In 2006, Chihei released his first album on Kranky, an acclaimed American label specialising in avant-garde music. Since then, he has released numerous works on labels in Japan and abroad, including Room40 in Australia, Own Records in Luxembourg, Under The Spire and Hibernate in England, and Home Normal in Japan. His works feature beautiful ambient drone pieces constructed by sounds using digital and analog equipment, and are mainly popular overseas, ranking in the top 10 of Spotify’s 2017 “Most Played Domestic Artists Abroad”. In April 2021 he released the album “Late Spring” – his first release on Gearbox Records. In May 2023 he also released a collection of music for the documentary film “Life is Climbing”. Since 2010, he has been actively touring around the world, including a 15-stop US tour in 2022 and two European tours in 2023.

Percussionist, born 1992 in Hokkaido. Shun studied percussion at the Music High School attached to the Faculty of Music, Tokyo University of the Arts. He graduated from the same university and won an Acanthus Music Award and a Douseikai Award at the time. Next to leading his own projects, including Answer to Remember, SMTK and Songbook Trio, he also appears at live performances and recordings by such artists as Quruli, CRCK/LCKS, Kid Fresino, Ohzora Kimishima and Millennium Parade. His most recent activities include the ‘excursion’ type performance “Shun Ishiwaka + Nobuyoshi Asai” live session. In addition to soundtracks for the movies “Architecture”, “Time” and “Kazuyo Sejima” and the NHK audio drama “Okujo No Shinyusha”, he also contributed music for promotional movies for products and series such as “OU” (Yamamoto Co., Ltd.), “Niji No Koku Chapter 15” (Madame Figaro), “FW21: Exploring Happiness” (Loewe), and “Jordan: Tokyo Fearless Ones” (Nike). In 2022 he wrote music for the NHK program “Ending Cut” together with Tomomi Oda. Co-performances with overseas artists include appearances at concerts in Japan by Kurt Rosenwinkel and Jason Moran among others. At YCAM, the new concert piece “Sound Mine” by Miyu Hosoi + Shun Ishiwaka + YCAM was unveiled in 2019. In the theatrical anime “BLUE GIANT,” released in 2023, he played the actual drum part played by the character Shunji Tamada in the film.

Darrel Sheinman is the founder and head producer at Gearbox Records, a vinyl-led label combined with in-house mastering and cutting studio based in King’s Cross, London.

A drummer from the age of 13, Darrel played in various punk bands before moving to jazz, groove, and funk. Whilst pursuing successful careers as a commodities trader and maritime security professional, Darrel continued to nurture his passion for music via his habitual crate-digging for rare, original Blue Note pressings and a strong addiction to high fidelity audio. In 2009, this led to a change in career path and the beginnings of Gearbox Records.

Initial Gearbox output stemmed from Darrel’s explorations of the British Library archives, which led to a slew of first-time commercial releases from cult British jazz icons that included saxophonist legend Tubby Hayes and pianist Michael Garrick. Under the mentorship of famed engineers Sean Davies, Darrel was inspired to build an all-analogue cutting and mastering studio based around vintage vacuum tube tape machines and a 1967 Haeco Scully lathe, to which one can attribute the signature “Gearbox sound.” More recently and under Darrel’s A&R leadership, Gearbox has been at the forefront of the UK contemporary jazz revival, having released music with acts such as Binker & Moses, Theon Cross, and Sarathy Korwar. As well as jazz, Gearbox has evolved organically into other genres and styles of music, from Brazilian no wave to ambient electronic to lo-fi soul, with a focus on quality being the deciding factor.

A frequent visitor to Japan, Darrel holds a black belt in kobudo martial art practices, something that he shares with legendary pianist and Gearbox signing Abdullah Ibrahim. His admiration and appreciation of Japanese culture led him to introduce monthly “kissaten”-styled listening sessions to the Gearbox studio, open to the public, which proved popular and have resulted in a monthly residency on London’s Soho Radio show.

Ever the entrepreneur, Darrel opened a Gearbox Japan office in Spring 2020, making Gearbox one of the first ever independent labels to do so.