Koyama Erina

Erina Koyama's songs are an intimate experience. They are nursery rhymes. And great lyrical flights of fancy. They contradict themselves. They are balanced but unstable. They combine enormous musical extravagance with the science of harmony and refinement. They oscillate, not allowing you to settle, turn into luminous droplets on contact with her voice. They are inspired by natural elements from the depths of the sea and the breadth of the sky. They are a fresh electronic breath of air.

Erina Koyama was out the blocks like lightening. In 2004, she sent a demo cassette to Ryuichi Sakamoto to take part in the auditions on his show Radio Sakamoto on J-Wave FM. On hearing the track Dance with Tarantula Ryuichi Sakamoto fell for her music and gave her the impetus she needed to get her professional career going. After the EP Inly and the full length Vividrop which came out in 2007 on Rhythm Zone (the Avex group), her second album was released on Commmons, the label run by Ryuichi Sakamoto (also Avex).

Erina Koyama started wanting to be a singer at the age of 20. She was working in a jazz club and sang regularly with an R&B act. But she felt frustrated artistically and the experience didn't go anywhere. She wanted to get her hands on the music as well and give herself a wider range of sounds to play with. That was when she discovered the creative potential of DTM (Desk Top Music). She threw herself into it and developed her skills over several years by a process of trial and error before mastering the tools of the trade and gaining full artistic satisfaction. Erina Koyama is a determined young woman.

She writes, composes and performs her own arrangements, taking charge of everything from recording to mixing. She is demanding and a perfectionist and doesn't simply reproduce her recordings on stage. Live, she works with an Irish harpist and a guitarist. She aims to produce vast original music with a powerful impact and light touch of Japanese spirituality. In one of her first songs Hana Uta she talks about the temporary nature of the beauty of flower-shaped figures of sound, the simplicity of her own existence and the beauty of the sky.