World's End Girlfriend

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Katsuhiko Maeda painstakingly crafts dramatic, ambitious music as World's End Girlfriend. Filled with sudden dynamic shifts and unpredictable changes, his work often features orchestral arrangements and noisy, gliding guitars, combined with glitches, breakbeats, and heavy electronic processing, resembling an audacious mixture of neo-classical, post-rock, and IDM. The Tokyo-based musician (and founder of Virgin Babylon Records) began releasing music in 2000, and received acclaim for albums like 2005's The Lie Lay Land and his collaboration with MONO, Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain. Fan favorite Hurtbreak Wonderland appeared in 2007, and the artist continued releasing film scores (including 2012's Starry Starry Night), live recordings, remixes, collaborations, and additional studio albums such as 2016's Last Waltz. Resistance & the Blessing, a two-and-a-half-hour triple-album opus, arrived in 2023.