“This is your grid, watched by the security camera / You still have some time / to be a survivor in eden,” Eiko Ishibashi sings hauntingly in “Coma,” the second song in her new album “Antigone.” In this chilling album, the Japanese songwriter and composer tells the story of the evolution of our world as we lean more and more toward dystopian ideals.
Ishibashi is known for masterfully creating soundtracks for films like “Drive My Car” or “Evil Does Not Exist,” and the artist hasn’t released a traditional songcraft album with lyrics since 2018 with “The Dream My Bones Dream.” “Antigone,” released on Mar. 28, 2025, breaks this lyrical fast as her 31st album, combining pop, jazz and funk — with synthesizers, strings, two-way radio inserts and Japanese and English vocals. Although many have deemed this album as more “traditional” compared to her other albums, there is nothing traditional about the message and style with which Ishibashi builds this album.
The title is based on the Greek tragedy written by Sophocles, which tells the story of a young woman who defies King Creon’s orders in order to properly bury her brother. Rather than die at the hands of Creon, Antigone chooses to commit suicide, resulting in the suicide of Creon’s son, his wife and then, at the end, himself.
In his analysis of the album, contributing editor for The FADER Raphael Helfand connects Sophocles with Ishibashi.
“Just as the Greek Antigone’s unjust demise destroys its perpetrator’s life […] perversions of the natural order are met with great suffering,” Helfand said.
In the first song of the album, “October,” Ishibashi gives the listener what they are expecting: a swelling orchestral score serving as an introduction into the mind and world of Ishibashi. It is optimistic, like the soundtrack for the beginning of an artistic, aesthetic movie — but with strange, dark, foreboding undertones that would cause a movie-watcher to wonder if the Joker was about to pop out from behind a corner. Suddenly, the scene changes, with a drum sequence, guitars and a light, whispery voice entering like a narrator, singing in Japanese. An indistinguishable voice of man over the two-way radio is heard fading in and out and is brought to the focus at the end of the song, when the voice becomes eerie with ethereal transcendent qualities. A translation of the song reveals that Ishibashi is communicating themes of doomsday in her music.
“Ashes fall in August / In October, the blood shines,” Ishibashi sings. Here, the language barrier can cause some misinterpretation of what is happening in this song, but no matter the language, Ishibashi is still able to communicate the emotions that she wants the listener to experience.
The next song, “Coma,” immediately causes one to think of a train chugging along with a dissonant horn, but soon, Ishibashi’s voice enters soothingly with a funky accordion backing her vocals.
“Covered with ashes, long winter / Spring is yet to come,” Ishibashi sings. Despite the ominousness of the approaching dystopia, there is hope that all will not be lost.
“The Model” is the seventh song on the track list — the longest at 8:33 — and it goes through many different phases. Drums start out the song in a slow march with a synthesizer in the background and ethereal vocals. Halfway through, the synthesizer turns screechy, and the vocals sound like they’re underwater. Some unnerving inaudible speech occurs in the background for some time, reminding one of the Black Speech spoken by the Nazgul from the Lord of the Rings. Electronic beeping enters the scene with glitching vocals mixed with excerpts from crowds, subways and a two-way radio. The disoriented nature of the song — especially without understanding the lyrics — creates confusion and fear for the listener. It seems to convey similar emotions experienced to those when one discovers he or she is living in a dystopia.
The manner in which Ishibashi draws the listener into her music is relaxing. Listeners do not realize where they are headed on the journey, but it is peaceful and calm, like a boat floating on a river headed towards a waterfall. There have been clues along the way — of slightly unnerving and eerie instrumentals underneath the soothing melodies — but the listener does not realize how distorted this universe is until the second-to-last song with “The Model.”
From her life in Mobara, Japan, Ishibashi may have an even starker image of what living in a dystopian society looks like. Neighborhoods in the cities are collections of skyscrapers where families can live in minimalist, uniform apartments and travel by metro. The streets are so clean and safe that children walk to school by themselves, and criminals are punished so severely in the prisons that there is a widespread fear of being arrested. There is a happy, optimistic exterior that is often a theme in Japanese music, which expresses the nature of conformity that is found in these cities. Often, conformity is the first sign of dystopia, and Ishibashi appears to be pushing against this cultural tendency in a desire for non-traditionalism. Her music may sound relaxing and carefree at times, but the lyrics tell a different story.
In the same manner, our American civilization is headed towards dystopia, as communicated by Ishibashi, and in this sense, she has written the soundtrack of our world. We are relaxed about our current way of living. The government is slowly seeping in to fill all the cracks in our lives that make it uncomfortable, and we don’t realize how little control we actually have. In Sophocles’ “Antigone,” doing what is right can result in death and suffering, which is often the case in dystopian novels like “Hunger Games” or “Divergent.” As Ishibashi gently pulls us under into the current of her music, so are we pulled into dystopia in our world today.
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