Nick:
This is one of my favorite little friends. It’s a small cassette recorder. I bring it into live venues and record the shows with it. I really like that warm, wavy, Walkman-style analog feeling. Sometimes we record on it and then give the cassette to someone as a little thank-you.

A cassette tape! That feels nostalgic yet refreshing. The analog, lo-fi vibe in A.o.P.F’s music and on Instagram really caught my attention.

Nick:
Thank you—I think that’s partly because of where we are right now as a band. At the moment we’ve mainly been focusing on live shows, songwriting, and performance, before getting to really high-resolution recordings. So for now we thought it would be nice to keep things a bit intimate, kind of at an analog level. Maybe that’s why that theme is naturally appearing in what we’re doing.

Members

Nick Edwards — Vocals

Nick grew up in the Highlands of Scotland, with lots of nature and open spaces, similar to Hokkaido. He taught himself guitar and singing, inspired by melodies that often came to him while walking the dogs.

The band name traces back to his childhood. In the late ’80s and ’90s, Japanese fighting games like Street Fighter II and Art of Fighting were huge in Europe, and he and his brother played obsessively. Even afterward, they would wrestle in the living room or argue at the table, replying to their parents, “We’re just playfighting.”

That idea inspired “Art of Playfighting” (A.o.P.F)—expressing emotions while keeping them accessible.
Nick felt that lighter bands didn’t have much to say, while heavier ones often felt too serious or political. A.o.P.F aims to sit somewhere between those two worlds.

Leo Herron — Guitar & Vocals

Leo was born in Kobe, Japan, with roots in both the United States and Japan. Influenced by his music-loving father, he grew up listening to classic rock like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles. Inspired by Jimmy Page, he started playing guitar at the age of 13.

He first met Nick in Tokyo in 2015, and they began jamming together. After that, Leo spent several years working in the music industry in Los Angeles, and the two drifted apart.

Then, a few years later, they unexpectedly ran into each other again in Tokyo—sitting right next to each other at a bar. That reunion led them to start making music together again, eventually forming A.o.P.F.

Kani Crabb — Bass & Vocals

Kani is from Oakland, California. He met Nick and Leo late one Sunday night in 2023 at a live venue in Shibuya where all of them happened to be performing and discovered he shared the family name Crabb with Nick—they instantly hit it off.

In A.o.P.F, he often writes what Nick calls “another song underneath the song.” Through bass lines in the lower register, he creates a new flow that pushes the music to evolve.

Turning Ideas Into Songs

The mood of your Instagram videos really draws me in. I’m curious—who’s behind them?

Nick:
That’s me. I’d actually been away from social media for years. The last thing I really remember was playing around on Facebook in the 2000s. When I came back, everything had changed and I was like, “What is this? It’s so shiny.”

So honestly, I don’t always know what I’m doing—but it’s about expression. I love what John Lennon said: “I know I’m not a good guitar player, but I’m an artist. I can’t play the tuba, but if you give me a tuba I’ll get a sound out of it.” That idea stuck with me.

I really like that idea. As a band, how do you usually go about writing music together?

Nick:
We all write music individually, but many A.o.P.F songs start in rehearsals. Leo and I have a chemistry that lets us improvise and suddenly a song emerges, which we record on this little recorder. 

Sometimes we do this by the Tamagawa River. Afterwards, we pick the best parts and start building a structure—lyrics, tempo, dynamics, backing vocals. At the moment, it feels like the songs come together in three layers.

Listening back and picking out the best parts to build something—it’s kind of like how I work on my interview articles. I take the recordings and reconstruct the ideas at home, and I really enjoy that sense of my creative freedom. 

But for you, working as a band, how does that process work? Do the songs just emerge naturally from playing together?

Leo:
We are very playful, I think. Our songs are always changing. Someone might bring a new idea—maybe a guitar part, maybe a vocal line—and we keep tinkering and improvising. They’re never really set in stone.

Nick:
Sometimes ideas come from happy accidents. One time we were jamming by the river and Leo suddenly changed the rhythm. The sound reminded me of light reflecting on water.

Then a group of Bosozoku motorcycles roared past us. I’d always been fascinated by that sound, so I thought, “Why not combine that imagery for a lyric with this riff?” That kind of spontaneous moment can lead to a new idea.

* Bosozoku: a “mini gang” of Japanese rebellious bikers. Loud bikes, flashy uniforms, riding in packs, all about style and chaos rather than crime.

Kani:
When I've seen Nick write vocals, he’ll jam over chords or a rhythm, singing gibberish or meaningless melodies, then fit in the lyrics afterward.

Nick:
Exactly. When we’re playing, I just freestyle gibberish, and the lyrics come later to fit the syllables or the shape of the melody.

I work in medical communications, so I’m used to writing in a structured way. That probably influences the lyrics too. They’re not Shakespeare or anything complicated. Usually the chorus holds the main idea or title, and the verses develop it until there’s some kind of expansion, and hopefully, resolution.

Why Make Music in Japan?

Japan has different values when it comes to artistic expression compared to your home. So, what made you want to make music here?

Nick:
I’d probably be making music wherever I live. It’s something I need to do—almost like an escape from everyday life.

But doing it in Japan is really interesting because the live scene is great. As someone from the UK, it’s also flattering that bands like The Beatles, Queen, or Oasis are loved so much here. Sometimes it feels like they’re even more appreciated in Japan.

I also love the way musicians here take influences—like Blur, for example—and turn them into something completely their own. And like many foreigners living here, I’ve fallen in love with city pop. I’d love to try something in that style someday.

Kani:
For me it’s easier to focus on music in Japan than in California. Living costs are lower, and I can work as an English teacher and still have time to make music. In the U.S. there are often a lot of things happening politically or socially that make life feel heavier.

I actually know someone who works as a tour manager for bands in the U.S., and that life is intense. Everyone piles into a single van and drives across the country, moving from state to state almost every day while playing shows.

The brighter the spotlight, the stronger the pull in the opposite direction. In that sense, Japan, with its stable and secure lifestyle, might allow more focus on the music itself.

Leo:
Kani and I have a California connection—my dad’s from Los Angeles, and I worked there as a musician for five years. The highs could be really high—you land a big international gig, and it feels amazing—but the whole scene is kind of crazy. 

That said, I feel more connected to the music I make here. I’ve also come to really enjoy how Japanese people experience music. When I was younger, I preferred rowdy American-style crowds, but now I appreciate the way people listen in Japan.

AI and Creativity

AI is starting to enter the world of music as well, and I think it’s going to change the meaning and value of human creativity in many ways.

Leo:
With creativity, the story matters as much as the final output. When you’ve been doing this for a long time, you want other people’s input—even on something small like a transition in a song. 

Using AI for that doesn’t feel quite right. It just feels better, more real. I don’t know if “pure” is the right word, but there’s a kind of authenticity in that process.

Nick:
Just like you said, the story matters as well. Imagine a biopic about Johnny Cash or Elvis where the artist just sits there chatting with AI to write songs. The movie would be rubbish. There’d be no story.

Kani:
If you get into the habit of asking AI things like, “What should the next verse be?” or “What melody should I use?”, you might start losing the ability to problem-solve in your own songs. It feels like a slippery line to dip into—you may start losing that creative muscle. 

Nick:
There’s a quote from the film Waking Life that I love: “...whatever you do, don't be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive..”

Whenever something new appears—AI, social media, whatever—the pendulum swings too far at first. Eventually it settles somewhere in the middle. So you can get angry about it, but it’s also kind of exciting. Things are changing whether we like it or not. So it’s like—game on.

Looking Ahead

So what’s next for the band?

Kani:
We have a lot of songs we’ve been working on, so I’m really looking forward to recording them. Making music alone is fun, but building something together as a band is a different challenge.

Nick:
We're all seeking success and that'd be great, but at the same time, it would be great if the band stays in a happy place. I've worked under ambitious, successful people and didn’t always like the atmosphere around them. So it’s maybe a small dream, but I hope this band can always stay in a happy space—where we spend more time playing music than fighting.

Leo:
One theme that’s important to us is being playful. We all have different ideas, so who knows—maybe next month we’ll try something completely different. Ultimately we want to make an album, but we also really enjoy the creative process itself.

To close the conversation, A.o.P.F put together a small, siesta-sized playlist especially for siesta — the one featured earlier in the article — featuring their original song Colour of Love and a few tracks that inspired it. Listen through it and drift into your own siesta moment, or wherever your creative process happens to take you.

Instagram: @A.o.P.F

Leo @theleoherron  Kani @crabbinz

Interview by Natsuko

Read in Japanese here