Late at night in a close-packed piano bar in Tokyo, Alessandro Takeshi, an experimental electronic musician from rural Maine, was rediscovering more than just his heritage. He had recently moved to Japan to reconnect with his roots, sold the synthesizers and samplers he had wielded to wreak musical chaos in DIY venues across New England, and began a musical transformation as dramatic as his change of address. Born in the smoky acoustic taverns dotting Tokyo, “We Could Be Friends,” finds the musician in a rare singer-songwriter form, unearthing the musical techniques he had trained in as a young composer and spent the following years gleefully destroying. Virtuosic piano playing and a sophisticated harmonic vocabulary reminiscent of jazz standards bring a rich color palette to his incisive lyrics, animating them in all their modern nuance.

“In both the US and Japan you have these highly advanced economies that are stagnating, either shrinking or selling off its parts,” he observed. “Maybe for older generations it’s a phenomenon you read about in the news, but for the younger generations there’s this ambient unease that permeates our way of thinking, how we imagine ourselves, and how we build relationships with each other.” Through stories detailing those relationships — and how they fall apart — Takeshi brings a worldly voice and rarefied songwriting craftsmanship to render his generation’s idiosyncratic perspective into a timeless sound.

He has performed regularly in both the US and Japan, and his classical compositions were recently featured on the popular Chapo Trap House-produced European history podcast “Hell On Earth.”