Bajune Tobeta is a Japanese composer, producer, and pianist who has developed a genre-crossing compositional practice spanning contemporary classical, ambient electronics, & Brazilian music and which is rooted in the question of how sound shapes the emotional and physiological states of the human body. A protégé of Ryuichi Sakamoto and contracted artist at Sakamoto’s Tokyo production house LLP 10°C, Tobeta has produced a widely appreciated body of work over the years including music for games and films as well as collaborations with major figures across all the genres he intersects.
His newest work takes inspiration from Haruki Murakami’s novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and its contrasting interwoven narratives depicting the dense sonic life of contemporary Tokyo and the walled, silent realm of the inner mind. With these themes in mind, Tobeta conceptualizes a musical counterpart in the form of an anechoic chamber: a space that strips away external sound to reveal what lies within. Across the five tracks it comprises, Anechoic draws on elements of contemporary classical composition, lo-fi electronics, and piano to explore the space between sound and silence.
The centerpiece of the album and first single to be released, “After the Silence,” is a collaboration with Austrian musician Christian Fennesz, an artist with whom Tobeta shares a deep connection through their work with Sakamoto. Built from one of Tobeta’s original piano works, the piece evolved through an exchange of sounds between the two artists based in Tokyo and Vienna respectively. According to Tobeta, the title points to “what emerges in the space after silence”, a question he sees as taking on new resonance since Sakamoto’s passing. It is a mesmerizing and immersive piece of music as you can here for yourself in this premiere ahead of its release tomorrow.
“After the Silence” began as a quiet piano sketch that I sent to Christian, almost as a question. What came back over the following weeks was unexpected: he had layered electronics underneath the piano in ways I hadn’t imagined, as if the silences in my playing had become spaces for him to inhabit. We continued sending versions back and forth between Tokyo and Vienna, each pass adding something neither of us could have arrived at alone. The track found its shape slowly, in the way a room finds its acoustics, through the relationship between what is sounded and what is allowed to remain unsounded.
Bajune Tobeta
Anechoic will be released digitally by CROIX Co., Ltd. / electric sheep on August 14, 2026. The album was mastered by Denis Blackham. Pre-orders are now available.
Links: Bandcamp (digital) | Bajune Tobeta
