Moe Shop interview: Inside a French producer’s creative life in Tokyo’s electronic scene

Before Moe Shop became associated with Tokyo’s club circuit, their story began far from any dancefloor. Growing up in a small village near Paris, their early relationship with electronic music formed through car stereos and bedroom headphones, coming into contact with filter-heavy French touch and electro. With little in the way of a local scene, internet music platforms and chat groups became their creative outlet, a space to share self-made, exploratory tracks that gradually found an audience drawn to their fun and informality.

Early internet-born releases like their debut EP ‘pure pure’ emerged from an intersection of house, funk, sampling culture, and anime aesthetics that rarely crossed paths elsewhere at the time. By the time Moe Shop relocated to Tokyo in 2019, the project had outgrown the screen, pulling them into clubs, collaborators, and Japan’s wider electro-pop scene.

Speaking with Electric Bloom Webzine, Moe Shop discusses the influences behind their sound, from French house to Japanese electronic pop and trackmaker culture, as well as the realities of building a creative life in Japan and why keeping the process open and enjoyable continues to guide the way they make music.

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You grew up in France during the peak of French touch. What were the first records or artists that made you want to produce electronic music?

It all goes back to ‘Discovery’ by Daft Punk. This is stuff we’d play at home or in the car ever since I was a kid, and throughout my life, it has been a constant. It’s truly a perfect record.

Later in my teen years, I discovered artists who inspired me just as much as the first time I listened to Daft Punk. Records like ‘Cross’ by Justice, ‘One’ by Uppermost, and all 3 ‘Relativity’ EPs by Lemaitre. I spent many hours on the bus listening to those on repeat.

Then what completed this rotation were artists like Madeon, Skrillex, Wolfgang Gartner, Favright, Mord Fustang, and tracks like ‘Metal Film Resistor’ by Art Institute and ‘Souvenir’ by Billboard.

‘Digital Love’ by Daft Punk, from the 2001 album ‘Discovery’

You’ve talked about growing up in a small village near Paris. What did the local music community look like for you back then, if there was one?

The closest thing to a local music community was the “Teknivals” thrown right next to our house, which was cool. I was too young to join, but my siblings would go. When I started making music was really when I started joining music communities online, mostly through SoundCloud and Skype.

You started producing around 13 and taught yourself through software and YouTube. Looking back, what did experience teach you that tutorials never could?

I would say time management; burning out was easier than I realised. I learned to parse projects and to decline offers when I had already taken on enough. Good time management is how I’m able to make this sustainable, and I want it to be since I can’t picture myself ever stopping music production.

When did Japanese pop culture and Japanese electronic music start influencing you, and what felt different from what you were hearing in Europe?

I feel like I’ve always been around Japanese pop culture somehow, watching anime on TV and reading the few manga I could get my hands on at my high school library, like Full Metal Alchemist. That’s when I started listening to Capsule and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, on the same bus ride I used to listen to French records.

For a long time, I couldn’t pinpoint what felt different about it, but later I learned that there are different codes for composing J-pop, unlike Western pop music. The result feels more melodic and colorful in some ways.

Nakata Yasutaka likes to play with the key of a song by shifting it around for example, which almost feels like a shift in hue mid-song. I love this feeling. Some songs are even straight-up tuned to 450Hz, instead of the 440Hz standard. It’s little things like this that inspire me.

Music video for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s 2012 ‘Fashion Monster’, written and produced by Yasutaka Nakata

Early on, was there a Japanese artist or track that really “clicked” for you and changed how you thought about making electronic music?

I would say m-flo! I think ‘Astrosexy’ was the first song I heard from them. Many of their songs directly influenced how I approach making music. I think it’s because in my eyes, Taku Takahashi is a true trackmaker who knows how to have fun with music production and structure.

Records like ‘ASTROMANTIC’, ‘BEAT SPACE NINE’, and ‘EXPO EXPO’ inspired tracks I made, like ‘good night baby’ with the help of SEIJ for the DENONBU project, and even my remix of ‘over the reality’ by Kizuna AI.

‘Astrosexy’ by m-flo, from their 2004 album ‘Astromantic’

Your first EP ‘pure pure’ in 2015 helped build your early audience online. What do you think people connected with most in that era?

Maybe it was the big Vengeance drums, the resampling, or K-ON! references, but I feel like it was mostly because I was finally doing whatever I wanted, and you could sense I was having fun making it.

Before Moe Shop, I thought music producers had to have a very calculated project and follow some set of rules. I realised that wasn’t the case when I started sharing random unfinished tracks I had on SoundCloud through my side account, which was Moe Shop at the time. I was having fun and people were enjoying it, so I kept it this way ever since.

You moved to Tokyo in 2019. What was the biggest difference between imagining life in Japan and actually building a life there?

It’s funny because I never really imagined a life in Japan; I always believed I was only passing through. I think before I knew it, I was already going to clubs, meeting people, and making friends.

Once I moved to Tokyo, many things became easier. I got more involved in the music scene, planned ahead for projects & shows, and started trying things outside my comfort zone, like working with bands or producing rhythm game music.

What was the starting point for your latest EP ‘EVO EVO’, a sound, a theme, a collaborator, or a feeling you wanted to capture?

‘EVO EVO’ started with the sound of French Electro & French House. It’s been in my heart, along with Justice and Daft Punk, and I’ve wanted to properly dedicate a whole project to that sound for years.

‘TIMEOUT’ was a single I was working on with orono before the EP even took shape. That song helped set the initial tone and naturally became the lead single.

As I started putting the EP together, I was going through a turbulent time in my life. I wanted to reconnect with myself and understand what I was going through, so I think it all poured out as the “evolving machine” metaphor that ‘EVO EVO’ is to me.

Music video for ‘TIMEOUT’ by Moe Shop, featuring orono, from the 2025 EP ‘EVO EVO’.

The title suggests “evolution”. In what ways do you feel you have evolved most since ‘Moe Moe’, musically or personally?

I’ve embraced playing with hardware even more than before. I’m even coding music scripts and prototyping PCBs, which is something I didn’t expect to be doing until later. I keep finding new ways to play and interact with sound. These experiments end up in my music sometimes, most times, though, it’s simply music exploration.

Otherwise, funnily enough, I’ve circled back to being an independent artist like I was on ‘Moe Moe’. It seems to work much better for me. I want to be involved in every aspect of my project, from the sound to the visuals. That’s how I handled ‘EVO EVO’.

What’s one small production detail on ‘EVO EVO’ that most listeners will miss, but you’re proud of?

There’s a lot of resampling happening in ‘EVO EVO’, but most people might not realize that it’s all my own samples! I’ve been doing that for a while now: I write my own music loops, and I chop them up, pitch them around, recontextualise them, etc. I love working with samples. It even gets meta with ‘ENCORE’ because it samples ‘COMPLICATIONS’, which itself samples a music loop I made.

Another detail is that I made it LOUD. I learned a lot working on ‘My Life’ with KAF because, for that song, I decided to make my own hardstyle kick for the first time, which was a crash course in handling loud signals and managing low frequencies. This allowed me to really push ‘EVO EVO’ as much as I wanted.

Music video for Moe Shop’s collaboration with virtual artist KAF, ‘My Life’

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“Nothing is ever locked in until the last minute, which gives me and the artists I work with the freedom to try whatever they’d like.”

– Moe Shop

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‘EVO EVO’ features a number of guest artists. How do you decide when a track is right for collaboration, and who to bring into it?

It really depends, some tracks I know very early on, like ‘BONSOIR’ with ONJUICY, or ‘NEWLY HUMAN FEELING’ with Jamie Paige. It’s almost like I made these tracks for them before even getting in contact.

Others go through a whole journey before becoming what they are, like ‘MACHINES’ with Kumisolo. I had my friends Hair Kid & Vantage come into the studio one day to jam on this loop I was working on. I chopped up what we recorded, and turned it into a proper instrumental. And then my friends losers! (who helped make the ‘TIMEOUT’ music video) introduced me to Kumisolo after I told them I was looking for French lyrics.

As you can tell, my process is pretty loose. I like it this way, because nothing is ever locked in until the last minute, which gives me and the artists I work with the freedom to try whatever they’d like. It also makes the process a lot more fun than something too calculated or scheduled. I like going all over the place, trying new things, and working with artists across the world.

What tools or habits are central to your process right now?

I use all kinds of hardware in my music, but what often comes back is my Eurorack system, which I used on the EP as well as the ‘EVO EVO’ Studio Live performance I shot at home, and my Prophet Rev2, which is a really nice 16-voice analog synthesizer. It’s basically my car.

I like to play and sample these two. Sometimes just for some chords or melodic beds, other times to kickstart ideas or make music loops to resample.

Something I’ve been doing more and more in the last few years is allowing myself to spend time with my hardware and play with it, without necessarily having a goal in mind. I’m also a big fan of small footprint hardware. I play with my M8 Tracker all the time, lately by resampling loops I make on my Kaossilator KO-1. It’s all stuff you can fit in your pocket and play with while traveling.

I do things like this all the time, often enough that I even made a feature-length video diary called music diary.mp4, which spans 2 years of music & visual experiments.

Moe Shop’s 95-minute video diary chronicling 2 years of experimentation

Compared to when you first started playing in Tokyo, what feels different about the club atmosphere today?

It’s hard to say, clubs had it pretty rough during lockdown. I think the aftermath made me really value the experience we’re able to have in a club. It almost feels like I took the club Heisei era for granted (at least since 2016 for me). Now every time I go out to an event, I try to appreciate it as much as I can.

The first venue I played at, LOUNGE NEO, closed in 2020, and so did ageHa in 2022. But now we have festivals like Boukawa (暴力的にカワイイ), which has been one of the most euphoric outdoor music event experiences I’ve had since I started DJing 10 years ago. Things flow and change, and that’s alright.

From your perspective, what is exciting about the Japanese electronic scene right now, and what do you want overseas listeners to understand about it?

I’ve been really inspired by individual trackmakers forming collectives and making raw electronic music together, outside the bounds of any given genres, like PAS TASTA. I think it’s exciting to see because, to me, raw output and organized chaos in a clean package is what it’s all about.

‘THUNDA’ by multi-artist Japan-based trackmaker collective PAS TASTA

After ‘EVO EVO’, what feels like the next “evolution” for you?

I’m gonna turn my studio into a big sandbox for a while. I have ongoing projects and things in mind, but I really wanna let go and keep diving more into hardware and how I interact with sound.

‘EVO EVO’ was really freeing for me. There are still a few things I would like to add to it, but aside from that, I’m really excited about making new music. Maybe it’s time for a Vocaloid project or something, we’ll see.

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