The Kukkii Files

Twenty minutes, 1-2-0-0 seconds. That is how long it took between finding the Bandcamp page and going down a rabbit hole that is still, as of right now, completely unresolved. (Edit: Contact was made via Email.)

The album is called 7 songs about a girl. The artist is Kukkii and they are from Tokyo, Japan. Released November 1, 2009. Seven tracks. Still sitting there on Bandcamp, in nobody's collection except mine now.

The tags on the album tell the story faster than the music does: club, guitar, j-pop, japan, jpop, pop, rock, second life, tokyo, twitter, ustream. All of that, from one person, in 2009. Before any of those platforms meant what they mean now, or stopped meaning anything at all.

The bio just says: "kukkii first Album."

Kukkii had their start in a four-piece band called CACA★HOBOSS: vocal and guitar (kukki Aichi), sakuran Rieko (Piano), miyuki Villier (Bass), and Toshi Etzel (DJ). Kuki and Satoshi met as international students in California in 2001. They found Canako (I believe 'Canako' refers to sakuran Rieko, the Piano/Keyboard player) later, in Tokyo. They won a small live audition at Ongura Records in May 2008. They started performing in Second Life in October 2008. Then Satoshi disappeared, described in a blog post with a straight face as walking into thick fog, and Kuki started writing alone. (Satoshi graduated from CACA★HOBOSS on 08/24/08, said he decided to pursue something other than music.)

The solo project became Kukkii. In 2009 they were doing street lives, playing Shimokitazawa, streaming on Ustream, performing in Second Life under the avatar name kukkii Aichi. They reached 47th place in the Summer Sonic fan voting and passed the preliminary round. They released songs for free under an alias called YASUMACS on a now-defunct Japanese music site. They had a blog on Ameblo with nearly 280 posts.

A Wayback Machine capture of their old site lists the Second Life lineup of CACA★HOBOSS as: kukkii Aichi (vocal and guitar), Toshi Etzel (DJ), miyuki Villier (bass), sakuran Rieko (keyboard). All Second Life avatar names. That lineup performed in virtual venues while the real world version of the band dissolved.

By March 2011, an activity hiatus notice. By April 2011, a final cluster of blog posts: a reflection on CACA★HOBOSS, a note that a friend covered an old song called Route15, an album production update, and then a brief post saying they had arrived in America. Part time work arranged and studying Python. Thinking about iPhone apps and web games. Planning three more albums.

Then nothing. 280 posts, and then a gap that has now lasted twelve years.

The album is still up. The Ameblo blog is still live and readable. The MySpace page still has 4,499 connections. Last.fm shows 7 listeners and 31 total scrobbles across all time.

I do not know if this search goes anywhere. I do not know if kukkii wants to be found. But the album is good, and I'd love to know at least a little bit more about the artist behind it.

Update: Contact has been made. Article will be updated with relevant information as needed.