Lullatone

Shortly after Shawn James Seymour relocated from Louisville, KY, to Nagoya, Japan, alongside his girlfriend and creative partner Yoshimi Tomida, the delicate lap-pop project Lullatone took shape. The pair first encountered each other during an intercultural communications course at Bellarmine University. When the instructor prompted exchange students to describe their difficulties adapting to life in America, Tomida mentioned struggles with local cuisine. Seymour responded by inviting her to a nearby Asian market once class ended. The outing led to a picnic, and roughly a year later he joined her in Nagoya, where the couple settled into a compact apartment. That setting sparked his interest in crafting what he termed “tiny songs.” Plagued by insomnia, Seymour often worked late into the night, layering lullabies for Tomida from an eclectic assortment of sources that included xylophones, keyboards, music boxes, sine tones, harps, toy drums, ukuleles, cymbals, shakers, wood blocks, pillows, whispers, heartbeats, bubbles, and, as he described it, “a lot of daydreams.” Those efforts coalesced into the warm, meandering pieces collected on Lullatone’s 2003 album Computer Recital. My Petit Melodies followed shortly afterward via the Japanese imprint Childisc. The band’s third effort, Little Songs About Raindrops, arrived in 2005 and broadened the sonic palette with Tomida’s breathy, childlike vocals woven through an intricate web of organic textures. Seymour and Tomida sustained their pursuit of luminous, organic sonorities on 2006’s Plays Pajama Pop Pour Vous, and the following year’s Bedtime Beat upheld the same vein of gentle, bedtime fantasy.