Lullatone

With a system of small synthesizers and array of analogue instruments, Lullatone has been soundtracking every moment possible over the last 25 years. Primarily the work of composer / producer Shawn James Seymour (with occasional past help from wife, Yoshimi), Lullatone has garnered over 115 million streams along 15 albums all from a small studio based in Nagoya, Japan.

Aside from composing for film, TV and art installations for years, each Lullatone album has been a type of personal soundtrack to document life through the diary of sound.

2016’s Thinking about Thursdays found the duo at their busiest - traveling around the world for work and concerts all while keeping up with a challenge to release one new track every single Thursday - a meditation on a special type of OCD (“obsessing on creativity deadlines). Songs That Spin in Circles was written and recorded over a week-long stay inside of a hospital when their first child was born - a series of looping lullabies made to help their new baby sleep after a premature and somewhat scary entrance into the world. Houseplant Music and Shapes in Time were covid-era snapshots of an urge to make a cozy sounding antidote to a potentially cramped situation.

The newest album, Music for My Friend’s Flower Shop is a background score for Nagoya’s most avant-garde(ning) flower shop, Tumbleweed. After helping curate a series of concerts there, Shawn set out to make a special soundscape that would match the ambient atmosphere of the space. The result is an album that plays a bit like a playlist. Each track flows into the next while all standing on their own as well. Warm analogue tones blossom alongside a garden of guitars notes plucked like petals from shops considered collection of fascinating flora.