Tashaki Miyaki announce their sophomore album, Castaway and release the first song & video off the album, “Gone.” 

Album will be out April 23^rd via Metropolis Records.

Singer/Drummer/Producer of Castaway Paige Stark says of the video: “Mainly due to necessity, I decided to direct the videos myself for this record. I am interested in filmmaking and seemed the safest thing to do during Covid. Our bass player Sandi, and myself are both dancers and we love the medium as an expression of emotion.  I asked Sandi to star and she said yes. Our crew was me, our DP Arlene Muller, her boyfriend Felipe assisting her, and our guitarist Luke drove the van. It felt really good to have the whole band there especially since we have never been much involved in the video process. This song is about loss and is very direct. People come and go in our lives and that grieving process can be painful. Often the people are quite literally gone. For the video I knew I wanted to incorporate dance and I knew I wanted to see Sandi moving in and and out of spaces. I wanted the dance to convey a release of emotion…like the emotion leaving the body, which can often come in waves. And then at the end it’s a burst and she’s running. We knew we wanted to do a sequence like that but I wasn’t sure how we were going to shoot it and it all came together on the spot. We worked with Sarah Marquelle Kruger on choreography but Sandi improvised the ending based on some things we had talked about and a last minute suggestion from Arlene. It was magic.”

Tashaki Miyaki are explorers of dreamy, hazy, melodic guitar pop. Though its three members are self-described “California kids,” their sound is influenced by much more than a west coast attitude. They all have broad musical tastes spanning across the American Songbook, Sun Records, Doo-Whoop and vocal groups from the 40s-50s, “the 60’s & 70’s things everyone loves”, their hero “Uncle Neil”, Punk, “Everything in the 90’s” and past and current hip-hop. Their sophomore LP, Castaway, will be released by Metropolis in April 2021, expanding their musical palette and broadening the emotional territory with songs circling themes of love, memory and time which are haunting, catchy, soothing and arresting all at once.

In their typical unhurried fashion, Tashaki Miyaki spent the past couple years writing and recording their sophomore LP, Castaway, also produced by Stark. Musically, the band pushed themselves into new spaces. They did a deep dive into classic film scores and the music that originally inspired them to create as kids- ranging from Portishead to the Byrds, Snoop Dogg to Brian Eno, Prince to Bryan Ferry. They tried to deconstruct their own bands’ sound and reboot from that place, while letting some beloved influences echo throughout. “We decided no wah pedal for most of the record,” Stark explains. “We tried to incorporate new soundscapes. Like, what if there isn’t as much reverb on everything? What would be the less obvious sonic choice here? What if everything isn’t as fuzzy and smeary? What sounds have we not tried? What if we let stuff be a little naked? What does that sound like?” Stark also pushed her boundaries lyrically, going deeper and more personal. “The title of the record comes from this thing a friend would say. He said called himself a ‘castaway from decent society’. I feel like a castaway from everything a lot of the time. When I wrote the title track, I was thinking about love and how it changes over time if you stay in something long enough. It gets hard. And sometimes you feel stuck, and that’s kind of the mood of the record. Being stuck with yourself or with your partner or with your habits or thoughts. Being stuck in your reality, in your life. It’s a pretty melancholy record, I guess. I always try to be direct, but I didn’t have as much life lived on the first record. I saw things very black and white, and perhaps simpler. Now I see a lot more grey and a lot more complexity. And I think this record goes into that grey area.”