Founded in 2005 by Yasushi Akimoto, the Japanese band AKB48 is one of the most successful artists of the present day. With songs like Beginner, River, and Heavy Rotation, the members led by Atsuko Maeda sang, danced, and jumped their way into the hearts of East Asian residents overnight and triggered puberty in many a teenager with a revealing music video or two. Andrew Joyce and Kenneth Maxwell of the Wall Street Journal once described AKB48's works as „sugary…

Adali Schell is a Los Angeles-born artist who began exploring the fantasy and reality of growing up in Southern California and his family's roots in rural Ohio in his photographic work at the age of eleven. He is currently a student at the University of California pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. His photo series Angst and Ill was created over an eight-month period, from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to the election of Joe Biden as President of the…

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has made a deep impression with his remarkable combination of top-level musicianship and visionary programming. Born in Reykjavík in 1984, the artist's almost frighteningly perfectly crafted pieces know how to delight both audiences and otherwise cynical critics. The Daily Telegraph called Víkingur Ólafsson „the new superstar of classical piano“, and the New York Times described him as „Iceland's Glenn Gould..

I am quite simple-minded. The more colors someone uses in their art, the more I'm willing to look at them. This could be due to the fact that I am a very visual person, or because I have remained a child in my head who simply does not want to grow up. The South Koreak artist Adehla Lee was born in Busan in 1983. She went on to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Hongik University in Seoul and then her Master of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York. So you…

When Avril Lavignes's debut single Complicated first hit MTV in 2002, it was like Cupid himself was trying to murder me with a bag full of love arrows. The then seventeen-year-old Canadian was not only downright sassy, perky and outrageous, no, her songs were also really good - especially the ones written by Los Angeles singer-songwriter trio Matrix. Let Go and Under My Skin were, without a doubt, among the most listened-to albums on my green iPod Mini, even if some…

The self-titled debut album of the Japanese band Millennium Parade is on repeat since release on my phone. After all, there are only absolute bangers on there. Bon Dance? Great! Fly With Me? Stunning! Familia? Fabulous! Just the genre is difficult to explain, because Millennium Parade simply throw everything available, such as pop, hip hop, electro, dance, rock, funk, jazz and rap, into a pot, stir vigorously and then slap the motley mash against the wall. „The…

Sure, everyone is always celebrating the seventies, eighties or nineties for their respective style, fashion and music output. But my great love is probably for the magical period around the millennium. When people were on the brink of the digital revolution with their first flip phones, had no idea what Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were, and were both anxious and curious about the future after the big 2000. In Japan in the mid-nineties, the style of music now kno…

If I want, I can make friends with very many people in a very short time. No matter in which place, no matter in which situation, no matter with which counterpart. Then I'm funny, rousing and so so open-hearted, as if we knew each other for a lifetime. I share intimate stories and secrets, confess my biggest sins and fears, and make them feel like I understand them and would left no stone unturned, no matter how unattainable, to make them happier just by having met m…

While the world collectively celebrates South Korea's cultural output, one very special troop should not be forgotten alongside Blackpink, Red Velvet and BTS: Balming Tiger, the quirky pioneers of Seoul's idiosyncratic rap scene. The group is a collection of multimedia misfits who kick K-pop down from the poppy, colorful glittery world into the abyss: Girls' Generation meets Brockhampton, Keith Ape meets Abra. And I so hope I get to see them live sometime soon. Demol…

Japanese music label Wack, part of J-pop giant Avex, is known for its quirky bands like BiSH, EMPiRE and Gang Parade. Founded by Junnosuke Watanabe in 2014, the company's mission is to give a platform to somewhat more experimental artists, but one that is trimmed for success despite their otherness. ASP is one of the newer bandwagons at Wack, which has had to reorient itself after the breakup of the exceptional formation BiSH and is now opening up to even more altern..