Shugo Tokumaru

Shugo Tokumaru began recording his sweet and eccentric lo-fi indie pop songs — songs that nod to artists like Plamo, Lullatone, and PWRFL Power — in the early 2000s. He recorded a ten-track demo CD-R, Fragment, in 2003. The album was never officially released, but it did manage to grab the attention of the U.S. label Music Related, which released Tokumaru's second full-length, Night Piece, in 2004. Tokumaru went on to release a couple more albums over the course of the next few years; L.S.T. followed in 2005 and Exit was released in Japan in 2007. The latter was re-released on the U.S. label Almost Gold in 2008. For 2010's Port Entropy, Tokumaru adopted a slightly more polished, but still playful, approach.