Interview: Nobonoko, Master of the Minimal Sequencer

Summary

Interview: nobonoko, Master of the Minimal Sequencer 27th of March, 2026 Music is art, makes political statements, signifies membership to social groups, sells products, is supposedly being automated, and overall has a lot going on at once. What gets increasingly ignored by this tempest is the craft involved in making great music. To take an example from the current cultural imagination, the musician Bad Bunny releases great songs, but he isn't successful because he is great at rapping (though no doubt he is). He is successful because the songs address topical politics. An integral part of his coolness appeal is not trying too hard when performing, whereas the other, less important people working on his music are responsible for making everything sound good. This phenomenon is not exclusive to him; almost all popular musical artists work this way. My favorite contemporary artist, nobonoko, represents an opposite. His music is best summarized as a journey to master a family of sequencing software called BeepBox-likes. BeepBox is a minimal music-making tool that runs in the browser, originally released in 2012 by software engineer and game developer John Nesky, later inspiring forks with extended functionality like JummBox and UltraBox. Even the extended versions, however, are simple TypeScript programs, under 2MB in total download size. The entire user interface fits on one screen — default BeepBox even hides most notes. The major scale is called the "normal" scale in BeepBox's settings. Using these extremely simple tools, nobonoko makes incredible pieces. For newcomers, I'd recommend the albums Strawberry+ (eight variations on a single Aspartame-sweet theme), Gato (rainy 70s synth jazz), Swamp (ambient with some hip-hop elements), and of course Music for Animal Cafés (very unique, could be described as Shibuya-kei with Latin jazz elements). Songs often re-arrange and refine previous compositions, so that an album's creation can be traced over multiple years via sing...