Tanukichan Radiolove

About

Tanukichan’s Radiolove EP is so named for the connection made between a listener and a musician. Radiolove materializes in those moments when your favorite song, most definitely written just for you, is being sung, and everything’s okay. Everything will be okay. This feeling comes effortlessly with these four new Tanukichan songs. Vibrant and subdued, cold and hot, this collection evokes the mixed emotions only music can express so well. Hannah van Loon is the being behind the songs and Radiolove is her solo debut: four songs of in-the-red guitar fuzz matched with astute timing and beautiful melodies.

The opener “Enough” is a rhythmically hypnotic song featuring My Bloody Valentine-like charges of noise. “I took everything, everything I could/ don’t know if it’s enough for me,” van Loon sings, calling to mind a certain assertive selfishness that can thrive in the midst of hopelessness. Some of the EP’s lyrics are about relationships, some about music and life, but “mostly I want to convey an emotion or a state of mind, and not necessarily a specific story,” van Loon says. “And More” morphs from a classic mid-20th-century pop song to a Tom Petty-meets-Pixies climax. The title track expresses the joy of communion in music and the soundtrack is justly blissful. The song pairs the mournful distortion of The Radio Dept. with the cautiously optimistic melody of a George Harrison tune.

“The songs were written at a time when I needed to break out of the routine I was in and do me,” van Loon says. Based in Oakland, van Loon toured with the group Trails and Ways for four years before departing to focus on Tanukichan. Van Loon’s band includes drummer Aaron Gold and bassist Scott Brown, both members of Astronauts, etc. Company Records head Chaz Bundick (Toro Y Moi, Les Sins) produced and recorded the trio in his home studio. Bundick was able to capture the raw feel of the live band sound with crystal clarity. As a producer, Bundick helped cement the tone and style of the songs, pushing in a shoegaze direction with heavy guitar tones and some extra synthesizer.

Artist Bio

Tanukichan is the solo project of classically-trained Bay Area native Hannah van Loon, whose music screeched to a halt when she discovered what she affectionately calls “dad rock” in her tween years. Throughout her self-described “sheltered” adolescence, van Loon taught herself guitar by spending hours in front of the radio, replicating riffs and chords from omnipresent bands like The Beatles and Incubus. 

Although van Loon is the creator and leader of Tanukichan, until now, the project could have been considered a collaboration between her and the Grammy-nominated chillwave pioneer Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi. After seeing an early Tanukichan show in 2016, Bear expressed an interest in working with van Loon; Radiolove, Tanukichan’s first headbanger of an EP, arrived on Bear’s own Company Records that same year. The promising four-song project was followed in 2018 by van Loon’s breakout debut LP, Sundays, which prompted her first solo headlining tour and dates opening for artists like Kero Kero Bonito and The Drums. Sundays earned Tanukichan enthusiastic critical acclaim, with Pitchfork writing that it “captures the spirit of a day whose wide-open nature fosters anxieties as well as ambitions” and Rolling Stone lauding its “bruising riffs, taut grooves, and open-road-ready guitar anthems.”

In March 2023, Tanukichan released her sophomore album GIZMO. While still rooted in the eerie shoegaze she’s become known and loved for, it also sees her go beyond her comfort zone, incorporating elements of grunge, industrial synths, nu metal basslines, and electric guitars that culminate into a captivating wall-of-sound. Shortly after the release of GIZMO, van Loon was approached by producer Franco Reid where they bonded over their love for Incubus. That correspondence led to the single “NPC” which was performed while touring heavily in the summer of 2023, opening for artists like Alex G, Alvvays, and Melanie Martinez. 

The new EP Circles, out September 20th, 2024, solidifies van Loon and Reid’s new partnership taking Tanukichan to new heights and sonic territory that feels larger, arena-ready, and more like a highspeed night drive than the hazy summer dream of its predecessors.