Anamanaguchi - [USA] (2019)

Anamanaguchi is a four-piece band from New York and Los Angeles made up of Peter Berkman, Ary Warnaar,James DeVito, and Luke Silas. Their long-awaited album, [USA], will be released on Polyvinyl Record Co. in October 2019.

"[USA] is the first Anamanaguchi album deliberately set in the real world." says Pete. "It's a kind of long-exposure photo that started when we chose the title in 2014." Ary says: "While fantasy can be an amazing way to experience beauty, happiness... feelings in general, it often stands tension with reality: in our interactions with other people and the world we live in. [USA] is inspired by the struggles of acknowledging the distinction between the two... a process so many of us seem to be undergoing.”

Since forming in the mid-2000s, Anamanaguchi have been revered as pioneers in the homemade, digital world of chiptune music: they combined a loud and fast punk band with hyper-melodic squarewaves from hacked Nintendo hardware. Their earliest releases have been distributed on NES cartridges you can actually play, and in 2010 they scored the cult-classic soundtrack to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game.

In 2013, Anamanaguchi self-released Endless Fantasy - a 22-track album backed by an out-of-control Kickstarter campaign that brought in $275,000, more than five times their goal. (They also sent a pizza to space.)

In 2016, they parodied corporate "Triple-A" gaming with Capsule Silence XXIV - a free video game 'leaked' by the band in a staged twitter meltdown against a fake company - with a soundtrack featuring over 40 songs. That same year, they collaborated on a pop single with computer-generated Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku, and were the first independent artists to perform alongside her hologram on tour.

[USA] is equally ambitious in a markedly different way, with a departure that is, in part, sonic — the album features voices (both human and synthetic) and a wider palette of sounds than ever before — as well as conceptual: perhaps for the first time, Anamanaguchi confront reality.