Takahiro Kinoshita / 木下 貴博
I make music as 99LETTERS. I make images the same way — by building the instrument first, then playing it until something holds still.
Designer and art director in a small studio in Shiga, Japan. Japanese letters, cover art, motion.
Before I made images, I made records. As 99LETTERS I have released music on labels in London and beyond — Disciples, Phantom Limb, Seagrave.
On each release I worked as art director alongside the label's designers. Making music taught me the habit I now use for everything: sample, cut down, repeat, and listen for the moment it starts to breathe.
2016 — a cassette, dated by hand. Every release starts the same way: a small object, made carefully, then sent out into the world.
The records were picked up by press abroad, mostly in the UK.
Kinoshita Studio is one person and one room in Shiga, Japan. The music and the images are made at the same desk.
I write the tools, make the images, set the type and build the pages myself — so the idea never has to be translated twice.
Film is shot, scanned and printed here. Proofs go straight onto the wall.
Abroad, Japan is usually drawn with the same few things: a brush stroke, vermilion red, a serif Mincho face. I wanted to see what is left when you take all of that away and keep only the letters.
So I treat Japanese characters the way I treat a sound. I sample them, lower their resolution, give each piece a texture and let them move. What comes out does not look traditional — but you can still feel that it could only come from these letters.
I don’t start with a purpose. I start by building a small instrument, play it, and let the accidents arrive. The judgment comes afterwards.
Brush, scanner glass, a home printer, film — the tools change, the habit doesn’t.
TSUBU (粒, “grain”) is one of the browser tools I wrote for myself. It turns a Japanese character into a field of 8-bit cells, then lets me play those cells like oscillators.
It is a tool, not a filter: every image is a single performance, recorded at the moment it settles.
One Japanese character, typed or drawn. Nothing else goes in — no photographs.
The letter drops into a coarse grid, like sound sampled at a low bit-rate. The shape survives; the detail is gone.
Each cell becomes a small tile of light — a stripe, a shine, a direction. Together they behave like a chord.
I turn the dials and let it move, then keep the one take where nothing wavers. Stills, loops and prints all come from that take.
TSUBU is open in the browser: kinoshita.studio/tsubu
If a work needs two tools to explain it, it is two works.
No photographs, no borrowed ornament. The way it was made should be enough to recognise it.
The clever take is usually the wrong one. I keep the one that would still feel right on a wall a year later.
TSUBU / grain
Letters broken into 8-bit grain and played as light. Motion loops and stills.
MASU / grid
A square measure, filled with chrome. Each cell is chosen by hand from a small palette of shapes.
Light of letters
One character set inside a frame of lines, until the frame and the letter become one surface.
NIJIMI / OBORO — bleed & haze
Letters that soak and smear, and images stretched until only their weather is left.
A set of sleeves made with the tools above — grain, print, stretch and paper. Each one starts from a single shape and is finished as a full cover, ready for vinyl, cassette or a streaming thumbnail.
Self-initiated sleeves for imagined releases. The artists and titles are fictional.
Vinyl, cassette, CD and digital sleeves — front, back and the small details in between.
A title or a name drawn as its own letterform, in Japanese or Latin.
For Japanese reissues — the obi, titles and credits, set to read naturally in Japanese.
Short seamless loops for Spotify Canvas, visualisers and release teasers.
For films, shows and releases — made to be printed and put on a wall.
A cover, a title, or just one word — I’m glad to hear about it. English is fine.
99letters99@gmail.com