This you know—thanks to the Internet, there is nothing indigenous in music anymore. The web has erased national borders and led to different cultures swapping native musics. It’s no longer impossible or even odd—it’s almost commonplace now—for artists to collaborate on albums from different locations without ever meeting in person. The past few years have led to a united globalization of popular music both here in America and abroad. Certainly now more than ever cultures are flirting with each other artistically, in some instances—Brazilian baile meets American hip-hop, for example—even fornicating. It’s at the point where an actual album of Swedish reggae from Stephen Malkmus would no longer be a daring career move. But lost in the slew of talented foreign artists to find acclaim here are two gifts from the Far East, quietly operating on opposite ends of the spectrum, mastering their respective genres in preparation to take over the world.

Shugo Tokumaru is still somewhat a mystery. Numerous attempts to learn about the shadowy figure behind both L.S.T. and Night Piece have all resulted in failure; both his personal and MySpace websites offer little to no biographical information. I attempted to run the “About” section of shugotokumaru.com through a translator and came up a string of accomplishments that were formed in backwards sentences and this ending: “In the future my pace you cannot separate the eye from character and activity and extraordinary music sense.” I’m not sure exactly what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds magical—and really, it takes but one listen to see through the shroud of mystery and view Tokumaru through his fog of gentle pop music.

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