He's built a distinctive world and standing in the ambient and electronica scene, and lately — starting with a nationwide tour for his album Kofū II, he's played festivals like SWEET LOVE SHOWER, and is now right in the middle of an overseas tour — this is MEITEI.
Beyond his own releases, he's also provided music for brands like Shiseido, Cartier, and Merrell — his name is genuinely skyrocketing worldwide right now — but recently (although the announcement was actually back on August 4th, so already two months ago), he revealed a new project under the alias Tenka.
This work gathers music that intuitively interprets the impressions and cycles felt through the earth, ecosystems, and natural beauty.
There's no special theme or story set for it — it's simply the impressions I felt in everyday life, put directly into sound. It's a private album made naturally, without being bound by expectations.
For this album, we also had help from Ryoko Hori — a therapist who runs RYOKO senses salon in Berlin and also works as a scent designer — who specially created a scent for HYDRATION.
I'd like to take this chance to thank Ryoko again.
The CD, which comes with an essential oil composed around the album's theme, is a collector's item limited to just 100 sets — and at Lounge Sai, all 10 copies we carry will be sold with a special touch: each one hand-signed by MEITEI himself.
You can find the full details on the release on the product page, but I'd love for you to get your hands on this collector's item — limited in number and unavailable anywhere else.
From here, let me share something more personal — a little behind-the-scenes story about MEITEI and me.
As it happens, this HYDRATION release is also the very music that first brought MEITEI and me together, back in 2019.
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May 2019.
At the time, my partner Bozu and I had just started a YouTube channel called Ronge to Bozu to YouTube (Long Hair, Buzz Cut and YouTube),For several years before that, I'd also been running a blog you could call a precursor to the YouTube channel — Ronge to Bozu to New York (Long Hair, Buzz Cut and New York) — so all kinds of emails were arriving daily from readers and viewers.
Honestly, it was hard to read through and reply to every email and attachment we got, so for the most part I hardly ever replied (sorry if you were one of the people who wrote in!), and I'd just skim the ones that caught my eye — but for some reason, on that particular day, I opened an email the moment it arrived.
Even before I opened it, I had a feeling — "oh, this one looks interesting somehow" — and I still remember vividly that I opened it quite deliberately.
That email was from MEITEI, and it was the very email that led to us meeting.
I'll keep the exact contents private, but what was in it were links to the music for Komachi and Kwaidan, which had just come out at the time, plus this HYDRATION.
Every one of those tracks hit me as shockingly cool, and I think I replied right away with a pretty passionate, emotional email.
Less than a month later, I met MEITEI in person for the first time, and he even performed live at Lounge Sai — in Osaka that November, and in Tokyo that December.
Do any of you who came remember that?
At the time — and I say this with respect — MEITEI was pretty much unknown in Japan compared to now, so the guests at the venue may well have been thinking, "who is this guy?"
Even so, as a huge fan of MEITEI before I was even a friend, and as Lounge Sai, being able to create a wonderful space filled with clothes I loved and music I loved was, as an organizer, about as good as it gets — a truly luxurious time.
After that, MEITEI also made a playlist for us to play at the Lounge Sai venue, and composed music for the video when we released the Gyokuro series, a collaboration between KEI SHIGENAGA and Tomo Kishida.
(Even watching it back now, the sound is just too good — a must-listen for any MEITEI fan.)
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Before I knew it, more than three years had passed since that email — but as the description for HYDRATION mentions, most of the tracks on this album were actually already made back in 2019, and they're exactly the works that struck me so hard at the time.
These are, to me personally, the songs that brought me together with MEITEI, and this album is one I'll never forget for the rest of my life..
When I think that this connection might never have happened if I hadn't opened that one email — unconsciously yet somehow with conviction — I really do think how people come together is a strange thing.
Right now, MEITEI is in the middle of his European tour for Kofū II.
I hope he's enjoying himself fully out there, and that his talent keeps resounding even further around the world from here.
→ HYDRATION Autographed CD + Essential Oil 【LIMITED EDITION】
