No matter how busy you think you were last month, it would take a lot to top the exploits of Hiroshima-born, Tokyo-based musician Kinuko Hiramatsu.
Hiramatsu — better known by her Sapphire Slows alias, which has seen her release music on labels that include Los Angeles tastemakers 100% Silk and Not Not Fun — spent October (and the beginning of November) on a whirlwind tour that took her from Canada to Mexico via both coasts of North America. The most impressive thing about the tour was not how Hiramatsu coped with the jam-packed schedule, but rather the way she engineered it in the first place.
"Because I don't have an agent, I did it all myself," Hiramatsu says. "I just emailed all my friends and the people I knew, so it was completely different to the first time I went to America (for industry showcase South by Southwest). Once you have 70 percent of the tour sorted then you're good to go, but at around 50 percent that's not enough — lots of artists find that their tours fall through at that point, so I was on edge the whole time."
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