Japanese pop polymath Haru Nemuri dives into experimentation on Ekkolaptómenos

Japanese singer-songwriter Haruna Kimishima, who makes music as Haru Nemuri, grew up in Yokohama and learned to play synth as a teen in a band with a friend. She launched her solo career about a decade ago, at age 21, and today she creates big, heady electronic pop songs that often twist together styles that aren’t easy bedfellows, among them posthardcore, noise pop, and rap. Nemuri’s latest album, last month’s Ekkolaptómenos , skews in an experimental direction, and it feels like she’s diving down a rabbit hole to pursue a new interest. Her punk ethos comes through as clearly as ever in the album’s themes of defying power—“Panopticon” questions the surveillance state, and “Symposium” calls for people to come together and dance in the face of government repression.

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