An Interview With XLII: International Music Producer and Polyglot Based in Japan
XLII in Shimokitazawa, 2024.
XLII is a Japan-based artist and music producer. Working mostly within the Japanese music market, he has collaborated with artists such as Kinashi Noritake, PKCZ, Miyake Ken, and Minmi. His music has been featured in commercials and films for brands such as Apple (Beats by Dre), Red Bull, and Jeep as well as placements for Netflix and Hulu.
The name XLII (pronounced “slee”) is an alias for his production work and,, as you might guess, represents 42 in Roman numbers. The Japanese pronunciation “shi-lii” (シリー) stuck before he figured out how to change it, and he laughed that it sounded a little funny, but maybe that’s part of the charm. Why 42? XLII tells me it’s his lucky number and it seems to accompany him to new places. 2024 also marks two decades since he moved to Japan in 2004.
I first met XLII at a year-end event by PUSH Japan, a digital agency where I had the chance to take part in a short-term cultural research project, and whose founder, Mike Sunda, is a friend of XLII’s. I was fascinated by XLII’s innate sense of curiosity and drive to pursue his passion: music. Was this something he had always wanted to do? How does he operate day-to-day? And what makes him tick? In this interview, I had the chance to ask him those questions.
During our chat, we talked about how learning his fifth language, Spanish, has been a worthwhile investment, his thoughts on “success” and ikigai, an important episode in setting up his freelance music career, and how he uses the mental model of inversion to think about the person he wants to be (or avoid being the person he doesn’t want to be).
How would your friends or family describe what you do for a living?
Friends who know what I do would probably say I’m in some room making noises 12 hours a day. My family would probably say I’m a “DEEJAY doing chiki chiki”. (XLII imitates a stereotypical DJ with a swiping motion).
What’s a day/ week in your life like at the moment?
It’s probably very boring for most people. In terms of the most typical day, I try to wake up early-ish (I’m a night owl, so it’s always a struggle). When I do manage, I usually go for a run or to the gym, study and read a bit, and get into the studio around 9:00 or 10:00. I’m learning Spanish now, so I might have a video call with one of my Spanish teachers then.
I’ll usually spend around 15 to 30 mins doing admin, then start work. If it’s a day when I’m working by myself, I’d usually listen to some music to think about what I’m aiming for, then do a couple of hours of production, prep, or mixing - whatever the day calls for. If I’m low on ideas, I might write something as it helps to clear the mind. Then lunch.
During the day, I have a few in-person or Zoom meetings here and there, but I try to schedule them all in one day as much as possible. And three to four days a week I’ll have somebody come to work with me or I might go to work at their studio. Two days per week or so, I might also have evening sessions where I work with somebody until 23:00 or 00:00. I might have an occasional phone call, although I discourage unscheduled calls. Some people are immune to my discouragements and call anyway (😆laughing).
Usually, I work until around 20:00, then I’ll have dinner, read, study, or watch a film. But if I’m into something or have a lot of stuff to cover, I might be working until 4:00 or 5:00. Once or twice a week I might pop out to an event or a reception and maybe have dinner or lunch with friends. I generally don’t take days off, so my schedule is more or less the same.
What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments (could be a purchased item, money, time, energy, etc.) that you’ve made in the last six months or in recent memory?
Quite a few, but the most recent must be online lessons with native Spanish teachers via Preply and iTalki. I intentionally pick a teacher who doesn’t speak English and has a strong base in their own culture, such as someone born and raised in Peru, Columbia, or Mexico. My teacher at the moment is from Medellín, one of the towns where Pablo Escobar lived in Columbia. It’s a very humbling thing to speak to someone about their culture in their own language, and it’s way more interesting than any textbook scripts.
I can really gauge my improvement and my confidence in using the language is going up. Also, it’s particularly worthwhile because now I can say that I’m a polyglot. Spanish is my fifth language and AFAIK (as far as I know) from the fifth language onwards, we can say “polyglot” instead of “pentalingual”. Always been a dream.
*Preply and iTalki are both language-learning apps.
What was your dream when you were a child?
I don’t remember. I think I used to say that I’d be a diplomat and go abroad, which was of course ludicrous since I was born in a communist dictatorship and nobody was allowed to travel abroad. But I wouldn’t replace it because it gives me perspective.
What does “success” mean to you? How do you personally define it?
Liking yourself, liking where you are in life, liking the people you surround yourself with, having the ability to make somebody’s day better, and also being able to take care of the people you care about. But mostly, I think it’s just liking yourself. If you like and accept yourself fully, you win in life.
And I think it isn’t easy to like yourself if you never do the things you want to do. For example, if you have a dream and want to do something but you never do it because you’re scared or have excuses about not having enough money etc. then I don’t think you’ll really like yourself. Don’t do that. You have to do the things you want to do to be cool with yourself. Since I’ve been doing the things I want to do, I feel like everything else is plus alpha, it’s like I’m living an extra life now.
Can you share an apparent “failure” that ended up setting you up for later “success”? Do you have a “favorite failure”?
I’m never quite sure what’s a failure or what’s a success. I’ve never had a moment where I was like, “Wow, what a failure”, nor do I ever feel “Wow, what a success.” I think almost everything is a gray zone. You always learn something and lose something in every situation.
The only thing I can think of that’s a very clear-cut negative situation that turned positive was when I got hit by a truck (I was on a motorbike) and broke my arm when I was 24. I had to do two years of rehab, and couldn't work for a bit.
I was pretty young and naive, but the unexpected insurance bonus from the accident allowed me to work minimal hours. It’s not that much now, but back then, it was the most amount of money I had ever had. I worked six hours a day, two days a week teaching English, and the rest of the time I spent in the studio making music, taking on projects, and improving my skills, albeit with one hand.
So I spent on nothing but rent and food and logged my 10,000 hours* in the shortest time possible. If you do 12 hours a day, you can do that in nearly two years (instead of 15, or 20 years). I worked until 5:00, slept until 10:00, and did that for two years. It was a little obsessive and I didn’t plan for it, but in retrospect, it set me up for my freelance career years later.
*It has been suggested that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert or to master something, proposed in the 1993 study of musicians by Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C., and this theory was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. However, this idea has been retested with different conclusions.
Did you know that you wanted to stack up your hours at the time or was it a gradual process?
I’ve been making music since I was 10 or 11 years old, so I had technically already done my 10,000 hours, but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I didn’t have the technical equipment then. I wasn’t actively trying to clock those hours at the time, but music was the only thing I was ever thinking about, so it just made sense.
What does ikigai mean to you personally?
For me, it’s simply enjoying whatever it is you do without the burden of ego or comparison; doing the best you can do in that moment, whether you’re a janitor or a pilot or a freelancer. Sometimes, it’s not so much about what you want to do, but about what you have to do. For example, in an unprecedented situation like an earthquake, you end up having to do things out of necessity, whether you like to or not. This is pretty different to the modern and trendy interpretation of ikigai that tends to come from a self-concerned perspective of "what I want to do".
Even if you’re faced with something you don’t want to do, you have the choice to have fun with it. If you choose to enjoy it, you’re likely to do good work. It’s hard since any second your self-judgment and ego can compromise you. I think that doing good service, being kind, being thoughtful, doing small things for others and not expecting anything in return helps to remove your ego from the center of your worldview and see the world as it really is.
Can you describe a recent moment that made you feel truly alive?
The other week I was asked to go to China to work with a world-famous artist. It was confirmed at 10:00 and at 14:00 I was at Haneda boarding the flight with three friends. No hotel booking, no visa (it was fixed for us on their end). It was so much fun.
Another time, I was in Bali and had to be in Tokyo the next day for a show that I was hosting, but then there was a volcano eruption, flights were grounded and I had to find my way via three different countries and arrived an hour before my set. It was a blast. Especially when you travel, the mishaps are the most memorable. According to my best friend who’s a licensed psychologist, I only have one mood and need extreme levels of stimulus to get excited (🤣 laughing).
If your phone screensaver had a quote or phrase that guides your life, what would it say? (It can be any language you like).
I had one for almost five years that said “Don’t overthink s**t”, because I always overthink everything. If it were now, it’d probably be: “You get what you repeat.” Just as it says, you get out what you put in; consistency and repetition are key.
You get what you repeat
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You get what you repeat ・
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or unmotivated, what do you do to reset? Do you have any routines or mindfulness practices that help?
Run! Go for a run outside with ambient music. You could also cycle or drive, but running works best for me. You get energy, you get more oxygen, and you’re also alone with all your “s**t”. These days we don’t give ourselves time to process our thoughts because we’re constantly on our devices bombarding our brains with noise. When you run, you can’t check your phone, so it’s like cardio and meditation in one.
It’s kind of corny but when I run I mumble stuff like, “Be attentive, be brave, be bold, be patient, be curious, be there, be here, be, smile at strangers, smile at yourself, listen, hear, pay attention, understand, comprehend…” etc. They’re just random words but when combined with ambient music, it almost feels like I’m writing a song while moving. I’m surprised by what comes out. I think it’s my brain spitting out ideas for what I need and I’m just picking up on it. At the end of the run, a few of these will stick with me. I usually write them down after and expand on what to do about it. It’s fun and I always feel great after.
What advice would you give to someone striving to live a life that’s true to themselves? Is there any advice you think they should ignore?
Everything is temporary. As humans, we have a tendency to become dissatisfied very easily. It’s okay if you don’t like yourself or where you’re at now because things will change. You can use inversion* as a mental model and make a list of all the things you don’t like or the person you don’t want to be and try not to do that.
IMO (in my opinion), ignore the advice of anybody who tries to sell you a solution. Everybody is unique, so there isn’t some kind of magic pill to make you be more you. In addition, we’re often shaped by our past experiences, so even if you grew up in an environment where it was normal to be a POS (piece of s**t), would you really wanna stay true to that? I think people can grow into being the people they’ve always strived to be.
*Inversion is one of a number of mental models or frameworks that can be used as tools to help us understand reality or examine the problems around us. For anyone interested in learning more, check out this piece by Shane Parrish or this one by James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.
Can you explain more about how you use mental models?
If you were to learn one, I think inversion is the one you should learn. I apply it to every single thing. For example, “How can I be boring?” I make a list of all the things I should do to be boring and just don’t do that. “How can I make sure I never succeed at anything?” Don’t do anything, stay at home, watch TV, don’t take risks, don’t invest, etc. Another example is my music. I’ve never tried to make a popular song or something that everybody will love. I never think about that. But I think about “How can I make something that I will be embarrassed about?”, and then I try to not do that.
It’s a good filter, too. It’s easy to say you want to do a YouTube channel, do TikTok, run a company, do dance music and hip hop, be present but also anonymous… but you can’t do it all. Start with thinking; what kind of life do I not want to have, what do I not want to be busy with, what do I not want to spend the least time doing? For me, I definitely do not want to spend very little time making music because I’m spending too much time doing other things. Then I know that making extremely complicated YouTube videos is not the one, because it will rob me of my time.
I learned about mental models 12 or 13 years ago but didn’t really understand it then. I didn’t know how to apply them and would get stuck. But if you slowly revisit it, you can start picturing opposites of everything.
Image by Milad Fakurian @fakurian
What’s something you love about Tokyo? If you had to pick one sound or track to represent Tokyo, what would it be?
I like that Tokyo is like hundreds of small villages. There aren’t any main streets. Every station is its own little downtown and the further away you move from it the quieter and more local it gets. I love that we can live in central Tokyo and live in a “house” instead of an apartment block. I like how quiet Tokyo is. At the same time, it’s also chaotic. I like that East Tokyo is so neat and well-planned with straight streets and gridded blocks and West Tokyo is like a spider web, with streets that lead to nowhere and lamp posts in the middle of the road. I also like that every area caters to a certain type of person. Everyone has a home here. It’s such a unique place.
In terms of music, maybe this song would represent Tokyo: “Arrival” by Felsmann + Tiley. I think it covers the entire spectrum of what Tokyo is - it’s retro but also futuristic, it’s calm, and humble, but also grandiose and frantic, all in one song. And it matches perfectly for a Blade Runner-esque midnight drive on Tokyo highways.
Ikigai in Motion captures the essence of our unique journeys and sense of ikigai. Through conversations with people including artists, entrepreneurs, experts, and more, we explore the diverse paths of individuals across various fields, illustrating that ikigai is not a fixed concept but a dynamic force, lived and embodied in many ways.
Our series begins in Tokyo, a city of vibrant contrasts and endless inspiration.
Note: Some questions in this interview have been inspired by Tim Ferriss’ book Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World and Mogami Wellness’ Ikigai Spotlight Series.
