We caught up with Nobuki Akiyama, the vocalist and guitarist of Tokyo-based alt-rock band DYGL (pronounced ‘day-glo’). The band released their latest electrifying single ‘Crawl’ on September 6th, via their label Easy Enough. The single premiered on acclaimed tastemaker EARMILK, and received support from Billboard Japan as well as Yahoo Japan.
DYGL has taken the alt-rock space by storm, with their trademark fusion of jangle pop and post-punk influences. They have performed in China, the USA, the UK and Europe. Since their inception in 2012, DYGL has released four studio albums and received support from the likes of The Line of Best Fit and Japan Times.
‘Crawl’ serves as a teaser for their forthcoming album Cut The Collar slated for release later in 2024. The album was mastered by the legendary Joe LaPorta (J Cole, Yaeji) of Sterling Sound, and is set to be some of their best work to date. In the interview, Nobuki reveals what inspired them to start making music, what their creative process involves and how they’ve managed to stay consistent over the course of their career.
Stream ‘Crawl’ below while reading the interview:
1. Tell us about you, how long have you been making music? What inspired you to start?
We’ve been together making music for almost 12 years as DYGL! Even after 4 albums we still feel very fresh to be with each other in this band to motivate each other to create more music. One of my biggest inspirations in the early days to make me start music was The View from Scotland. Especially the song ‘Superstar Tradesman’ from their 1st album, there’s some simple guitar strumming on its intro. That made me grab a guitar & start to write my own music.
2. The music industry is super competitive these days, was there a moment in your life that you wanted to give up on music? How did you manage to stay focused and achieve what you want?
I never thought giving up on it because ultimately music is literally the part of my life. Wheather it’s a job or not, I don’t know how to live without it. It’s more fundamental part of my life rather than a job. There’s no way to quit it because music is always there. There’s no point in making music we can’t love honestly neither. Of course it’s super competitive and I admit that but as long as we can be happy for what we make, I think we’re already the winner in the game. Money, fame, whatever comes later as long as music is good. Honesty in music comes first. For us, at least.
3. How would you describe your creative processes? Who writes the lyrics to the songs? Are the music and lyrics written in conjunction, or separately?
For the most time I am the one who brings the first demo to the band, but these days something clicked suddenly and our random music session often go really exciting and we can find many gems from the sessions recorded on iPhone’s voicememo. So we do more writing sessions together than before these days. We kind of found the tone that we wanna do from now and once it’s found it kinda drives us to make more ideas. Always sounds come first, then I find the views & moods from the sound to write words.
4. Where did the inspiration come from?
Anywhere really, but mostly music lately. Vinyls, cassettes, still CDs, all the streaming services, all the good music coming from anywhere motivates us a lot. I personally love cassettes a lot though.
(And some fresh air by the river around my flat always makes me feel happy and creative so I’d love to give it credit too)
5. What’s next for you?
So many things that we wanna do. We already got many new demos so we’d love to record some the next month. There’s a coming Japan Tour in this autumn-winter season as well (hope anyone attends it if you’re ever in Japan) so we’re gearing up for it. Some festivals to play in Indonesia & China this year too. We’d love to go to more countries the next year! Invite us to your home town please. We’d love to come anytime.
We need 25 hours a day, 8 days a week, really.
