Bio provided by artist:
There are few bands in the world more exciting than bed, the Japanese four-piece who have broken through the hegemony of 2020s guitar music to make their mark on the international post-punk scene. Hailing from Tokyo, bed are a brilliant, volatile contradiction: A group of crack musicians whose deft-but-counterintuitive blend of techno, pop, punk and classic rock has earned them a reputation as one of the best live bands in Japan. A motley crew of punk devotees and indie die-hards willing to break the mould, bed are smart and clear-headed: Four virtuosic renegades ready to spread their gung-ho, deliciously laissez-faire attitude to the world.
bed are unclassifiable by design: Their debut EP 円相 | Enso, set for release later this year, hops between soft-rock and techno anarchy with aplomb, making time to explore dance-punk and ragged-edged punk along the way. Sinji, the group’s founder, sees bed’s mission as one of constant exploration in the face of a world barrelling towards hegemony and sameness. “Playing rock and roll means you’re going to hell, right? Or have no future,” he says. “Well, I don’t mind—maybe it’s the reason to live for me.”
Sinji started forming bed in the summer of 2021, when his project with Sony Japan was petering out and he was feeling a strong pull towards the kind of rock music he had actually been listening to his whole life. He knew his new housemate, Une, was a vocalist who had also grown frustrated with the J-pop industry: They started recording rough demos in Sinji’s bedroom and began establishing the foundation of the band. As a result, Sinji stopped his job search and picked up the bass, while Une left his pop band.
Two more members completed the line-up: Sinji’s childhood friend, Shun-1, who had been working in a pickled plum packaging company, had just moved to Tokyo alone as his mental health condition was not understood in the rural environment he was living and working in; the band’s guitarist and youngest member Joneu was a university student with a strong interest in shoegaze and indie rock that Une found online.
The freeform nature of the group’s construction in itself was appealing: Une was sick of having to live his life as an idol, “having to learn the moves, to do Instagram.” And so he decided to base bed around principles that actively railed against the hegemony he had known: “We decided to ignore all about the Japanese music industry’s attitude,” says Une. “We didn’t give a shit.”
That ethos is remarkable in Japan, a country that still boasts a robust music industry to a fault: There is little in the way of indie music there, and practically no bands like bed, which seek to upend established rhythms and ideals. “I had never made a song with friends before bed,” says Sinji. “We just wanted to take in the atmosphere and people of Tokyo.”
True to that idea, 円相 | Enso speaks to the quotidian drudgery of life in the big city, capturing the feeling of existing in a tradition-laden society with sharpness and wit. “風 | Kaze” was inspired by a walk bed took through Tokyo, where they could hear the rattling of a washing machine; its consistent rattling ended up inspiring a song about the way generational feelings can butt up against individual morals. “These songs are about daily frustration,” says Une.
“Everyone waits for the green light at the crosswalk—these songs are saying: You don’t have to follow what everyone else is doing.”
Despite their ethos of power to the people, bed are hardly an activist group: They make their music for their fans, already a devoted tribe in Tokyo, where their regular club night, bedroom, attracts large crowds. 円相 | Enso is an attempt to find that tribe beyond Japan, and to move beyond the indie influences that provided the bedrock of their early days, although they still feel a sense of devotion to the people who crowd out bedroom each month. “円相 | Enso,” the EP’s title track, was made specifically for bedroom, tying together elements of electronic music and punk in a way they knew their fans would understand. “We realised that rock music can just be dance music,” says Sinji. “Tokyo is beginning to open up to techno, but it doesn’t have to be a separate subculture.”
In a way, though, bed are their own subculture: A scene of four who happen to be finding fans outside their own idiosyncratic clique. The beauty of 円相 | Enso is in its malleability: It’s a rock EP that drives hard into techno; a dance record played by seething punks. Whichever way you see it, bed are forging a new path that’s admirable and real. “It’s so hard to get this position in the industry,” says Sinji. “For Japanese artists… this is crazy.”
Bio provided by artist:
There are few bands in the world more exciting than bed, the Japanese four-piece who have broken through the hegemony of 2020s guitar music to make their mark on the international post-punk scene. Hailing from Tokyo, bed are a brilliant, volatile contradiction: A group of crack musicians whose deft-but-counterintuitive blend of techno, pop, punk and classic rock has earned them a reputation as one of the best live bands in Japan. A motley crew of punk devotees and indie die-hards willing to break the mould, bed are smart and clear-headed: Four virtuosic renegades ready to spread their gung-ho, deliciously laissez-faire attitude to the world.
bed are unclassifiable by design: Their debut EP 円相 | Enso, set for release later this year, hops between soft-rock and techno anarchy with aplomb, making time to explore dance-punk and ragged-edged punk along the way. Sinji, the group’s founder, sees bed’s mission as one of constant exploration in the face of a world barrelling towards hegemony and sameness. “Playing rock and roll means you’re going to hell, right? Or have no future,” he says. “Well, I don’t mind—maybe it’s the reason to live for me.”
Sinji started forming bed in the summer of 2021, when his project with Sony Japan was petering out and he was feeling a strong pull towards the kind of rock music he had actually been listening to his whole life. He knew his new housemate, Une, was a vocalist who had also grown frustrated with the J-pop industry: They started recording rough demos in Sinji’s bedroom and began establishing the foundation of the band. As a result, Sinji stopped his job search and picked up the bass, while Une left his pop band.
Two more members completed the line-up: Sinji’s childhood friend, Shun-1, who had been working in a pickled plum packaging company, had just moved to Tokyo alone as his mental health condition was not understood in the rural environment he was living and working in; the band’s guitarist and youngest member Joneu was a university student with a strong interest in shoegaze and indie rock that Une found online.
The freeform nature of the group’s construction in itself was appealing: Une was sick of having to live his life as an idol, “having to learn the moves, to do Instagram.” And so he decided to base bed around principles that actively railed against the hegemony he had known: “We decided to ignore all about the Japanese music industry’s attitude,” says Une. “We didn’t give a shit.”
That ethos is remarkable in Japan, a country that still boasts a robust music industry to a fault: There is little in the way of indie music there, and practically no bands like bed, which seek to upend established rhythms and ideals. “I had never made a song with friends before bed,” says Sinji. “We just wanted to take in the atmosphere and people of Tokyo.”
True to that idea, 円相 | Enso speaks to the quotidian drudgery of life in the big city, capturing the feeling of existing in a tradition-laden society with sharpness and wit. “風 | Kaze” was inspired by a walk bed took through Tokyo, where they could hear the rattling of a washing machine; its consistent rattling ended up inspiring a song about the way generational feelings can butt up against individual morals. “These songs are about daily frustration,” says Une.
“Everyone waits for the green light at the crosswalk—these songs are saying: You don’t have to follow what everyone else is doing.”
Despite their ethos of power to the people, bed are hardly an activist group: They make their music for their fans, already a devoted tribe in Tokyo, where their regular club night, bedroom, attracts large crowds. 円相 | Enso is an attempt to find that tribe beyond Japan, and to move beyond the indie influences that provided the bedrock of their early days, although they still feel a sense of devotion to the people who crowd out bedroom each month. “円相 | Enso,” the EP’s title track, was made specifically for bedroom, tying together elements of electronic music and punk in a way they knew their fans would understand. “We realised that rock music can just be dance music,” says Sinji. “Tokyo is beginning to open up to techno, but it doesn’t have to be a separate subculture.”
In a way, though, bed are their own subculture: A scene of four who happen to be finding fans outside their own idiosyncratic clique. The beauty of 円相 | Enso is in its malleability: It’s a rock EP that drives hard into techno; a dance record played by seething punks. Whichever way you see it, bed are forging a new path that’s admirable and real. “It’s so hard to get this position in the industry,” says Sinji. “For Japanese artists… this is crazy.”