Japanese independent artist Kierrr has shared their second single ‘Frail = “me”’, (Mix / Mastering: Kensei Ogata) a densely atmospheric collision of shoegaze, dream pop and fractured memory that finds something unsettling lurking beneath the brightness of summer.
The track begins in deceptively open territory. Whispered vocals drift through layered guitars against the imagined backdrop of an intensely vivid Japanese summer, but that sense of clarity doesn’t last. As ‘Frail = “me”’ progresses, distortion creeps in and the world surrounding the song gradually begins to buckle.
Part of that instability comes from Kierrr bringing sounds from everyday life directly into the recording. Household electronics, the ignition of a lighter, accidental equipment noise and deliberately degraded digital processing are woven into the track, initially recognisable before becoming increasingly difficult to separate from everything around them.
By the second half, the accumulating noise serves a purpose beyond providing the inevitable shoegaze crescendo. Reality itself appears to be slipping, with memory, fiction and the present increasingly occupying the same space.
There is something distinctly cinematic about the approach. Kierrr cites All About Lily Chou-Chou and early-2000s Japanese cinema among the cultural reference points surrounding the song, alongside the imperfect textures of ageing digital media. Rather than attempting to recreate those influences, ‘Frail = “me”’ draws on their contradictions: beautiful images concealing something considerably less secure beneath the surface.
The accompanying video pushes further into that territory, combining vivid summer greenery with fragmented text and degraded early-digital imagery.
‘Frail = “me”’ follows Kierrr’s debut single ‘Suichuu Yuei’ (水中遊泳), released earlier this year and subsequently picked up by Japanese independent outlets AVYSS and Sleep like a pillow.
The two tracks approach similar feelings of instability from opposite directions. ‘Suichuu Yuei’ begins submerged beneath heavily reverberating guitars and indistinct vocals; ‘Frail = “me”’ starts out in the light and slowly watches it become unreliable.
Two singles into the project, Kierrr is already constructing a distinctive universe where the beautiful and the disquieting are never particularly far apart.
