another artist that i am happy to have found via active suspension is a japanese singer songwriter - or folk ‘guitar sorcerer’ if the AS website is to be believed - called shugo tokumaru. active suspension are french but they have a few japanese connections, one of the members of the konki duet is japanese too. from the AS website:

please try to list the 5 things you like most in life: making music. movie. milk. Kyoto. UFO.

i like milk too!

an endearing message left in his myspace profile: THERE’S ONLY ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTS THAT HE PLAYED WITH SOME SIMPLE EFFECTS. shugo has supported an impressive list of modern hippies (m ward, animal collective, iron & wine, why - he’s also a member of damo suzuki’s international network) so i’m kind of surprised i haven’t heard of him before, but i don’t think his material has any distribution in australia (please someone prove me wrong). a friend of mine would describe his music as “folk +1″. but hey all i need to tell you is to look at that photo up there - i know you can’t resist a cute japanese man with an acoustic guitar.

www.shogutokumaru.com