This is the debut EP from Japanese-American transplant 8tari. Born in Tokyo, she moved to New York as a child & began piano lessons before returning to Japan at when she was 12. However, a freak accident with a prototype blockchain connected gashapon machine outside of a keki shop near Takeshita Street resulted in 8tari being decentralized & becoming an NFT. Lost in the network & no longer able to physically touch a piano, she began making beats that soon began to fill the back streets of Shibuya after down-resizing them for transmission at human audible levels. Renown west coast producer DJ Muggs eventually took 8tari under his wing & is producing her debut EP in full.
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“Neon Sunburn” is a dreary piano opener to the EP that I can only visualize serving as the soundtrack to a rainy ass day whereas “The Guns of Brixton” works in more keys by fusing them with some strings & the sounds of nature that help give the instrumental a woodland feel to it. The penultimate track “Paradise” has a more climactic vibe to it almost as if it were playing in the background of an important scene to a really good movie leading into “Bad Scene, Everyone’s Fault” ending the EP with a drumless, warm beat.
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What we have on Lofi Punk here is essentially Muggs dabbling with chillhop for a duration of 4-songs, 15 minutes & it makes me wonder if he plans on traveling further down this rabbit hole in the future because it’s a really interesting change of pace for the seasoned west coast producer. The instrumentals that he cook up here each have their own mood that they bring out & I like to think of it like him paying homage to the godfather of lo-fi hip hop himself: the late Nujabes.
Score: 7/10