Next week will mark Brooklyn, New York-based synth-pop duo Chairlift's first gig in Japan, but it won't be the first time here for Caroline Polachek.
The singer and synthesizer player lived in Japan in her early childhood and says the experience had a lasting effect on her artistically.
"The things that I recall the most vividly are the kinds of things that children would care about: illustrations, colors, the sound of the language (without actually being able to speak it), and the way it looks when written (without knowing how to write more than a few characters)," she recalls. "Tea, rice, candy, shaved ice, a pink kimono with golden cranes embroidered on the back that I loved. But despite the specific nature of my experience, I think the delicate quality of Japanese composition and aesthetics really got into me at a young age, and that hearing a foreign language all the time in a familiar way gave me a love for unfamiliar sounds and vocal textures, and that I try to recreate that feeling now; familiar strangeness."