Kumo 99 appear in our Winter 2024 Issue with cover stars L.S. Dunes, Wisp, Fall Out Boy x WWWYF, and Chase Atlantic. Head to the AP Shop to grab a copy.
Somewhere in the dark matter of the musical noösphere, Kumo 99 emerge as a pummeling music that spans vast experience while avoiding strict classification. A cyberpunk supernova, the LA-based duo triangulates Psychic TV, the Prodigy, and Ministry while sounding like none of those. EBM? DNB? CIA? Who’s to say when talent, mystery, and charisma effortlessly collide with such force. At the core of this raved-out hardcore miasma are Ami Komai and Nate Donmoyer, two alt lifers who, before they could get out, got pulled back in.
“We’re both so used to being in bands, and I had no intention of going back into touring or being in a band,” Komai says, a surprising admission given the restless globe-trotting tendencies of the pair. They recently did a few shows in Japan and just wrapped up a European jaunt. Not to mention coveted slots at festivals like Substance and Sound and Fury.
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This unrelenting schedule also reveals the versatility of the Kumo 99 sound: They recently toured with electro-pop duo Magdalena Bay, rode a support slot with post-punks Provoker, and booked a whole run with punk collective the Armed.
“That is really important to us — to be able to just be fluid,” Komai says. “I like the fact that we can go anywhere and play anything because we don’t really fit in anywhere. And that’s always probably been a part of the fact that we wanted to make something that didn’t exist yet.” Indeed, a better description of them might not exist than Sean Lim’s “post-national, apocalypse-adjacent, lo-tek love songs for the digital native,” a rendering that also brings to mind the likes of Machine Girl, Kill Alters, or LustSickPuppy — though of course Kumo 99 are their own beast.
Without foisting too much of an analogy on the band: Though the tour with the Armed had to be canceled for budget limitations of a group of such girth (not to cast aspersions on the Armed — mainstream acts find difficulty breaking even these days), a duo like Kumo 99, who can load out into a single suitcase, seems like the ultimate flex in the “post-band” environment.
“I love it,” Donmoyer says. “We can tour in any vehicle.” For Donmoyer, who did a stint as the drummer of indie darlings Passion Pit, not having to haul a kit around seems like a huge plus. And once again: That surprising factoid shows the genre-hopping never ends with these two. Around that time, Donmoyer released a few records under the moniker Shuttle, rave and breakbeat-inflected tunes that reviewers at the time could only grasp as “electropop.” Listening in retrospect, it’s impossible to ignore the high energy and fast pace — both of which are now commonplace in clubs of varieties from goth to pop. What accounts for that? “There’s so much sleepy stuff leading into COVID,” Donmoyer says. “It’s as simple as people want fast shit right now. Like, hyperfast, and I don’t mean hyper as in hyperpop.”
As far as the compact nature of the group, Komai, herself a veteran of the LA punk scene, explains: “The only reason why it works is because it’s a duo, so it just feels more nimble.” Their efficiency also affords them the luxury of maintaining extreme independence. “We’ve done it in so many different ways,” Komai says. “This definitely feels like the first time where we’re doing it the way that we want to on our own terms.” As far as label backing, she adds: “That’s just never been our goal. Whatever we wanted to achieve felt like we could do without a label or anyone behind us. And that was really the sole purpose of making music between us anyways. We just wanted everything to be us.”
“We’re trying to preserve the ability to do whatever we want whenever,” Donmoyer says. “We just don’t need it. Do that when you need it. Because those deals, even the industry-standard ‘musician-friendly deals’ are terrible. They are not musician-friendly. The only way to take that deal is if they can offer you something that you can’t do on your own right now.”
The group excel in their unified visual language. Komai and Donmoyer present a deeply dangerous, weird, slightly evil, and ultimately fresh optics. They achieve this by maintaining a consistent relationship with their friend, artist, and photographer Kristopher Kirk. “It is a duo, facing publicly, but, really, I consider Kris on the visual front our third member, for sure,” Komai says. “I think that’s why it works, because it’s small and isolated. If we’re lucky enough to have something that we want to do, then why do I want another person’s opinion? I have two people that I respect so much and I love so much in the same room. If they’re happy, then I’m fucking happy. Which also is extremely lucky, and I think that’s once-in-a-lifetime shit.”
By keeping their collaborative circle small, Kumo 99 deliver an intense honesty that audiences of all stripes find attraction to. Not only are they often outperforming the bands under which they’re billed, but they’re finding a phenomenon among devoted fans: learning the lyrics to songs that they don’t understand. Komai sings in Japanese (“kumo” roughly translates to “cloud,” as in cloud nine), and fans who aren’t native Japanese speakers are showing up to shows knowing all the words. “People phonetically sing along, and that’s really fucking cool. I love it because I do think that it’s not solely about the words.”
“Our American audiences, I’m constantly baffled at how much is communicated, even if they don’t know exactly what I’m saying,” Komai says. “But they 100% understand the songs and know what it’s about, and I don’t know how. Nate does, too. He doesn’t know what I’m saying. We don’t talk about it.”
This also offers a degree of liberty as far as lyrical content, giving Komai a space in which to express unrelenting and raw emotion, on topics such as “addiction, gambling, and hating yourself,” as they’ve said of their song “Dow Bones.” “That’s how Nate and I started writing music to begin with,” Komai says. “He would send something, and I would send something back. Being able to be completely honest was a huge part of why I could feel as free as I do writing these songs.”
As far as demos Donmoyer might pass to her, any style from U.K. garage to deep dub might play out (the 2020 EP 99 Ways to Die, Choose One was a direct homage to Cutty Ranks). But the two can’t seem to remember how and when they met, other than the fact they’ve been fast friends for about a decade.
“We keep our circle pretty small,” Komai says. “I grew up here, so most of my friends are all from when I was a kid. I’m one of those fucking weirdos. Why would I make new friends when I have one that I’ve known since I was 13?”