Nao Katafuchi releases the title-track video from ‘Lonely Fire’ on Kernkrach
Nao Katafuchi releases the video for “Lonely Fire”, directed by Berivan Sayici. The album came out on 26 June 2026 via Kernkrach in an edition of 150 copies.
Minimal synth and darkwave artist Nao Katafuchi has released the video for “Lonely Fire”, the title track of the album Kernkrach issued on 26 June 2026. Vienna-based video artist Berivan Sayici handled direction, camera and editing. It is the second video taken from the record, following “Kieta Ashita”, which Christopher Gorski shot and directed in Hamburg.
Katafuchi describes the song as a piece about keeping hope intact when the surrounding circumstances do not cooperate. Its central line runs: “Even if all else fails, your treasure remains the same.”
What is on the Nao Katafuchi album ‘Lonely Fire’
The album runs ten tracks: “Kieta Ashita”, “Lonely Fire”, “Love And Superstitions”, “A Flash Point”, “All For Nothing”, “Anesthesia”, “In Between Times”, “A Sensetive Matter”, “Crying In The Shadow” and “State Of Mind”. Katafuchi sings in both Japanese and English across the record, over analogue synthesizer and drum-machine arrangements.
Kernkrach pressed it in an edition of 150 hand-numbered copies on black vinyl with a silk-screen print and an insert. The label, based in Münster and founded in 2002 by Jörg Steinmeyer, has specialised in minimal wave, NDW and synth-pop for over two decades, and had already co-issued Katafuchi’s 2019 LP “Stahlgrau”. The album is also available digitally through the label’s Bandcamp page.
The video arrives after a run of South American shows. In July 2026 Katafuchi toured Latin America alongside Je T’aime and Staatseinde, playing Bogotá, Santiago, Lima and Mexico City.
About Nao Katafuchi
Nao Katafuchi grew up in the suburbs of Tokyo and moved to New York in the early 1990s, settling on the Lower East Side. He began performing under his own name in the orbit of Wierd Records, the label and weekly party that anchored the city’s minimal synth revival. His debut EP “Yumegoto” appeared on WT Records in 2012, followed by the LP “Émergence” on Nadanna, a sister label of Anna Logue Records, in 2015.
He relocated to Germany in late 2015 and has been based there since. His third record, the LP “Stahlgrau”, came out in autumn 2019 as a joint release between Kernkrach, TONN Recordings and Castle Records. Live, he has shared stages with ChameleonsVox, Rational Youth, Psyche, Attrition and Parade Ground.
His music mixes cold, cinematic synthesizer textures with a vocal approach that sits closer to spoken melancholy than to conventional singing, and he alternates Japanese and English lyrics on record. “Lonely Fire”, released in June 2026, is his fourth full-length and his second album issued with Kernkrach’s involvement. The new title-track video is the second clip drawn from it.
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