Kishi Bashi

Kishi Bashi is the pseudonym for violin virtuoso Kaoru Ishibashi. He released his first full-length album 151a via Joyful Noise in 2012, which received high praise and the title of NPR's "Best New Artist Of The Year". K's follow-up album Lighght expanded his palette to include more diverse and nuanced instrumentation, Philip Glass inspired improvisations, and 70s prog. With 2016’s Sonderlust, K’s work became more intensely personal and artistically adventurous with the help of producer Chris Taylor, engineer Pat Dillet, and drummer Matt Chamberlain. After Sonderlust, K traveled frequently to Montana and Wyoming to work on a “song film”, about Japanese internment during WWII. Kishi Bashi’s fourth album, Omoiyari, is a studio album written during those six intense years of travel, research, and filming for the movie Omoiyari: A Song Film, which premiered at South by Southwest 2022, and is screening at several film festivals in Fall of 2023. It will then be available to stream on Paramount+. Kishi Bashi's 2024 album Kantos is a work of exquisite duality: a party album about the possible end of humanity as we know it, at turns deeply unsettling and sublimely joyful. On February 27, 2026, Kishi Bashi will release a 10-year Anniversary Edition of his legendary album Sonderlust. It will include the original album, demos of all the songs on the album, and 2 B-Sides from the Sonderlust Sessions.