Tyler’s life has always been centered around music. From a young age, he was constantly searching for new sounds to explore and share with anyone who would listen. It was this passion that led him to join his college radio station and become entranced by private press music. In 2018, Tyler collaborated with Douglas Mcgowan to release the #1 best selling Environments app for Numero Group, as well as a sought-after vinyl reissue for Yoga Records. He now works with Yoga Records as their Chief Operating Officer and designer.

For the past decade, he has been exploring the acid folk scene of 1970’s Japan, immersing himself in its rich and vibrant culture as he tries to listen to all that he can. He has even been sharing his findings through a series of mixes on the popular music blog Aquarium Drunkard. In 2019, Tyler moved to the small mountain town of Taos, New Mexico, where he lives with his partner Aleya, and their 3 year old daughter, Rumi.

Johan was born in Landskrona, Sweden and got into collecting private press records as teenager when he was playing in punk bands and writing fanzines. He started his first record label Red Blue Yellow Recordings in 1998, focusing on American post-rock records. In his early 20s, he discovered Japanese folk musicians Wataru Takada, Kan Mikami and Morio Agata and quickly became infatuated with Japan’s 70’s underground music scene, travelling to Tokyo at times on a yearly basis to buy records and seeing folk musicians performs.

In the last few years Johan has had programs on the web radio stations Elara.fm and KPISS.fm where he played rare and obscure 70’s music from Japan.
For the last 15 years, Johan now resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Shinsaku is a record collector from Tokyo who has been exploring music from around the world since his teenage years, regardless of its production date or genre. He got acquainted with Tyler and Johan through this hobby and shared their deep love and exploration of Japanese folk and rock from the 70’s. Shinsaku’s primary role at First & Last Records is in the search for musicians from that period and in mediating contractual relationships.

There are still many unknown masterpieces buried in Japan and with Shinsaku’s help we hope to make their reissue a reality so that they can be easily shared with a wider audience.