101A blends rock and electronics with almost ethereal vocals to create music that can be compared with the likes of ACO and, in some cases, MONO.
They appeared on the Tokyo scene for the first time in 1997 with the band decay (produced by Yukihiro Takahashi, who is known to be one of the former members of Ryuichi Sakamoto's project, Yellow Magic Orchestra aka YMO), but "K" and Noah made their real first steps in the music industry as 101A in 2000.
When the band was created, they decided to set up their own independent label called Label † film.4. During that time, they held their first performance with support drummer Yoshihiro Hirama, and their first demo called apotosis was released in 2002. About one year later, the first mini-album with the simplistic title 01 was released.
The year 2005 was a new chapter in the band's history, as they flew to the United Kingdom to perform their first overseas gigs with their new session drummer Chang Ileun. Those shows took place in London at the Metro Club and the Bull&Gate, which are both famous clubs in the capital. Their projects materialized with other gigs in the UK at the end of the year, and they were recognized as one of the most important composers of 2005's Tokyo scene. However, the band didn’t limit itself to Tokyo, but also performed in other large cities such as Osaka, Nagoya and Sendai. In the summer of 2006, they took part in the well-known Japanese festival Fuji Rock Festival alongside bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sonic Youth, and Guitar Wolf. During the same summer, they also released their first full-album entitled one day.
2007 brought the band overseas once more, as they visited not only Korea but also made plans to drop in on the European scene with three lives in France, Belgium and the UK in November. Also, after years with only support drummers, one of their previous support drummers, Sally, has finally joined the band as a third member.
January 2008 brought the release of their second full-length album, LETHE. This wasn’t the only release of the year, as December brought another mini-album, which was untitled unknown. Other than the release of the mini-album, it seemed that their activities had started to simmer down a little in this period and the band focused mostly on live shows. There were plans for the band to come back to Europe again in July, but these plans were cancelled.
Currently, the band has a number of live shows planned for the upcoming months. Hopefully, we will see 101A back overseas again in the near future.
