Make Believe Mailer #119: Daoko

A chat with the now-independent artist about going her own way, slashing and burning, and a karaoke performance that made her dreams come true

Photo courtesy of the artist

When taken in as a whole, Daoko’s career stands as one of the most fascinating to play out in 21st century J-pop. As a junior high schooler, she uploaded songs to Nico Nico Douga, starting off with her hip-hop interpretation of a Hatsune Miku cut. She connected with indie label LOW HIGH WHO? PRODUCTION which helped her develop her whispery rap approach to performance. An early example of how social media could foster new stars, she attracted attention almost right away — from m-flo, from TeddyLoid, and eventually from major Toy’s Factory.

In the back half of the 2010s, she ascended to the top of the country’s pop scene with 2017’s “Uchiage Hanabi,” a fireworks-display of a ballad with Kenshi Yonezu doubling as a sign of a new era on the horizon. It pointed towards the central role the internet would play in spotlighting J-pop, the way anime would help boost songs for global audiences and, thanks to the spotlight being shone on two artists who emerged from Vocaloid backgrounds, predicted the 2020s rise of creators raised on singing-synthesizer software.

Yet as the music landscape shifted around her, Daoko started moving in another direction. Her 2020 full-length anima re-imagined the concept of Shibuya-kei pastiche into a eulogy…for a changing Tokyo, for a world in crisis, and for the artist she used to be. A year later, she bid farewell to major-label life in favor of independence, establishing her own agency and imprint called Tefu Tefu, where she would release singles and EPs.

With her first independent full-length album Slash-&-Burn, she razed the Daoko of before to grow.

Released this past May, Slash-&-Burn marks the first time Daoko has shaped every element of an album. Besides writing and singing, she was responsible for assembling a collectin of producers — ranging from frequent collaborators such as Nariaki Obukuro and Hideya Kojima, to experimental pioneers like Foodman — to bring her vision to life, while also assisting in the overall sound herself.

The end result, though, is one of the most personal albums Daoko has created to date. She leans into electronic music, channeling both the internet-born styles she came up on alongside contemporary dance sounds…often letting the two mingle. She’s more intimate across Slash-&-Burn, singing about efforts at escaping bad feelings and seeking euphoria in the face of hurdles (see the particularly devestating “SLUMP,” wherein Daoko attempts to find clarity in the club, while dropping lines focused on the frustrations of being unable to pen hit songs). It’s her, in charge and welcoming a new creative chapter all her own.

A month after the album’s release, I talked with Daoko over Zoom about her latest album, alongside her decision to go independent and her recent collaboration with Sheena Ringo for the latter’s newest album. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MAKE BELIEVE MELODIES: To start, what have you been up to today, before this interview?

DAOKO: I’m actually still a bit tired from the live show I did in Osaka the day before yesterday [laughs]. I just came back yesterday, so I’m still trying to recover from that.

Again, I can’t emphasize enough..thank you again for chatting. Now I feel guilty!

I’m already feeling better, so don’t worry about it! [laughs]

After a live show, what do you do to recover as you say? What’s the Daoko recovery program?

Getting a really good night’s sleep is the first step for sure. After that, I do a lot of stretching and massages too. I try to go to chiropractors too, in order to keep the condition of my body strong. It’s all about maintaining my general health.

I’m far from a performer, but when I was younger I never thought about my overall health, whereas now I’m way more aware of it. You’ve been performing live for a long time, though. Is that a mindset you’ve always had? Or is it something you are more aware of as of late?

It’s definitely a recent development. Maybe because I’m getting older too. I’ve always been somewhat aware of the importance of maintaining your overall condition, but it has definitely become more important in recent years. I am 27 now, so it’s a lot different than compared to when I was 15. I do feel that.

You were performing live in support of your latest album Slash-&-Burn. It’s your latest independent release, and I believe your first full-length album coming from your own label Tefu Tefu. What was the experience of making it like?

Slash-&-Burn is my first fully self-produced album. It was a very independent work, and while I did have to work with other people for various elements of it, the production side centered primarily around me. I had to learn so many new things while creating this album.

What was the most difficult thing you had to learn?

Over the last few albums I made, I always had a producer working with me, who I could discuss the direction of the work with and just generally consult with whenever I had any questions. The structure this time around was much different…it was me. Same with the vocal recording. Before, I’d bring in a professional who would help me select the best vocals, but this time it was all on me. I received a lot of help from the engineers mixing the songs together, but outside of that it was all on me when it came to that side of the work. That was a big challenge…I’m still new to it.

Was there a specific reason you wanted to self-produce the album? Like a specific motivation?

I decided to do Slash-&-Burn as a self-produced album because I wanted to be completely independent, with my own agency and label to share songs capturing the music I liked at that moment in the form of an album. I wanted to express myself more freely. So I wanted to change the direction, by going independent and working on this mostly by myself. I want to do music for the long term…I want to create until I die. So when I took that into consideration, I realized I needed to take a new step.

Working with a major label, there was a lot of team production, and working with others to create the idea of “Daoko.” I could do what I wanted…but within certain regulations. As I’ve grown older, I’ve had a desire to try out new things and have had the self-realization about what kind of music I want to create. This felt like the right direction.

What was the timeline of making Slash-&-Burn?

The actual process had actually been going for about four years. Some of the songs were demos, and others were already written. But the point when I started taking the formation of an album seriously was between the spring and fall of 2023. I selected the tracks during that period, and figured out the best order for them, while also brushing them up.

I’ve always had an abstract idea of what I wanted the album to be. I wanted to associate it with burning fire. I usually come up with the name of the album near the end, but this time around it was actually the first thing I did. There’s a Japanese word, yakihata, which is exactly what I envisioned, “to slash and burn,” to burn a field. I thought that was the perfect way to express the album. I looked up how it sounded in English, and “slash and burn” sounded so cool. I thought it would be a great expression of what I was aiming for. Under that theme, of burning fire, I selected the songs I had already written that fit it.

I read that one of the reasons you went with that theme and title is because you were trying to find a new beginning for yourself. Why did you want to find a new beginning for Daoko?

It all comes back to me wanting to do music for the rest of my life. When I imagine myself at age 26 or 27 doing this for the long term, I wanted to be able to compose, write and arrange music all by myself. I still need some help on that front, but I wanted to work towards attaining that skill. To do that, I figured this would be a good challenge.

That’s a great transition to talk about the music of Slash-&-Burn. What did you want to do that Daoko hasn’t tried before?

As I was producing the album, I kept wondering “what’s the genre of this going to be?” Or maybe more accurately, what are people going to tag this as musically. The reactions I’ve gotten so far have been “music you can dance to,” which I’m happy to hear. That’s the type of music I always like to listen to myself. While mixing it, I was unifying the tones of the songs so they would have one theme, and it ended up being dance music.

What dance music have you been listening to lately?

Over the four years I was making this album, I had to do a lot of research about what kind of dance music I wanted to draw from. I ended up listening to a lot of U.K. house, and a lot of Vocaloid. Some of the songs on Slash-&-Burn definitely incorporate elements of the new wave of Vocaloid artists going right now.

That’s interesting, since you have, to varying degrees, always been associated with Vocaloid music, since early in your career on Nico Nico Douga. What’s your relationship to Vocaloid in 2024?

Vocaloid right now is so fun and interesting! Like you said, being an artist who came up on Nico Nico Douga has meant I’ve always had some kind of connection with Vocaloid, and there was definitely a time in my life where I was listening to a lot of music from that world. But I ended up taking a break from it for a while. It was only two or three years ago I had the chance to check back in with the Vocaloid scene, and I saw all these young creators, most of them in their teens or early 20s, active in it. I realized how free it was — there was no regulations around it, it is such an exciting corner of music right now. You can even hear Vocaloid music playing in clubs [laughs]. I’m loving this phenomenon, and the growth of the Vocaloid style playing now.

Slash-&-Burn is self-produced, but you did bring on a lot of artists to help with creating the music, ranging from constant collaborators like Nariaki Obukuro to new names in your universe like Foodman. How did you go about selecting people to help you craft the sound of the album?

I wanted to work with people I respect, and people whose music inspires me. It was based off of good character and good impressions, so that we could work together easily and create something good from our collaboration. And while it was a self-produced album, I still needed a lot of help in making it happen, so I wanted to make sure we had a good connection.

Just because he’s probably my favorite person to appear on the credits here…how did you connect with Foodman?

I’ve always listened to Foodman’s music, and have always found it original. It’s real feel-good music for me. I perform at a lot of club events, and I had the chance to chat with Foodman at one of these. We got along talking about sauna [laughs]. We just sort of hit it off from there. I decided to give them an offer from there.

I’ve had the chance to talk to Foodman a few times now, both in interviews and just outside of work, and sauna always comes up when we chat. It’s like the ultimate Foodman topic.

I know right? I also really like saunas. I’m not as hardcore as Foodman though [laughs].

I don’t think anyone is as hardcore about saunas as Foodman. When did you get into saunas? Is that another recent development?

I’ve always liked saunas…well before the recent “sauna boom” happening now…but I have recently started doing the cold water plunge afterwards. That was influenced by a manga called Sadou which is all about saunas. Through that, I learned about the idea of totonou, which is kind of like a realignment of your body achieved through doing the sauna and then jumping in the cold water bath.

I’ve recently also gotten into saunas — almost certainly because of the boom — and yeah, it’s such a refresh, right? A great way to get rid of stress.

It’s great! [laughs]

I recently listened to a conversation a J-pop artist in their 30s who had started out as a teenager had, where they were talking about how being that young made the experience really challenging and intimidating…sometimes scary. You also started out as a teenager, first via the internet and then as a major label artist. How do you look back on those times now that you’ve had some distance from those times?

From the ages of 15 to 17, so first to third year of high school, I belonged to an indie label. It was almost like doing an after-school extracurricular for me. Like some people would go to tennis practice, I would just go home and work on my music. It wasn’t scary or anything, and I didn’t feel much pressure. There were blurred lines between being a student and being an artist. But when I joined a major label, it became full-time work. I was “hired” to make music. I had so much to learn, with a huge learning curve.

If the Daoko of today could go back and talk to the Daoko about to join a major label, what advice would you give yourself?

I wish I knew more about music copyrights before I joined [laughs]. I would tell her to study more. I didn’t face any problems on that front, it’s just an important topic for any artist to know about. Like, how taxes work. I wish I would have learned more about it just for me.

Always good knowledge to have. Something that comes up in a lot of your older interviews, whether in relation to your music or the music your father listened to that influenced you, is Sheena Ringo. Recently, you collaborated with her. How did that come about?

It’s really hard to describe how it feels, having it happen…I’m still trying to comprehend it [laughs]. I feel like I’m dreaming…when I worked on the song, I would feel nervous and have to detach myself from the situation. I had to pretend I was dreaming. It’s hard to put into words!

I met her through a stylist, who was a mutual acquaintance of ours. In fact, even before we started working on the song, the stylist invited us out to go to a karaoke bar together…well, more like a snack. Among the Showa-era pop songs I often sing at karaoke, I like doing Seiko Matsuda's songs that I find easy to sing, which I did while we were out too. And after that, in our email exchange, she praised the song I sang at karaoke so much. After that, she offered me this opportunity. If it hadn't been for that karaoke bar, it might not have happened (laughs). It really is like a dream come true.

What song did you sing to win over Sheena Ringo? [laughs]

“Nagisa No Balcony!”

Last, before I let you rest and recover the rest of the day, is there anything else about Slash-&-Burn you want to tell readers about?

I want to talk a bit about the first song on the album, “Tenshi Ga Itayo.” This song is the first time my name has been listed as the arranger in the credits. I consider it my “debut.” I worked with Hideya Kojima, who I think a lot of listeners would notice, so it left a very deep impression on me.

After that, I also wanted to emphasize the keywords about what this album is about. The first is “fire,” as I already mentioned. The second is “washed-out pink.” Regarding that, the artist who did the cover art, named Kennosuke Hara, uses that color a lot. I wanted to use that a lot here, and it’s important to the overall theme of the album. Another word is “curse.” That’s I’ll I will say about that…”curse.” [laughs]

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

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