collecting the world through the streets of 90s Shibuya

A world where every retailer, record shop, nightclub, clothing store, and song feels like walking into somewhere new. This is what the world of Shibuya-kei feels like. Bright music, full of references from all over the globe: French pop, bossa nova, jazz-funk, British indie, soul, Italian soundtracks, and the more obscure, the better. The influences came from everywhere. Sometimes you could point out exactly where they came from. Other times, they were so jumbled together that they created a fantastical world built from a gumbo pot of ingredients.

Shibuya-kei grew out of what was considered the bubble period in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, a time when all forms of culture overlapped. It wasn’t solely a music scene, but a cultural scene where fashion, design, nightlife, and music all existed together.

This Shibuya lifestyle created a thrill around discovery, where influences came together in songs to evoke places never visited and eras never lived through, imagined instead through the music, films, magazines, and objects that made their way to Shibuya.

Shibuya-kei uses discovery as an instrument, taking the best of the eras, genres, and places its artists uncovered and creating worlds by collecting those influences, sampling them, rearranging them, repackaging them, or building something entirely new.

These are just a few artists, albums, and tracks from the Shibuya-kei era who built worlds from their influences.