There was a stretch a few years back where I genuinely could not study without “Aesthetic” playing. You know the one. Tollan Kim and kudasaibeats. If you spent any time on TikTok around 2022 it was the sound under everything, from people chopping vegetables to whole skincare routines. Over 10 million posts used it. I had it on loop during finals and didn’t even know whose track it was.
Then the guy just sort of evaporated.
For two years there was basically nothing. I figured he’d moved on, or the lo-fi thing had run its course for him, or whatever. Producers come and go. That’s normal.
Turns out he was just taking his time.
And here’s the part that got me. He didn’t come back small. There’s a full 21-track album now, called “Tired at 21.” Twenty one tracks after two years of silence is a wild amount of music to just hand people at once. It reads less like a comeback and more like he’d been quietly stacking up everything he had.
The single leading it is “Aesthetic Garden,” sometimes written as “Garden Aesthetic.” I’ve had it on a few times now. It’s got that same soft thing his older stuff had, those beats that just kind of lower your shoulders, but there’s something a little more grown up about it. Hard to say exactly what. It still lives in the lo-fi world but it keeps drifting outside the edges of it.
Give it a listen: Aesthetic Garden on Spotify
People throw around “King of Lo-fi” for him and sure, fine. But the more of his catalog I sit with, the more that feels like the wrong box. He calls his own thing Aesthetic Music and that actually tracks. It’s instrumental, no vocals, the stuff you put on to clean or work or just stop your brain from spinning. There’s a warmth in it though that I don’t really get from other lo-fi playlists, and I’ve never quite figured out how to explain it to people.
He’s stayed pretty mysterious through all of it. Brazilian, lives in South Korea, real name Lukas, and that’s about as much as most of us know. He doesn’t post his face everywhere or do the loud creator thing. His whole deal is basically: be kind, make something that helps somebody get through a rough day. For an artist this big that kind of quiet is rare.
And he is big, even if it doesn’t feel like it on the surface. Over 700 billion views across his stuff on TikTok. Regular top 10 spots on the Global Viral 50. That’s bonkers for a guy making calm instrumental beats with no real marketing machine behind him.
Anyway. I didn’t expect to care this much about a producer coming back. But I’ve got the album on right now writing this, and it feels like getting a text from someone you’d assumed you’d lost touch with. He’s back, and it sounds like he’s somewhere new with it.
If you used to have his stuff on repeat too, go say hi: Tollan Kim on Instagram
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