Kuunatic

Featuring: Yuko Araki

Tip! Kuunatic’s hotly anticipated 2nd album “Wheels of Ömon,” takes another adventuresome deep dive into their self-made fantasy mythology, proposing whole new worlds of psychedelic drama and ritual. In addition to their core sonic palette of tribal drums, pulsing bass, atmospheric keyboards and grouped female vocals, the acclaimed Japanese psych-rock trio played an array of Japanese traditional instruments on "Wheels of Ömon." The result is a thrilling, kaleidoscopic album that brushes against tradition as it whirls into an other-wordly future. 

Kuunatic are the trio of Fumi Kikuchi on keyboards, Shoko Yoshida on bass and Yuko Araki on drums. All three of them also sing. They formed in 2016 and released an EP and 7” single before, in 2021, dropping their debut album, Gate of Klüna, on an unsuspecting public. Here’s where things get unusual. Gate of Klüna was no ordinary album. Following on from their Kuurandia EP, it developed a mix of psychedelic garage and prog rock, ritual drumming, chanting female vocals, lush keyboard textures and traditional Japanese folk instruments to tell the mythic tale of the planet Kuurandia – a bold saga of magic, volcanoes and battle. Now, with the release of their second album – Wheels of Ömon – Kuunatic have come to take us further down the rabbit hole.