So Tollan Kim disappeared for two years. Now he’s back.
f you spent any time on TikTok in 2022, you heard him. You just didn’t know it was him. That track “Aesthetic,” the one with kudasaibeats, soundtracked basically everything. Cooking clips. Get-ready videos. Late night study sessions. It was everywhere. Over 10 million posts used it. The guy built a whole sound and then sort of vanished.
Turns out the vanishing was on purpose.
Burnout. Plain and simple. Tollan stepped back for two years to deal with his mental health and actually recover. Which, honestly, is a brave thing for a producer at the top of his game to do. Most people would’ve kept pumping out singles to ride the wave. He didn’t. He went quiet instead.
And the wait paid off.
The comeback isn’t a single. It’s a whole album.
Here’s what gets me. He didn’t just come back with one track to test the water. He came back with a 21-track album called “Tired at 21.” Twenty one tracks. That’s not a comeback, that’s a statement.
The lead single is “Aesthetic Garden,” sometimes floating around as “Garden Aesthetic,” and it’s the one that sets the tone for everything else. Relaxing beats. Melodies that kind of stick to you after the first listen. It pulls from lo-fi but it doesn’t sit neatly inside it. Feels like its own thing.
You can hear it here: Aesthetic Garden on Spotify
People keep calling Tollan the “King of Lo-fi.” Fair enough. But some folks think that label sells him short. What he’s actually doing is its own lane. He even has a name for it. Aesthetic Music.
It’s the chill, instrumental, no-vocals stuff. The kind you put on while you clean or work or just want your brain to slow down. But there’s something warmer in it than standard lo-fi. Harder to pin down. You feel it more than you can describe it.
The Brazilian-born producer, who lives in South Korea now, has always kept things mysterious. Real name’s Lukas. He doesn’t do the loud personality thing. The music speaks. And his whole message is pretty simple. Be kind. Make stuff that helps people feel a little better at the end of a rough day.
The numbers are kind of insane
Over 700 billion views on TikTok across his catalog. His tracks keep landing in the top 10 of TikTok’s Global Viral 50. For a guy making quiet instrumental beats with no marketing machine behind him, that’s wild.
Point is, he reclaimed his space the second he came back. Didn’t have to ease in.
Two years gone. Now back with 21 tracks and a sound that’s still evolving. “Aesthetic Garden” is the door in. If you’ve been waiting for the producer who shaped a generation’s soundtrack to return, this is it.
Follow him here: Tollan Kim on Instagram
This article is brought to you by One Submit, where artists and music curators meet.
