With glockenspiels and violin bows, KiiKO creates pop that is “dreamy and infinite in scale”

On an icy Saturday morning, right before Christmas, John Anthony McDowell waited outside a noisy cafe for Emmy Shigeta to arrive in Ranelagh.

Co-founders of the electronic pop band KiiKO, they were just a couple of days out from playing their second gig, and first as a headline act.

“We’ve one more rehearsal tomorrow,” he said.

Once she got off the Luas, the pair marched with haste towards the Devlin Hotel, a spot where Shigeta frequently DJs.

They ordered coffees and tore open a large white paper bag of croissants, and momentarily mused on how long they had been working together on this new project.

It would’ve been just over a year prior, McDowell said. “It kinda started slowly. Very slowly, and then only last summer were we kinda playing regularly, trying to actually finish things.”

For Shigeta, while no stranger to performing as a DJ, the formation of the band marked the first time when she was playing live, she said. “I’d never played any shows before.”

Transitioning over to performing live wasn’t something that was easy, she said. “But once I started, I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to hide in myself. It’s not really a hobby in KiiKO. I wanted more development.”

Musically, they wanted to draw from a lot of backgrounds, like chamber and ambient music, neoclassical, and even drum ‘n’ bass, McDowell says. “Use things like a glockenspiel, things a little out of the ordinary. But bring it back to a pop thing.”

Creating something like a musical bridge between Ireland and Japan in some way, says Shigeta, whose lyrics are sung almost entirely in Japanese. “I wanted this collaboration, because the two countries are very far apart; culturally, in everything.”

It isn’t music that had a particularly local feel to it, he said. “It’s not like an Irish band. It’s a world band, maybe. As much as there are artists in Dublin that we love, we’re doing our own thing and we’re much more influenced by artists internationally.”

Second impressions are important

McDowell and Shigeta first met in November 2021 when the experimental rock band Black Midi performed at Vicar Street, she says. “It was a very cool gig. But it’s funny. I did not like John.”

She had moved to Dublin in 2018 from Kichijōji, a neighbourhood in west Tokyo, and over the next few years, she became a regular DJ, predominantly spinning ambient and 1980s disco records from Japan. 

So she invited him along to one of her sets, she says. “He enjoyed the ambient sets, and after talking a bit more, I changed my mind.”

McDowell, who grew up just outside Ranelagh, had an interest in ambient and neoclassical music around that time, he says. “I wasn’t as familiar with Japanese artists. So she introduced me to a lot.”

Prior to their working on anything collaboratively, McDowell began to perform as a solo artist under the name John Anthony, debuting in April 2023, and releasing an EP on cassette, before expanding this into a chamber-folk ensemble named As Many As Possible.

Unlike KiiKO, that work was a lot more serious, he says, pausing for a few moments. “I actually found it hard to work on. Stuff doesn’t get finished, because I’m so nervous about it. But this is very fun, it’s easier to do, because you try to make it exciting.”

The one thing that carried over from his prior work was approaching instruments unconventionally, like using a violin bow on a guitar, he says. “Like, doing things more experimental on a bass, playing with string players, trying to apply it to a pop thing.”

Wintery July

A crowd started to steadily stream into Whelan’s upstairs venue on the Monday night before Christmas as Shigeta and McDowell took to the stage with drummer Dave Rogers.

All three of them were wearing only white, as did their support act, Other Creatures, of which Rogers is also a member.

The stage was lit blue as McDowell slowly dragged a violin bow against the strings of his bass guitar, generating a suspenseful, booming drone, which Shigeta contrasted with an echoing melody, hammered on a glockenspiel.

Once Rogers’ propulsive, primal drumming kicked in, and Shigeta started a monosyllabic chant, the trio sped away from their ambient overture.

For just under 30 minutes, the band delivered a tight set of bright, bouncing synthesisers, duelling glockenspiels, and samples of swooping violins. 

They concluded with a performance of “July”, their debut single, released over the summer, which plays about with dream pop and drum ‘n’ bass.

Maybe when the duo first started to play together just over a year ago, musically they would have been drawing more on the ambient styles that they had previously been known for, McDowell said on the Saturday morning prior to the gig. 

But these days, “It’s a total genre mix. It’s a feeling, like wanting to make stuff that is dreamy and exciting,” he said.

He paused for a moment while searching for a way to encapsulate what the band wants to be. “This might sound a bit pretentious,” he said, laughing.

The band has a track called “Dance World”, he said.

“It’s a good name,” Shigeta says quickly.

The name comes from a shop about 85 metres away, up the Sandford Road, he says. “Those two words capture the spirit of this. It’s fun. But kinda dreamy and infinite in scale.”

About 20 minutes later, once they departed the hotel, Shigeta and McDowell went on the briefest of pilgrimages up to the shop, which sells dance wear and dance shoes.

In the window display, there was grey athleisure wear, a short pink cardigan with a cropped tutu, and a tagline for the shop saying this was “the first step to stardom”.

It was cool to see this, Shigeta said. “But it’s very different from our sound.”