The slow and steady rise of Lamp, a cult favorite

Taiyo Someya truly understood how big his band Lamp had gotten when he found himself worn out by direct messages. The musician says he has tried to respond to every digital fan letter sent his way since the group started in 2000, whether on the social media platform du jour or the project’s own aughts-appropriate bulletin board system (BBS), which is still active today.

“I love replying to messages and answering questions, but at some point I got a little tired trying to respond,” Someya says to The Japan Times over video chat with a laugh. He emphasizes that he appreciates the enthusiasm and support but has gotten overwhelmed.

“I’ll sometimes check YouTube comments,” says bandmate Kaori Sakakibara. “(The fans) will use translation apps and it becomes really cute Japanese. That makes me smile.”

It’s a reflection of just how much listeners around the world love Lamp. The group — which features Someya, Sakakibara and Yusuke Nagai, all aged 43, who call in from their respective homes in the Kanto region — has developed a cult following with its 1960s pop harmonies, ’70s folk craft and ’80s bossa nova brightness. This unique blend of sonic inspirations has made Lamp the stuff of message board lore. Albums such as 2004’s “For Lovers” (“Koibito E”) and 2014’s “Dream” (“Yume”) developed reputations as hidden gems among online music circles domestic and overseas, helping Lamp to put on shows at venues such as Tokyo’s Liquidroom and tour surrounding Asian countries.

With its recently released ninth album, “Dusk to Dawn” (“Ichiya No Pathos”), the band is now being viewed in a new way. Once something akin to a word-of-mouth favorite, the rise of music streaming data and online communities reveals just how far Lamp has traveled. Twitter users and writers for publications such as FashionSnap have been floored by the group’s global popularity, specifically by how it has pulled in over 2.35 million monthly listeners on Spotify. That’s a number closer to — and even ahead of — big-name J-pop acts and legendary Japanese artists with seemingly larger international profiles such as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Lamp’s music and audio clips score all kinds of TikToks, even if it’s just Sakakibara introducing the group. It’s arguably the most left-field inclusion on Spotify’s Gacha Pop playlist but, by pure numbers, one of the most deserving.

Lamp is part of a new canon of Japanese music embraced and shaped by listeners around the world. Like Fishmans, Ichiko Aoba or Siinamota, the band shows how devotion to craft can pay off and foster a dedicated community of fans.

“We’ve always had the same mindset, which is not to overly promote or advertise our music,” Someya says when asked if they check streaming data or try to play the Spotify game. He prefers a slow and steady career instead of one marked by sudden fame that can’t be sustained or replicated.

The band says “Dusk to Dawn” captures the sensation of time going by. “One night is like life itself — life from death,” Someya says. Personal developments colored this theme, as some members experienced the birth of their first children and the passing of parents. The lyrics, though, are rarely explicit about these big-picture happenings. As it has done for over two decades, Lamp focuses on the small details of life. Songs play out in rooms (the delicate folk of “Alone In My Bedroom” or the horn-assisted light funk of “Last Dance”) or on solitary walks home (the mid-tempo chamber pop of “Cold Way Home” or the more meditative “Around The Corner”). Against these settings, the songs focus on memories of what once was.

Someya says tracks for “Dusk to Dawn” started taking shape concurrently with Lamp’s last release, 2018’s “Her Watch.” (Tellingly, the newest collection includes a song with the same title.) “At first we said, ‘Let’s do 12 songs for this new album, with me and Nagai splitting up song creation,’” Someya says.

Nagai, however, says he found it tough, partially due to his mind being in a difficult place during this period (he doesn’t elaborate on why) and the challenges of multitasking. This resulted in his songwriting process taking about a year to finish and requiring help from his bandmates. In that time, Someya kept writing and found himself with even more material. The band added many of those songs to “Dusk to Dawn,” making it the longest Lamp offering to date, with 20 tracks.

“In the streaming era, artists tend to release songs one by one to platforms,” Someya says. “We can do that anytime in the future, but we thought this was a rare chance to release such a large album at once.”

Small changes to the recording process emerged, most notably Someya using the digital audio workstation Pro Tools himself for the first time, leading to a more “managed” sound. Still, all three members agree that the actual process of creation and capturing the music hasn’t changed much since they started out over two decades ago.

“I guess back then we hit one another more, as a joke, but now we’ve gotten too mature for that,” Sakakibara says. “Someya used to give Nagai more compliments, but at a certain point Nagai didn’t seem as motivated by them.”

“Now I know Nagai too well — I have run out of things to say,” Someya says with a laugh.

“That’s all true. But I think Someya is crazy positive and really unique. He’s an incredible person,” Nagai adds.

While the members have known one another for over 20 years — Nagai and Someya connected in high school, though they actually attended the same kindergarten in northern Chiba, too — the core of their relationship seems unchanged. It’s similar to their approach to music. Lamp has always drawn from older artists from all over the globe to make a sonic bricolage. The band emerged during the final days of Shibuya-kei, and the group’s out-of-time compositions made it easy to link them to that style.

It also explains why Lamp is frequently described as ”nostalgic.” Given the trio’s fondness for 1960s pop and other well-worn styles, it’s easy to see the group as focused on the past. But rather than settling with the familiar, the members always tinker with their sonic palette and don’t present yesteryear as a golden time (if anything, the lyrics on “Dusk to Dawn” present the past as painful, with emotional gut punches delivered from sudden memories and old diary entries).

“As listeners, we love listening to older music. As creators, we always try to make something new, even if it’s just for us,” Someya says. “We don’t think it’s worth it to recreate the same sound that already exists. Maybe we sound nostalgic, but we want to sound new, and we are serious about offering something new to our work.”

He elaborates with an example from “Dusk to Dawn” (with the disclaimer “Is it OK if I get technical?”). On this album, he found himself experimenting with the C-sharp 7-9th minor chord, as it was something he felt he didn’t hear much in songs and a technique he had not applied previously to Lamp’s work. “None of us have studied music formally, so it’s always about finding something new in the creative process,” he says.

“The key is always being able to make music that we think is good,” he adds. Even in an algorithm-dominated era, that sort of classic thinking goes a long way.