Tanaka's new project is called Isan, meaning "inheritance" in Japanese. Tanaka wrote each song based on a corresponding obscure hymn, composed by Japanese-Christians in the early 20th century.

Says Tanaka: “In order to explore my complex heritage as a descendant of Christian missionaries, I felt compelled to write songs that took the melodic, harmonic, and thematic material from hymns in a Japanese hymnbook I inherited from my grandparents. As an atheist, I wanted to explore biblical themes from a more scholarly, and secular, perspective. Much like how Michael Ondaatje based In The Skin of a Lion off of the Epic of Gilgamesh, I researched the hymns, proverbs, and passages in The Bible, and used that as a launchpad for my own songwriting.”

The result is an 11 track LP, that explores notions of cultural identity, the effects of religious thought on western society, and attempts to answer the question of “what can we do with what we inherit?”, all while traversing various genres such as synth pop, garage rock, ambient drone and psych folk.

“I wanted to use these songs to explore all the unconscious beliefs that I had inherited through my religious and multicultural upbringing. I would argue that the ideology of Christianity is woven into the language and systems of Western society, and I believe we cannot ‘unbind’ ourselves from those structures without engaging with them consciously first. I also feel that my Japanese-Canadian identity contributed to my outsider identity and feeling that I don't belong in any particular space. With Isan I am trying to create a world of my own.”

In an act of community building, Tanaka also sought to include as many Japanese diaspora musicians where possible. Featuring on the album is Japanese-Canadian artists such as Teiya Kasahara (Jeremy Dutcher), Brian Kobayakawa (Serena Ryder), Annie Sumi, Japanese-American Paul Wiancko (Kronos Quartet) and more.

To turn his songs into wild, rock anthems live, Tanaka enlisted the help of The DenSan Band. A quartet onslaught including the virtuosic shreddery of organ/key player Brendan Swanson (YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN), The DenSan Band subverts the hymns into psychedelic jazz rock jams, as Tanaka thrashes along the stage in a traditional Japanese “hyottoko” mask and “boro” robes.

This is a stark departure from Tanaka’s debut album, Kaigo Kioku Kyoku (2020), which was built from Tanaka’s experience as a caregiver for both his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and uncle with terminal cancer. Kaigo Kioku Kyoku makes music out of meaningful objects and voice recordings of his relatives, and are structured off of hymns and Japanese folk songs, and was largely a solitary project.

As a writer, Hiroki has had poetry published in literary magazines including Metatron Press, and was shortlisted for the Janice Colbert Award (2017). He wrote for Weird Canada, and for the online Canadian music blog, DOMINIONATED, as well as curating their first music festival HEAR HERE Fest in Vancouver.

While he was in YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN, the band was longlisted for the 2018 Polaris prize, and won a Canadian Video Game Award for their soundtrack for Severed (2016). Hiroki toured extensively in Canada/US and Western Europe, opening for artists such as Jethro Tull, Kim Gordon, and Dirty Projectors.