Kazu Makino Talks Blonde Redhead, Solo Work, and the Twins

While she was growing up in Kyoto, Japan, solo artist and co-founder of the popular American band, Blonde Redhead, Kazu Makino, would wake up every morning to Bach on her alarm clock. For her father, a strict disciplinarian, classical music was a religion. It was the song of the exact, of the specific. For Makino, though, it was stifling. So much so that, as a young woman, she escaped Japan for New York City, leaving her hometown with the artist and musician, John Lurie. But the ups and downs of life didn’t end there. In many ways, they only intensified. As a result, Makino’s life is saturated with subject matter, which she’s expressed over the course of handfuls of records, including her solo LP, Adult Baby, which she released exactly one year ago this week.