Meishi Smile
About
Meishi Smile is an emotive electronic project founded by vocalist, songwriter, producer, and visual artist Faye. With their debut, LUST (2014), Meishi Smile burst onto the scene with a ferocity that NPR described as “part shoegaze, part chillout, part noise, part power-electronics, yet so cohesive it feels like a single genre.”
Through national television spots on Adult Swim, shows with Anamanaguchi, Chrome Sparks, Kero Kero Bonito, Perfume, and others over the years, Meishi Smile catapulted beyond the web. A decade later, the influence of Meishi Smile still resonates. Noted as a catalyst for the new generation of Internet producers and mainstream pop music, they have been retroactively revered as a pioneer of “hyperpop,” noted releasing the genre’s “#1 album of all time” (The Line of Best Fit).
In 2019, the fully formed lineup of Jason on bass and Zachary Roy on drums led to the industrial metal LP Ressentiment. This lineup would carry on to release 2024’s Limerence— resulting in a core reinstatement of the fundamental sounds and themes of Meishi Smile: euphoric, yet raw contemplative electronica mixed with undertones of shoegaze, Japanese pop, digitized ‘90s alternative rock, and 2010’s indie, exploring capitalist alienation (‘White Cloud’), the fallibility of memory and the corruption of nostalgia (‘Strawberry Wrist,’ ‘Stay Like This Forever’), and the pacification of the culture industry (‘Love Will Ruin Us’).
SELECTED Press
"The songs take influence from disparate sources—Japanese pop, experimental noise, lusher rock acts such as the Radio Dept.—and corrals them into something unified"
Pitchfork
"…what one may call “proto-hyperpop”—a project whose aesthetic and cultural influence is perhaps felt more than heard and more a catalyst for everything that came after it… an important piece of Internet music history, both for the sounds it produced and what it represented to the scene at large"
Line of Best Fit
"Part shoegaze, part chillout, part noise, part power-electronics, yet so cohesive it feels like a single genre …. call it unending waves of sonic joy. I could have listened for hours more"
NPR
"A glorious, very emotional, and surprisingly warm hybrid..."
Gorilla vs. Bear
"... [the] leading interpreter of shoegazed J-pop"
The Fader
"...is full of the sort of unbridled emotion that’s become the province of EDM-adjacent songwriters in recent years. Producers like Porter Robinson and Mija among others..."
Noisey
"This is certainly more than the sum of East meets West aesthetics and experimentations... we’re going to hear some truly fascinating hybridizations."
Indie Shuffle
DISCOGRAPHY (FULL LENGTH)
Limerence (2024)
Ressentiment (2021)
(reclamation) (2016)
...Belong (2015)
LUST (2014)
Featured On
LLLL Chains Phase 4: Resemblance (2018)
Metempsychosis (2017)
News
