{"id":62339,"date":"2025-07-13T13:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T13:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/62339\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T13:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T13:35:09","slug":"tokimonstas-eternal-reverie-the-los-angeles-djs-dreamy-new-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/62339\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokimonsta\u2019s \u2018Eternal Reverie\u2019: The Los Angeles DJ\u2019s dreamy new sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n

If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n

Tokimonsta went through a lot in making her new record, Eternal Reverie.<\/p>\n

Inspiration for the record\u2019s sound \u2014 sunny and joyful, but with an edge \u2014 struck at an unlikely moment. Toki was travelling in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, with her friend Regina Biondo, when they spotted a street vendor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just this young guy with crates and crates of vinyls, with a very beat-up record player and beat-up headphones, just waiting for people to buy these records,\u201d said Tokimonsta, whose real name is Jennifer Lee. \u201cIt felt very serendipitous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rifling through the collection, the Los Angeles-born-and-raised musician \u2014 who also goes by Toki \u2014 came across a worn-out old record by Brazilian artist Jaime Al\u00e9m, featuring a catchy, disco-inflected track with a soulful vocal called \u201cDisco Fevers.\u201d The song immediately fired up her imagination.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something special about finding a very dusty sample and being like, \u2018How can I give this new life again?\u2019\u201d Toki said.<\/p>\n

When she got back to her studio in California, Toki put the sample in her music software and cut it up, intuitively picking the best snippets, then rearranging them. Then she programmed drums, followed by synthy chords and strings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, I want this to be like a banger. And I created [it] with that sense of freedom,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted it to sound vintage, nostalgic, gritty, and to have a lot of energy and power behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The track, which she called \u201cCoraz\u00f3n: Death by Disco Part 2\u201d and features on the new album, took on more meaning than Toki could have predicted when she was making it. Regina Biondo \u2014 Toki\u2019s best friend who was with her in Brazil and helped her find the sample \u2014died of cancer last year. Toki postponed the release of her album so she could care for Regina in her final days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will never regret that,\u201d she said. \u201cI am happy that this album is out in the world, because it\u2019s important for this journey of mine to share it with people, because it is the way that I can celebrate Regina, but also a way for me to process her loss, because it\u2019s a long road and it hurts a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so grateful, because without her, I would not be the person I am today,\u201d Toki said. \u201cHer legacy and her impact on my life is the way I carry her forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toki grew up in Torrance, a coastal city in southwest L.A., and was mostly raised by her mother, who owned a small business. She started piano lessons at around 6 years old, but she didn\u2019t really love practicing classical pieces. It was a very different sound that captured her imagination as a little girl.<\/p>\n

When Toki was in the fourth grade, a classmate turned up at school with a CD in his backpack: Dookie, the third album by the pop-punk band Green Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just showing it off to all the kids, and I was like, \u2018Wow, this is really cool.\u2019 It was exuberant, it was wild. It also felt very L.A.; there\u2019s this freedom and sunniness. This punk attitude resonated with me as a very young kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Toki didn\u2019t stick to just punk music: soon after, she discovered hip-hop and R&B. She listened to TLC\u2019s iconic \u201cChasing Waterfalls\u201d, \u201cGangsta\u2019s Paradise\u201d by Coolio and even Enya \u2014 strains of which can all be heard in her music.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As she was growing up, Toki absorbed all of these sounds and musical textures like a sponge. She also listened to house music and more experimental electronic artists like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.<\/p>\n

This moment, in mid-2000s L.A., was at the beginning of what became known as the Beat Scene: a collective of musicians exploring leftfield electronic music and underground hip-hop. In her late teens, Toki began going to beat ciphers: competitions where musicians play a beat or rappers freestyle.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had 15 seconds to 30 seconds to play a beat, and it had to hit within that amount of time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone looked at me like [I was] a crazy person, because I didn\u2019t look like someone who\u2019d make heat, like I wouldn\u2019t come with the fire, the bangers or whatever. I was just this Asian girl in South L.A. [But] I played my beats and everyone recognized at that time that it was possible for someone that looked like me to make music that was really authentic and real and also pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toki went to club nights at influential venues like Project Blowed and later Low End Theory \u2014 using them to sharpen her production skills. \u201cWithout being in L.A., I don\u2019t think I would have the gusto to be as experimental as I was when I was younger,\u201d she said. \u201cThe city and the community is a very integral part of [who I am] as a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Around 2009, she started making music under the name Tokimonsta. \u201cToki means rabbit in Korean, and monsta \u2026 I thought that was a cool way to say monster. I was in high school; it was my iChat name.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, she didn\u2019t think the name would stick. \u201cAnd yet, I\u2019ve grown to also love my name because it represents who I am. I am this soft thing and this hard thing. I am this lightness and I am this darkness, I am this uplifted and strong, and I am this sensitive person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toki continued to hone her signature, shapeshifting sound and went on to make five full-length albums, collaborating with Ty Dolla $ign, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Anderson .Paak.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to push the limits of who I am as a musician \u2014 forward, backwards, every direction. That meant being the weird one for a very long time, for making music that people didn\u2019t really understand but somehow resonated [with them].\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Toki points to a track on Eternal Reverie called \u201cSay Tell Me\u201d as an example of her reflective side.<\/p>\n

The song starts out gentle, but shifts halfway through, the tone mirrored by a heavy arpeggiating bass line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always like to think of all my songs as a \u2018hero\u2019s journey,\u2019 and to follow that path of, where is this melody taking us? Where is the song taking us? And [so] when the bass comes in, that is the peak moment in that song,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is the hero accomplishing its big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Toki has been on her own epic journey, one with an unimaginable hurdle and a surprising twist for her musical career.<\/p>\n

At the end of 2015, Toki was diagnosed with Moyamoya disease, a rare and life-threatening blood vessel condition where some arteries become blocked and affect blood flow to the brain. She needed surgery immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surgery itself comes with all these side effects, which was how I came to have aphasia, how I lost my ability to understand music,\u201d she said. \u201cThose were all because someone tinkered with my brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

After surgery, music sounded like noise in Toki\u2019s ears: There was no rhythm or melody.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very disheartening. \u2026 I was alive, which is the most important thing. But what is a life without music? What is a life for me without being able to create, which is what brings me joy in life?\u201d<\/p>\n

Slowly, Toki\u2019s brain gradually began to heal and music started to make sense. After just a few months of recovery, she produced a song called \u201cI Wish I Could,\u201d featuring Belgian artist Selah Sue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just felt like a heroic feeling,\u201d Toki said. \u201cIt was relief. It was joy. It was like, oh my god, \u2018I\u2019m back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Soon after, Toki was back on stage. During her recovery, she made an album called Lune Rouge, which was nominated for a Grammy in 2019, making her the first female Asian American producer to be nominated in the dance\/electronic album category.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to think that I\u2019m superhuman now, but unfortunately, not. I\u2019m just me, but with less headaches and still alive. So I\u2019m pretty happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite having a singular vision for her work, being in the music industry for decades has taken a toll on Toki. Early last year, the pressures of social media and the demands of touring prompted Toki to take a break from performing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was starting to feel a bit jaded,\u201d she said.\u201cWhen I sensed that cynical feeling creeping into me, I knew it was time to take a step back.\u201d<\/p>\n

To regain her energy, Toki spent time with friends going to clubs and underground raves in L.A., focusing on rekindling her eternal love of music.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to remember that that dreamer exists, and sometimes I need to be reminded,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope for the rest of my life I remain this inquisitive dreamer forever. I hope that spark never goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keep up with LAist. If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":62340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[12260,1582,276,44719,2961,224,5337,635,44720,44721],"class_list":{"0":"post-62339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-album","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-eternal","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-new","16":"tag-reverie","17":"tag-tokimonsta"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114846192360411567","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}