The season is right for Japanese masked production duo AmPm, tech-house DJ and producer CARTOON and virtual human artist YELLOCK, along with Japan-based singer-songwriter and Indonesian diva singer Icazahra, to bring ‘Summer Drive feat. Icazahra’ to the airwaves! This track is one way to dance the night away, and it’s the perfect release to signal the end of this eason.
The new track is a collaboration born from the popular music show ‘Unknown Studio’ broadcast in Japan by ABC TV. The song combines Icazahra’s beautiful singing voice with AmPm’s synth sound and a lot more from CARTOON+YELLOCK, resulting in a house music gem. If you’re just as curious as we are, the streaming links can be found on this landing page:
There’s no music video, and listeners can visit this YouTube Music page to listen to this mix-genre work. Band bios are as follows:
About Icazahra
Icazahra is an Indonesian singer-songwriter based in Japan. She studied classical music in junior high school with the aim of becoming a violinist, and began her career as a singer in Indonesia in 2010. She moved to Japan in 2014 to study, and in 2015 she was the winning contestant on the Nippon TV show ‘Nodojiman The World’. Then in 2019, while managed by a Japanese talent agency, she made her debut in Japan, releasing a single and album under the name ICA. She is now performing as an independent artist under the name Icazahra, as well as posting her own covers of popular anime songs on YouTube. In 2020 she released the single ‘We Are Not In Love Anymore’, followed by the 2021 EP ‘Restless’, which featured lyrics in three languages.
About AmPm
AmPm are a masked production duo from Japan who made a major global impact with their March 2017 debut track, ‘Best Part of Us feat. Michael Kaneko’. The same year, they were the only Japanese artist to perform at Spotify On Stage, a festival in Indonesia hosted by Spotify. In 2018, they dominated stages around the world, from ULTRA Miami, ULTRA Korea and ULTRA Japan to a headline concert in New York. In addition to releasing their own original music, AmPm have remixed tracks by popular overseas artists such as Afrojack, R3HAB and Nicky Romero, along with remixes for renowned Japanese artists like Gesu no Kiwami Otome (‘Black Parade’) and MONKEY MAJIK (‘Tokyo Lights’), and production for Ken Hirai’s track ‘Holic’.
Collaborating with a plethora of dance-music vocalists, they have released more than 40 tracks to date. In March 2019, they were recognized at the Digital Contents of the Year 2018 / 24th AMD Award, winning the Special Jury Award. In June 2019, they produced the V6 track ‘All For You’. With a large fan base overseas, AmPm are currently one of the most popular Japanese artists on the global stage.
About CARTOON + YELLOCK
CARTOON + YELLOCK is a unit formed by CARTOON, a tech-house DJ who was the first Japanese artist to sign with the respected New York-based dance music label Ultra Records, and YELLOCK, a drum’n’bass “digital twins” artist who is both a real person and a virtual human.
In 2022, they performed on the main stage at ULTRA JAPAN, and their track ‘nox’, which was released around the same time, was featured on the official ULTRA JAPAN playlist and other top dance music playlists on multiple streaming services. In early 2023, they hosted a club event in Shibuya, Tokyo, with the theme “Web3×MUSIC”, pulling a crowd of over 1,000 excited dance music lovers.