Career
In the 1990s, Sekiguchi began her career as a Club DJ in Tokyo. [1] In 1991, she self-produced her first mini-album POiSON GiRL FRiEND with her own independent label, Psycho Planet Communications.
In 1992, Melting Moment, her first major-label album as Poison Girl Friend, was released on Victor Entertainment (Endorphin). Hardly Ever Smile (Without You), on the album, has become her signature piece since, featuring a marriage of electric ambient house style and a texture of classical strings arranged by Neko Saito and performed by his strings quartet.
In 1993 and 1994, POiSON GiRL FRiEND released three albums on Nippon Columbia. The year 1993 saw the releases of Shyness and Mr. Polyglot Remix, recorded in London and produced by Momus, whose second album The Poison Boyfriend had inspired Noriko to baptise her unit POiSON GiRL FRiEND. [4] With these albums for which she collaborated closely with Momus [5] and Simon Fisher Turner, she is often classified as a Shibuya-kei musician. [6] [7] In Mr. Polyglot Remix, she continued the exploration of the acoustic sound with the Balanescu Quartet. The subsequent album on Nippo Columbia Love Me (released in 1994) showed more French taste with songs titled in French, giving allusion to French cultural elements or covering French pop songs.
In 1993, she released under the name "Dark Eyed Kid" a dance-music album Angelic House' on Spiral Label. In the years that flowed she released, as dance music unit Kiss-O-Matic, circularhythm (1996) and Sambanista! (1997) on her own label Psychoplanet.
In 2014, POiSON GiRL FRiEND released rondoElectro, her first album in 20 years under the name of POiSON GiRL FRiEND on her own label Psycho Planet Communications [8] [9] [10] The album "Das Gift" [11] was released in 2018 on Nekon Records, featuring a diverse range of Japanese musicians active in the electro genre. [12]
In 2021, the two major labels, Victor Entertainment [13] and Nippon Columbia, [14] started to allow the distribution of her ancient albums through several download and streaming service platforms. That led to the rediscovery and reappraisal of the POiSON GiRL FRiEND. The year 2023 saw the release of two vinyl albums:"Melting Moment" (on Sad dicco in June), the vinyl edition of her 1991 album, and "exQuisxx" (on Nippon Columbia - HMV Record Shop in November), a compilation of her three albums from the Nippon Columbia years. In September 2023, Sega Bodega's project with Mayah Alkhateri, kiss facility released So Many Ways, in which she participated as featured artist. [15] [16] On 30 December, she gave a full concert in Shanghai. [17]
In 2024, POiSON GiRL FRiEND embarked on her first U.S. tour, performing ten shows across eight American cities from October to November. The tour included stops in Seattle (The Crocodile), Portland (The Star Theater), Los Angeles (Vermont Hollywood and The Novo), San Francisco (Great American Music Hall), Washington, D.C. (Union Stage), New York (Elsewhere and Sony Hall), and Chicago (Lincoln Hall).
As a DJ, Noriko appears in several venues in Tokyo and hosts her own events. Since October 2023, she works as a resident host DJ on NTS Radio. [18]
