Recently, Deborah of Pop Experiment had the pleasure of talking with Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Tomida of Lullatone. “Lullatone’s music is cute!” they say.
We say it is that, plus more.
With three released albums (Computer Recital, My Petit Melodies, and Little Songs About Raindrops) and another on the way (Lullatone Plays Pajama Pop for You), Lullatone has created worlds where the sounds are gentle, interesting, varied, layered, and evocative of afternoon sunshowers, dreamy summer naps and languid days spent painting, writing, and watching the moon move across the sky.
This music is contemporarily electronic, but full of the natural world, be they the sounds of drinking orange juice, or the sense you get of being outside while listening to Lullatone at your computer with your headphones on.
Some say it is minimalist, and it is essential, using only what is needed to convey its incredibly lush sentiments, leaving the rest to you, the listener.
PE: I love the organic nature of your music and vocals. Do you have a way of describing/defining it?
SHAWN: Thank you! We usually call it pajama pop. A lot of musicians and artists seem to want to avoid genres and descriptions of their music, but I think it is fun to think about that kind of stuff. Especially if you make up your own genre name!
PE: I read that many of your songs grew out of lullabies you were writing for Yoshimi…has this changed over time?
SHAWN: Yeah, it has really. Before I would stay up all night every night. I only slept like 2-3 hours a day, so it was a good chance for me to make these sleepy sounds for her while she was snoozing by my side. But now I work with Junior High School kids, teaching English, and I usually end up playing basketball or running or something with them after school. So, I am too sleepy at night to make lullabies these days. Every time I try I fall asleep in the studio (it happens a lot).
YOSHIMI: He always woke me up in the middle of night to play the lullabies he made for me!
PE: Do you look back and see what has influenced you or do you not look at things this way?
SHAWN: I don’t usually think too much about what is influencing me. But, I think there are a lot of things. Even the weather or the time of day or what I read in a book, or… many many things are influencing me, but I don’t think about them too much.
PE: How did you begin producing music: Individually? Collaboratively? How did you two exactly meet?
SHAWN: We met in an intercultural communications class at my university in America, and we started dating almost immediately. At that time I was already making some funny, cute computer pop music and I thought it would be great if Yoshimi could help by singing because we were already spending all day everyday together, so it just seemed natural. But, all of that was for a different band. We stopped that one before we moved to Japan because it was a little too silly and Yoshimi was going to be too embarrassed to sing those songs in Japanese in Japan. For Lullatone, I usually make all of the melodies. Then, we both make some words, and I just think of the way to sing. But, I can’t sing well so it is hard for me to tell my ideas to her. Plus, my ideas for timing are really strange some time. So, she is really nice and patient for dealing with that.
PE: What instruments do you most enjoy playing? What instruments sound is most interesting to you?
SHAWN: I like playing xylophone and harp and a toy keyboard called SK-1 best. I think that they all sound really good no matter how badly you play them, and that is their charm point!
PE: It seems that you are always composing songs…is this true? How would you best describe your process during production.
SHAWN: Before, I was really always always composing songs, like 1 or 2 a day. But for the last two years I became too worried about every little detail of this new CD and spent all of my free time (like 6-8 hours a day) mixing and remixing and un-mixing and rearranging and re-editing so many little details that I didn’t make any new songs at all. Usually I make a whole song in a day and go about editing and fixing it’s production over the course of a week. But this time, I went totally overboard. I wish I hadn’t, but I couldn’t stop then because I was too in love with these melodies and I wanted to make sure that they were presented in the best way possible. But, next time I am going to try finish everything quickly again like I used to! I promise!
YOSHIMI: I hum in bath tub everyday!
PE: What facets of this process most interest you?
YOSHIMI: I like the echo of humming in the bath tub.
PE: What motivates you to play music?
SHAWN: I just want to play music all of the time. I daydream about making songs all day long.
YOSHIMI: Shawn tells me he will make dinner if I do good job.
PE: When you’re at home what inspires you?
SHAWN: Just having enough free time to be able to play with my instruments is enough to make me want to. Who wouldn’t want to? It’s so much fun!
YOSHIMI: Thing about dinner.
PE: When you are touring, what are your favorite parts of traveling?
SHAWN: I like trying food in lots of different places. For example, in Japan, every city has some special food that it is famous for. So, we always try to try the local specialities everywhere we go. So, when we make a plan to go to some new place Yoshimi always says something like, “Oh! Great! Then we can try so and so!”
YOSHIMI: We also like shopping, especially me!
PE: What are some of your favorite things to do?
SHAWN: I really really really like eating breakfast.
YOSHIMI: I really really really like doing laundry. It smells good.
PE: Favorite foods and drinks?
SHAWN: My number one favorite food is Peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. Yoshimi’s favorite food is rice. She becomes a little cranky if she doesn’t eat rice everyday. That is why it is difficult for us to travel in Europe or America.
PE: Where are some of your favorite places? Why?
SHAWN: I really like Nagoya (where we live now) because I have a lot of good friends here. Other places I have been that I thought I might like to live in are Malmo and Gothenborg in Sweden, Macau, and Montreal.
YOSHIMI: I like Louisville, Maui and Nagoya. Oh, LMN!
PE: Do either of you have a typical day? If so, what is it…
SHAWN: Usually I wake up at 6 am and get ready for work. Then I shave, eat breakfast, etc and kiss Yoshimi good bye and leave the house at about 7. Then I ride my bike for about 45 minutes to school. When I get there I get some things together for the classes to teach. Then I teach and eat lunch with the kids and teach some more. Classes end at about 3 and I usually stay at school until about 5 or so playing basketball, or soccer or something with the kids. Then, I stop by the market and buy something on my bike ride back and get home around 6 or so. Yoshimi usually gets back at about 6:30 or 7, so we make dinner then. Then after that I was working on mixing and stuff for a long time time every night until like 2 or 3. But, now we finished that so I am usually working on some kind of promotion thing instead.
YOSHIMI: I wake up at 7 am, just when Shawn’s leaving house and get kissed good bye. Sometimes do laundry, get ready and leave the house about 8:30. I work at a Sewing machine company and export spare parts and accessories to oversea. I work at gigantic factory so sometimes when I’m bored, I just take a walk around the factory. Oh, we have a shrine inside of factory. It’s nice! Then I get home around 7, then we make dinner, do dishes and after that, I just like to relax or maybe go to public bath.
PE: On your site, I read (again from 2004) that you were enjoying listening to your friends music. What are you listening to these days?
SHAWN: These days my top 2 are Jens Lekman and a new band from Nagoya called Happa No Uragawa Sisters. They are 2 girls who are going to help us shoot our next video.YOSHIMI: I like this Japanese guy Hanaregumi lately and my all time favorites are Le mans and Os mutantes.
PE: Is there anything about making the new album you would like to tell us (besides re-recording some tracks over 150 times!!)?
SHAWN: Well, I think I spent too much time cleaning up every detail on it at first, and when I listened in the end it sounded a little… well.. too clean. So, in the end I re-recorded al of the final tracks onto an old Tascam cassette 4 track recorder. After I did that, I realized we were finally done. Other things…
YOSHIMI: We once recorded vocals in our bath tub and also on our bed. It didn’t sound that good, but it was fun!
PE: Who made your Little Songs about Raindrops video? I love it…
SHAWN: Oh, thank you! We made that. We usually make that kind of stop motion animations to play at our live shows.
PE: I saw pics on your website of you and Yoshimi at an art exhibit of your paintings…do both of you paint? What about other modes of expression? Are a lot of your friends multi-media expressionists like you are?
YOSHIMI: We paint, make animations, take photographs. I like sewing (I have my company’s sewing machine) so I make dolls, finger puppets and purses. I also like doing collage out of origami paper (like the one in Little Songs about Raindrops video). In Japan, most of our friends are DJs or musicians and in America, most friends are visual artists.
PE: I read in the interview from Groove in 2004 that you had been collaborating with many friends. Since then, have your collaborations continued? What part does collaboration with other artists (either sound, visual, etc) play in your life?
SHAWN: Yeah, lately we play live with 3 of our best friends and use a lot of toy instruments. It is more fun for us to play with friends, and it is going to be summer soon, so hopefully we can go and practice in the park! Also our new CD features more players than ever. Even a lot of my students are on there, playing violin, cello, piano, etc. And even a Junior High School girl’s choir!
for more on Lullatone, visit their website, www.lullatone.com
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