The Algorithm™ can lead you to unexpected, bizarre places. Sometimes, if you’re lucky (or doomscroll long enough), you can hit a goldmine. This is precisely how it has led me down the path of brothers and Tokyo fashion scenesters Kio, Kai, and Nico de Torres, who play together as the band Gliiico. I lurk around the feeds of Daikanyama hipster types enough (Pack it up, Legazpi Village), and — absolutely no snark intended — they are precisely what I get.
Born and raised in Vancouver to a Filipino-Spanish father and a Japanese mother, the de Torres brothers are currently based in Tokyo, well-entrenched in the fashion scene. As the nascent indie pop rock outfit Gliiico, its origins are all-too-familiar, but its rise has just been astonishing. From forming the band “out of quarantine boredom” in 2021, they hit the ground running fueled by word of mouth mostly from self-avowed purveyors of underground cred and all things cool.
Since then, they’ve appeared alongside Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig in Phoenix’s “Tonight” music video, and supported the aforementioned Frenchmen as well as Khruangbin on the live stage. Gliico is a personal fave of TWICE’s Chaeyoung, who has signal-boosted its music and even let the group cameo on her Instagram. Even with an unsolicited yet obligatory sibling parallel to the Jonas Brothers, Tokyo-based magazine Sabukaru has hailed the band as “the new sensation in the scene of [Tokyo’s] alternative music scene.”
The trio jokes that they pull from a motley smörgåsbord of not just one, five, or a hundred, but “10,000” influences. They’ve looked up to the hip-hop acts like the Teriyaki Boyz; 2010s post-punk legends The Strokes; French Touch stalwarts Air, Cassius, Justice, and Phoenix, too; even Shōwa-era pop greats Yellow Magic Orchestra and Tatsuro Yamashita. Their obvious psychedelic bent invites comparisons to heroes such as Tame Impala and Gorillaz, fellow Canadian goofball Mac DeMarco, and if I may add, the likes of Toro y Moi, Trevor Powers (a.k.a. Youth Lagoon), and their legendary labelmates at Cantora, MGMT.
The list can get overgrown, but trust that neither imitation nor homage seems to have ever been on their agenda. Their approach has been to channel all their touchpoints into one slick package and conjure for themselves a universe that they can confidently inhabit. “This is an age of so much music, so we aimed to create something that can stand out in introducing Gliiico (たくさんの音楽があふれている時代ですし、はっきりとGliiicoを紹介できるような作品を目指した),” the eldest brother and guitarist Nico told GQ Japan.
Around four years now since its inception, Gliiico has finally released its first extended play, The Oath, said to be partly inspired by Game of Thrones — if you take vocalist Kai’s watching habits and the Renaissance-esque frieze on the cover as proof.
The eponymous opener, in its warbled glory, is a stately but heart-rending dirge. “In my land, I am king / In my land, I am free / In my land, I think,” they croon over shoegaze-y, caustic guitars that vaguely mimic plaintive bagpipes. “I’ll fly the highest mountain / Set time to get back / I’ll give you the world.”
Like echoes of Phoenix’s “Trying To Be Cool,” a swift, gleaming glissando kicks things into high gear in psych-funk grail “Amiri Jeans.” Namechecking Californian designer Mike Amiri’s label though is telling, as if they only had a pair of $1,000 jeans and a dream. “I’ve never worn Amiri jeans before,” Nico shares with Nowness Asia. At the same time, he provides a glimpse into their songcraft, as the track is able to set the direction for the rest of the record: “But I could imagine the soft, luxury denim, skin-tight with rips for ventilation against my skin, and what that might feel like. What would that ‘sound’ like? That’s the deep, inner question that informed the genesis of the song.”
Gliiico has a knack for evoking hyper-specific imagery, this much is clear from the get-go. “Mutron,” with phases and whooshes like its namesake musical contraption, is a sonic sketch of a dark sided high or nightmare blunt rotation, whichever you fancy (“I’m rollin’ thunder and marijuana / Like anacondas and piranhas”). Every Metronomy/Stereolab-esque organ hit in “Osampo” (お散歩、literally “a stroll”) has you stomping in head-to-toe Engineered Garments or Junya Watanabe, dripping Tokyoite cool in the wake of your every step on the asphalt (Well, maybe at least in your dreams, or a hypothetical Michel Gondry Kaiju movie much like its music video). The explosive album closer (and the most Tame Impala-reverential of the lot), “Sam Difrs,” is even directly inspired by the closing scenes of seminal cyberpunk animé Akira, Nico says.
Halfway through, The Oath tries its hand at more candid lyricism. Supported by J-Pop star Chara with her gauzy vocals, “Tragedy” pictures unrequited love as a slow-burning catastrophe with utter ruin just waiting to happen. The dazed soul-infused tune “Tell Her” deploys slice of life tactics, too: “We was [sic] sitting at the park / Then the feelings got involved.”
Gliiico isn’t exactly testing uncharted waters nor breaking new ground here — but this is not a bad thing in itself. There’s an entire pantheon of kindred spirits and predecessors to invoke, and at the very least, these brothers aren’t snake oil salesmen in the business of pretending to be pioneers. But is it possible to sound like everyone, without trying to be anyone but themselves? For Gliiico, that singularity is within reach.
There are perils, sure, when you bank on the currency of lo-fi-flavored nostalgia. Even good-natured anachronisms can wear thin. Mishmashing from a dozen sources, even for the sake of camp, can get cloying. And of course, being unapologetically niche — to the point of fixation — can be a double-edged sword.
Thankfully, Gliico prizes flow over anything else — that is: just do whatever comes naturally, instead of being fussy over capturing something as elusive as sounding exactly like someone (and others more), maybe. Just like Nico tells GQ Japan, “It’s more important to come up with ideas freely than to have a role model (ロールモデルがあるより、自由にアイディアを出すことが大事).” That’s such an honest and unconceited outlook, which often pays off with free-flowing enjoyment all around. So, maybe this shimmering plate of ~just vibes~ that they’re dishing out could turn out to be great.
