We do Japanese-inspired music through a mixture of electronic ambients, melodies, and Japanese sounds. Inspired by the emotions, colors and feelings of the traditional japanese culture, our music explores different ways and musical genres to reach a unique experience.
17 years of music making have turned into 15 albums with more than 2 million downloads world-wide.
๐The project was started in 2005 by Facundo Arena (composer/producer). The first album was called “The first voyage”, and it was released in 2006 under a Creative Commons license. In 2008, the project became a “band” with the incorporation of Rodrigo Trado in drums and Jesica Rubino in Violin.
๐The Kyoto Connection is not a genre-specific music project. Across our albums and singles, we’ve explored many styles such as synthpop, ambient, new age, japanese ambient, house electronica and even acoustic. We tend to be very eclectic ๐
๐Our greatest hit is “Hachiko – The Faithful Dog”. An instrumental piece inspired on the well-known story of Hachiko. After it’s release in 2015 (in the Wake Up album) it was used on thousands of videos, movies, documentaries and personal projects. It was downloaded more than a millon times on The Free Music Archive. You can listen to the song here.
๐On August, 2016 a friend of the band called Roberto Gluck wandered through the streets of Kyoto recording urban sounds with his smartphone. At the same time, in the other side of the world (Argentina), we used those sounds to create a unique musical soundscape. The result was Kyoto Soundscapes, our first ambient album. You can listen it here.
๐The song “H.E.A.T” from our synth-pop album “No headphones required” (2010) is featured on the independent-videogame “3030 Deathwar Redux – A Space Oddysey by Crunchy Leaf Games. The game was a big success and the developers became the biggest contributors to our Kyoto 2020 fundraising campaign. Eternal thanks to them! See the trailer of the game featuring our music here.
๐Our album: “Postcards ่ๆธ” reimagines the soundscapes of japanese ambient music from the 80s and the 90s and it’s deeply inspired by the works of Hiroshi Yoshimura, whose soul we dedicate this album. Synth melodies, real Kyoto soundscapes and traditional sampled instrumentes mix togheter in a space of constant flow.. Listen to the album here.
๐ Our latest album is “1982” (released on dec 2020) a synth-pop tribute to the 80s featuring Jesica as lead singer. You can listen to it here.
๐It may sound crazy, but we’ve never been in Kyoto. We are from Argentina and feel a strong connection with the traditional japanese culture. We love Kyoto and we want to get there! We want to visit the place that inspired so many songs to us for more than ten years. You can help us and get our full discography here.
