Make Believe Mailer #102: bo en

An Interview With The Artist As They Return To The Spotlight, Ten Years After A Netlabel Essential

Calum Bowen has made peace with his breakthrough, and is ready to revisit it.

The 32-year-old London artist, who performs as bo en, crashed into the world of online music with 2013’s pale machine, released by Japanese netlabel Maltine Records. In just 26 minutes, Bowen packed in a browser’s worth of musical ideas, ranging from slippery SoundCloud-appropriate electronic flurries to synthesized-singing touches to Jersey Club breakdowns to piano-man flair. It was a fitting statement about both the ethos of internet music in the early 2010s — anything goes, if you go for it — while also underlining the spread of this perspective globally.

Upon its release, pale machine became a standout in the Maltine catalog, arriving at a perfect online moment where Bowen’s flights of fancy in English and Japanese felt fitting, and connected him closer to Japanese audiences. He would come out to Tokyo multiple times to perform. I followed along closely as someone writing about Japan’s netlabel scene, getting the chance to chat with Bowen several times, including for a Japam Times feature. Even as the years went on and bo en’s output became rare, pale machine loomed large. Closing track “my time” appeared in the trailer for much-hyped indie video game Omori, and transformed into the title’s anthem / a point of fascination for the psychological RPG.

Yet the success of his debut cast doubts in the creator that still linger. “In a way, I am scared of the shadow of pale machine,” Bowen tells me on a rainy Saturday from inside a Shibuya cafe in late November, some eight years since we last linked up in the capital. “This album has had 10 years to accumulate attention. It’s hard for me to have an accurate perspective. Say I put out a new song…people care X amount. It’s hard for me, I’ll say ‘ah this old song has 50 million plays on Spotify…this new one should have 60 million!”

Bowen, days earlier, had performed a 10th anniversary show for pale machine at Daikanyama UNIT. It was a playful interpretation of the album, presented as something similar to a Japanese TV broadcast (news segments, skits, guests galore, a climatic bit finding Bowen singing while tucked into a futon). A rapt crowd watched the netlabel classic come to life. Yet the creator told me days later that his relationship with that album was much more complicated, and its success had long played a role in less original bo en music coming out.

“Sometimes I realize I can make something in a day, and ready to go. But I have this sense of…shouldn’t I be holding on to this for like months and months and months? Shouldn’t this be arduous?” As we chat in Shibuya for nearly two hours, he talks about doubts creeping out of his success via his first stab at music production, and persistent worries about falling behind. “Well, the thing that seemed to define me came out in 2013…well maybe now I need to be ahead of the curve, again, in a new era. Can I do that? Is that something I should even want to do?”

The solution? To stare down the breakthrough work, make peace with it…and discover new angles on it.

Bowen releaed pale machine 2 concurrently to his performance in Tokyo in November 2023. A radical re-imagining rather than a new album per se, Bowen called on collaborators — ranging from artists who had assisted with the original batch of songs such as Japanese artist Avec Avec or compatriot Augustus Lobban of Kero Kero Bonito, to newer names such as PAS TASTA and Cwondo which emerged in the years after his netlabel breakthrough, with neo-Shibuya-kei heavyweight Plus-Tech Squeeze Box popping up for a bit of dream fulfillment.

It was just step one of a larger celebration / closure session that remains ongoing. Bowen is currently halfway through a tour of the United States celebrating pale machine’s 10th anniversary, joined by Lobban and Vocaloid artist Kikuo.

When we talked in the fall, that tour remained in limbo — Bowen was waiting on his U.S. visa to come through, confident it would but also aware that it absolutely could not — but his intent was clear. He was ready to offer his debut album a proper party with the people who loved it…and move on to the next chapter of his artistic career.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

MAKE BELIEVE MELODIES: Let’s start by talking about the reason you’ll be going on tour in January…and at least to some degree, the reason you are here in Tokyo right now, the tenth anniversary of pale machine. Looking back at the bo en of 2013 and the album itself…what do you make of that time in general? What do you think of pale machine?

BO EN: I didn’t listen to it for a long time. I was kind of freaked out by it. I felt a bit like a thing that I’m dragging along, and I’m like trying to let go, but before I did this ten-year-anniversay thing, I actually almost had a phobia of listening to it. Then I did listen to it and it was like, “oh right, I actually do like this.” [laughs]

I guess it feels weird that I could have a career sustained by one album. I felt like the audience was keeping it alive more than I was. And I was kind of like “I want this go away.” I don’t know, probably because I hadn’t been able to make a follow-up album. I kind of thought it was because pale machine hasn’t died that I can’t make something new. People are still being nice to me about that…I need some empty hole. Then I could make something new.

I think this whole ten-year anniversary is partially a celebration, but it’s also me trying to put it to rest. Close the book on that. Which is kind of weird because…the whole pale machine 2 is kind of a sequel…I keep saying don’t call it a remix album, because in one way it’s not, but in another way it totally is. Those songs are basically collaborative, but they are weighted in different ways. Like one song would be 90 percent the other person remixing it, while others were more 50-50, and others were 80 percent me and 20 percent the other person. But it’s odd to be putting out this new album and being like “OK everyone, pay attention to this” when I also am trying to close the book.

You’re trying to walk a tightrope…it’s new but it’s also not new.

I suppose it’s like, in 2023 how would I have made that album, and who would I have wanted on the album. It’s bringing in people from that time who maybe haven’t been that active, to newer people who I didn’t know back then.

Who didn’t exist as artists back then!

Yeah. But who I felt were in my orbit. To kind of revisit it. I feel like I had quite an uncomfortable relationship with it. I was kind of willing there to be some other album that people could perceive me through. And not just like, that was me when I was 22. I don’t know, it’s just weird having like a sole thing that kind of defines me for the last 10 years.

So in a way I put out this kind of new album, but also hoping to put out a new new album, or music, or anything, next year.

You just have to close this loop. How have you changed personally over that decade?

I was trying to figure out if I am more or less confident now. I feel like I had a very youthful self confidence that was a bit fragile at that time. It was kind of handy. Whereas like now I feel more neurotic, but also weirdly more at ease. Like, I cared so much about how I was perceived, who my audience was. Just like the minutiae of someone replying to me on Twitter, checking their account and thinking “oh, this kind of person follows me?” I think when you make music, I don’t think people are making it from the place as the normal person you identify as while walking around the street. It’s what you make at three in the morning. I’m on some other weird vibe, and now it lives forever, it’s somebody else. Seeing that, it’s kind of sobering. Like oh shit, this thing resonates with you, this thing that I could only allow myself to engage with in some small moment in the night. And the normal me is kind of shut down.

So then people expect that from me. In my everyday life, I’m not like that. That’s the grotesque stuff that comes. But when your audience holds all of that, and you are face to face with it…I think my initial immature reaction was to try to reject that. “Oh, no, that’s not me.” I didn’t want to identify with it, the embarrassing things I felt I put in my songs.

I think now I have a much more accepting perspective on that. It’s like, awesome, it resonates with you, I’m so happy it resonates with you. Not to be all cringy, gratitude journal like, but I do feel super grateful just looking at people’s music careers in general. I didn’t do that much, but I got a lot from it. I feel very lucky. I’m more accepting, and I feel like I don’t have that…maybe I’m just 32, not 22 [laughs]. Like, I don’t have that intense need to prove myself. They need to know this about me! I have to put this out!

Something that struck me at the show at UNIT was how diverse the crowd was, like…seeing so many artists even from scenes I usually don’t see intersecting. Netlabel people next to hip-hop artists next to hyperpop types. And they were all wowed by everything you were doing.

I like to hear that. I had so much stuff to pack up afterwards that I didn’t really get to see who was out there besides whoever I saw while looking out during the show. But it was like…you look like you’re about 60, that’s cute that you’re here. You’re just some random kid. It was cool.

I kind of wanted to cultivate a family vibe, particularly at the end, for the encore. Doing a cover with all of the singers who joined me was a bit messy, as we didn’t have much time to practice. But I did want it to have a variety show feeling, like the whole family sits down together. Even the moody teenager can still go “I watch this TV show with my family.” I’m happy that varied crowd came out.

I asked about your relationship with pale machine, but to some degree it has slipped out of your control. In part due to the game OMORI, which sort of gifted it to another generation. I’m curious, the listeners who didn’t come to it through Maltine Records, how have you observed them reacting to it? Anything that has caught you off guard or revealed something you didn’t even know about it?

There are multiple, intense fan theory type things…like conspiracy theory-ish interpretations of the songs. Not just “my time,” which is like the OMORI song. I’ve read YouTube comments, or someone randomly emails me, “I think this is about this and this and this.” There’s one interpretation of one of my songs¹ that has become kind of common — like, OK, I didn’t know that, whatever — that goes “oh this song is about when America bombed Japan, and people went into the caves and you can hear the sirens.” Well…I guess it is now! But…yeah.

The big kind of OMORI thing is that “my time” plays at the end of the game, but only for the bad ending, where you decide to “unalive²” yourself, because the main character jumps off a building. So there’s an interpretation that the song is about suicide, which actually existed before OMORI anyway.

It’s always a weird feeling like…when I was trying to be literal, it was taken as a metaphor, and when I was trying to be metaphorical it was taken as literal. Everything is scrambled. And I mean it makes sense…I put a gun shot sound in there! But to me that was just a trap cliche, I’ll put it in for the drop. I live in the UK, we don’t even have guns, so I didn’t even think of it as a signifier of killing yourself.

It can be intense. Inadvertently, it made my parents worry about me. Like, everyone’s interpretations could be what he’s really thinking.

Were your parents reading Reddit or something? [laughs]

No, they don’t read Reddit, but they do go on YouTube and read the comments.

I feel like I’m the only person being like “it’s not about suicide!” To the extent where I’m like…maybe it is, and I’m protesting too much. Maybe like in some way.

You’re double guessing yourself now.

In some sense. In the end though, people are going to read things the way they read things. Their are multiple interpretations, that’s OK. And I feel like the majority of comments and emails I get are very life affirming. If they were saying “great song, it convinced me to kill myself” I’d say “no stop,” and maybe even take it down. But a lot of people have said that it has gotten them through rough times. I was actually in a performance art piece where I was dressed as a cowboy, for my friend’s art show. One of the other performers afterwards, we started talking and they told me they used to listen to my music in a very dark time, when they were really struggling. It helped them get out of this dark place. In that sense, even if people have a dark interpretation of it…if it helps people have hope or understanding, that’ good.

I haven’t ever really thought of myself as a hopeful or inspiring person [laughs]. I feel I’m a depressive person.

[laughs] In my experience, I wouldn’t say so! But then again maybe my experiences are limited.

I don’t feel that inspiring, but…I don’t know.

You played at an Omori third anniversary concert during this trip too. How was that?

It was amazing! Crazy. It was 2000 capacity in a huge hall, with a hundred piece orchestra. I just sang “my time” for the encore. I had my own little green room, with a piano in it, a shower, little snacks…I felt treated well.

It was a lot better than doing a show where you have 10 to 15 separate songs. It was nice to go on and do one song.

Was there any pressure? Like…one song, but only one song…

Oh, a lot. Also I knew it was being recorded as well, so I thought “oh if this somehow doesn’t go well, I’ll be stuck with this forever.” But it went really well. I was still struggling a bit with jet lag, and a day before the UNIT show I didn’t have a voice at all. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do any of these shows. But I had so much throat medicine. It worked very well.

Shout out throat medicine, coming through.

Yeah, exactly! But the show was amazing, it was crazy. When they announced me…it was a surprise, so there was this huge shock. *gasps* Coming out to gasps was actually amazing, these people are really excited.

Let’s jump to pale machine 2. What was the timeline of this one coming together?

When I was in Japan last year, I said to [Maltine Records founder] Tomad “I want to do a 10th year anniversary Tokyo show³.” I didn’t know what kind of celebration I was going to do. I put out a remastered vinyl, and I haven’t even announced it yet [PATRICK NOTE: This has been announced since], but there will be a double CD versions too. And that’s how pale machine 2 came to be. Initially it was like, oh we can do a bonus track or something. And we can do remixes. It just kind of piled up and…we are just doing the whole album, and then some. Now I just want to do this.

It was a crazy scramble. Like, we were still working on it until the week before I got to Japan. I didn’t even know if it would make it on to Spotify by the release date. But let’s hope it does…and it did! It had zero time to get any press, there was no lead time at all.

But everything came together very smoothly. There wasn’t anything where I felt like “hmmm, I don’t like that.” It was nice. And it felt good to know people still cared, and wanted to be involved. I did kind of get back into producing music…this is fun. Yeah, I’m happy with it. I…I think it’s good [laughs].

A lot of the collaborators are natural fits — artsts who have been in the Maltine universe for a while now. But there’s also a lot who weren’t part of that, whether due to circumstances or the fact they didn’t exist as artists then. How did you put this list of collaborators together?

It was a collaboration between me and Tomad. So some people were in my head. This song, new version, this person doing it.

Can you give me an example of that?

I’ve been working with Babymoroco recently. I did a remix for him, and we also have original songs we are working on together, that aren’t out yet. Very quickly, I could imagine him doing a new version of “I’ll Fall.” It felt like it made sense. Other than Avec Avec doing “Be Okay” and Kane West slash Gus Bonito having to be the one to remix “Money Won’t Pay,” I didn’t know who would do what beyond that. But we all got it together quite clearly, I think.

The first track, “Prelude,” was an idea I had ages ago where the intro track from the original album..it was just so minimal. It was effective, but I wanted to do something so much bigger. The idea was bringing you in, with these lush string things, but I felt like that was me at age 22 with some random string plug-in. I wanted to do a whole thing…this is a prelude to a whole orchestral piece recorded with live instruments. I knew I wanted to update that one. Paritally, I think I wanted to impress people. And then in the end I think I made it too long for an introduction [laughs], like this is actually a taxing introduction. This is longer than some of the non-intro songs. But that in itself was re-visiting what I had done.

A few people helped me put that one together. One was this composer named Ayana Tsujita, who I found on SoundCloud randomly like eight years ago. And she’s not a producer or artist in “the scene” or anything, just this random composer working on anime and games and some pieces for orchestra events. She went to the Tokyo University Of The Arts, a very music-centric univeristy…like I did. It’s actually quite cute to bond with someone over pure music. No scene stuff, no discussions about Twitter followers. It’s like theory. Besides playing toy piano on “Prelude,” she helped to coordinate all the players on it. She knew lots of artsits from her school. One of the violinists, Tadashi Machida, he worked on the Belle soundtrack and a bunch of Utada Hikaru string stuff too. The standards were just super high.

I would like to have a project that is more in that vein, like a theater project where it’s all purposeful. I don’t have to worry about anything like, “do I need to put a Jersey Club beat under this?” Should it be this, or should it be referencing something else. Is this too hyperpop…or not hyperpop enough? Any of those genre anxieties are just kind of gone when you are working on an orchestral classical piece. They’re always going to be there, and they aren’t really engaging with the flow of generes and so forth. Maybe that’s a 32-year-old thing to do. [laughs]

Let’s talk younger artists, such as — because I love them — is PAS TASTA. But you also work with folks like Winamp Boys, this constellation of SoundCloud-based producers. What was communication with these artists like?

With PAS TASTA, I was just like…they have to be on here. I love their album, and they are amazing producers in their own right. Really fun. I’m surprised they aren’t more popular⁴. Their remix started as them doing their whole thing. To be frank, I didn’t like the first half. So I did the first part [laughs]. They did the second half, which was the drop. It’s kind of insanse…I love that. If people listen to that and find their music…that would be a great thing.

The Winamp Boys — their are twelve of them but only ten of them could participate in the new version. When I was doing an Omori playthrough online, I had different segments on my screen. One was a fan music station kind of thing. I asked people watching to send their music, and I made a mix of it. They were the big standouts. It was amazingly produced. It really goes. It’s one of those things where… you shouldn’t be this grateful to be working with me, you are really good. They’re very young, which is part of it. But it just came from that. Let’s do it. That was just an email, a little bit of back and forth. The original they sent me was seven minutes long…we need to cut this down a little bit. I know you have 12 members and you want everyone to shine…

But we have to edit here [laughs].

And this reggae ending, I love it, but it doesn’t have to be three minutes long. But there’s was a standout, it takes the track to loads of places. Some stuff, production wise, the artist is quite similar to me. Sometimes when you make music with someone who is very similar to you it’s a bit like…what’s the point? We’re both going to be supplying the same kind of thing. But when working with someone with a different kind of skill set or taste, I feel like they made something I never would have made.

Is it weird that people look up to you and see you as kind of a musical hero?

Yeah, a little bit. For me, pale machine was my first foray into producing music. I did not feel like that kid who spent all of his summers growing up perfecting the perfect kick drum, or something like that. When I met Porter Robinson, he was that kid. He told me about the summers where he was compressing a snare and trying to get a perfect sound. I never did that. I just dragged in a sound and thought “that sounds right.” I was winging it. I didn’t have any real production theory. When I made pale machine I had zero expectations. I was still making music as Calum Bowen, for games. I uploaded some of those bo en songs to my Bowen SoundCloud and quickly realized, oh this needs to be a separate thing. I didn’t expect to be in this position, with this work. Which now I look back on and, yeah that just worked, and some of it is just intuitive. Some stuff I think sounds weird and wouldn’t do now, but whatever. I made that choice.

What’s an example of that? You’ve used the word “cringe” a few times here today — very young of you — but is there anything particularly “cringe” that comes to mind?

I don’t know, because if I start the whole thing is going to go. I just have a blanket of acceptance.

That’s fair, I don’t want to push you into cringe mode.

There’s not one thing where I’m like “god I wish…why did I pan that kick all the way to the left? That’s not going to work.” I think it was a lot of me getting used to what dance music is, what is the club setting…do I even belong in the club setting? And also, the last UNIT show, it was me more determining what kind of live show I want. Whereas in the past, since I put music out on SoundCloud, it was using these dance music sub-genres, but I was basically a songwriter. Sometimes I felt like SoundCloud Billy Joel. I’m just kind of a weird soft rock guy who was in this SoundCloud world. When I’m next to these other DJs…it feels weird, I’m singing and playing a piano, not a smooth DJ set.

I think I found my feet with this UNIT show. Kind of presenting these songs, but in a way that’s a broader performance. I keep coming back to “variety show” as the framing I want for what I do. One idea I had that I couldn’t do due to time constraints was to have a set of commentators. There would be a segment where we switch over to them and they give their comments on the last performance, in a box.

[laughs] Like Terrace House.

Kind of like Terrace House. I don’t know how that would have worked. But yeah…since it was my show…I’ve actually never booked a show for myself before. I’ve never really wanted to perform live, but if people asked me to play live, I’d say OK, and that would happen every now and then. Like supporting a big artist, like Porter Robinson, Anamanaguchi, Kero Kero Bonito…if they are in London. Japan was the only place I’ve headlined, and it would have been organized by Tomad.

I think that helped in defining what the UNIT show was, instead of thinking “I’m just a guest here, who am I to put on this weird variety show. I guess I’ll just be a DJ, but not really a DJ.” It’s weird. I’m still trying to find out who am I in this whole world, where do I slot in? With time, I have found a lot more acceptance and perspective. When I was 22, I would have worried about if other artists liked me, or I would have wondered about what scene I fit in. But now, I feel…OK.

I still feel like I’m at the beginning of this. I have one album basically, and a revisiting-that-album album. Meanwhile, there’s some artists who are 23 who have put out seven albums. It’s very weird. I keep coming back to that…how can you do this with just one album? And here we are.

bo en might have one album…but Calum has done a lot in these last ten years!

That’s true. I am kind of underselling myself. In a sense I have had like 10-ish other albums.

I imagine those soundtracks — which have hard deadlines — require a different approach though. There’s a difference between Calum and bo en you have to figure out.

With stuff like that, it’s also about fulfilling someone’s demand. I supposse I have some kind of wide, generic demand from an audience, but in general doing bo en music boils down to what is my demand to myself? What do I want to pull out of myself? With game music, there is a framework, and there’s someone else there. Here’s a game, this is what it looks like, this is how you move and these are your objectives. With game music, I don’t have to feel like “am I ahead of the curve?” It’s maybe closer to the classical stuff. It’s always there, and it doesn’t have to be some thing that gets into the top 100 albums of the year list. It’s something that the people who love it will love it. It doesn’t have to feature a photo shoot around its release.

And I’m a massive game music fan as well. Like, I listen to so much game music while going about my day. I have a similar kind of relationship to it — it’s not a scene-y thing. It’s kind of practical, but also effective and provocative. I’ve been listening to a lot of Final Fantasy music, just walking around to that. It’s nice. If I could give that to someone else, I would feel happy.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies

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1. The song is “every day,” and you can find all kinds of theorizing in the YouTube comment section (along with people being shocked to learn America bombed Japan at some point in the past…which either speaks to how young some bo en listeners are or serves as some kind of indictment of the modern education system)

2. I’ve spared you the aside where I ask if people actually say this, as I genuinely didn’t know this was a thing…and Deadpool invented it?

3. bo en explains here that the show was actually suppossed to be at a different venue initially (WWW in Shibuya) but due to various factors, it was pushed back two months after the anniversary. Omitted becuase I blabber about the state of live bookings in post-COVID Tokyo.

4. Preach, preach!