World's End Girlfriend | Artist
Katsuhiko Maeda aka World's End Girlfriend is a Japanese experimental rock musician born 1975 in Gotō Islands, Nagasaki Prefecture. Katsuhiko's music is based on a love of classical music, building compositions centred around guitars and electronics which defy strict categorisation, but fall somewhere on the spectrum of Electronica, post-rock and modern classical forms. Fascinated by his father's classical music collection, he began his foray into sound at the age of 10, creating compositions on keyboard, guitar, tape recorders and computers. His debut studio album Ending Story, was released in 2000 and was followed a year later by Farewell Kingdom. The artist first came to the attention of audiences outside Japan in 2002, when he was invited to perform at Barcelona’s renowned Sonar Festival, on the back of his collaborative work with Japanese post-rock band Mono. This partnership resulted in the album Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain, released in 2005, which attracted critical accolades from American webzine Somewhere Cold. The superb album Hurtbreak Wonderland, released in 2007 received widespread critical acclaim, setting the artistic benchmark for Katsuhiko's earlier body of work. Since then he has gone on to release a total of 18 studio albums , culminating (to-date) with the superb 2023 release Resistance & the Blessing. With his mellifluous music naturally lending itself to film adaptation, Katsuhiko has been commissioned to create scores for the films Late Bloomer (2004), directed by Go Shibata, the internationally renowned Air Doll (2009) by award-winning director Hirokazu Koreeda, and the 2011 Taiwanese fantasy film Starry Starry Night. The artist's music also features in the music video for Les Enfants du Paradis, taken from the album Seven Idiots (2010). This beguiling visual, directed by Yohei Saito, has gone viral on the web, receiving upwards of a million views. Recommended album releases include The Lie Lay Land (2005), Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (2005), Hurtbreak Wonderland (2007), Seven Idiots (2010), the live album Last Waltz in Tokyo (2018), and Resistance & the Blessing (2023). Katsuhiko Maeda, who maintains a somewhat mysterious personal profile, avoiding any publicity, is also the founder of the record label Virgin Babylon Records.
Artist Website: wikipedia/World's_End_Girlfriend
Featured Albums: World's End Girlfriend
Related Artists: Katsuhiko Maeda, Wonderland Falling Yesterday, Mono
