Otomo Yoshihide
Otomo Yoshihide is a musician born in 1959 who has been creating a wide variety of music from improvisation and noise pieces to pop music, always simultaneously and independently, and performs all over the world. As a film music producer, he has composed music for more than 100 films. After the earthquake disaster, he launched Project FUKUSHIMA! in his hometown Fukushima, and has continued various practices up to the present. He is also the director of the renewal of the signature summer festival in Fukushima, “Waraji Matsuri”.
https://otomoyoshihide.com

In the first part of this interview, Otomo Yoshihide expressed his confidence about his performance, stating that he can play the guitar and turntable at his best right now. In Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable (2023), Otomo clearly shows his improvisational skills as an improviser who has reached such a state of freedom. This album was released by Little Stone Records, a newly founded label that released “Stone Stone Stone,” an album of Otomo’s Special Big Band in 2022. The label is planning to release more of Otomo’s solo works such as “Solo Works 2,” a live album and “Solo Works 3,” the one being conceived around the theme of Christian Marclay.

In the second part of the interview, we asked him about his almost-unprecedented musical practices as an experimental turntablist. While his starting point was improvisational collaging, he took a cue from kung-fu movies (!) to play the turntable faster. It also delves into his unique path in which his extreme turntable performance without using records led to his installation works. Besides, perhaps it’s surprising to many listeners, Otomo also says of himself that he “may not be from the context of free improvisation.”

The Impact of Christian Marclay

–In the second part of the interview, I would like to ask you mainly about your work around turntables. Your career as a turntable player began in earnest after you left Masayuki Takayanagi, didn’t it?

Otomo Yoshihide (Otomo): Yes, that’s right. But in fact, I had been performing since I was with Mr. Takayanagi. I was not allowed to perform live, so I only performed in front of the audience just a few times, and most of my performances were recorded at home though. So I started performing in earnest after I left Mr. Takayanagi’s place.

–I heard that you had been making music with a tape recorder since you were a child, although not on turntables.

Otomo: I used to make sound collages with a tape recorder when I was in middle and high school. So I initially wanted to use turntables to create those too, which is why I started it in a completely different context from hip-hop.

–Does collage mean what is called “musique concrète” (concrete music)?

Otomo: Yeah, I wanted to do an improvised version of musique concrete that Pierre Schaeffer would do. But it was only after I met Christian Marclay that I started working solely on turntables. Until then, I had been using cassette tapes or open-reel tapes along with turntables, but Christian made me think it would be cooler to play only on turntables. That realization came even before I heard his music, and I only saw a photo depicting Christian.

–Is that the famous “Phono Guitar” photo in which he plays the turntable slung over his shoulder like a guitar?

Otomo: No, it wasn’t that one. I saw a picture of him playing on four turntables set side by side and thought it was genuinely cool. So something like an imaginary Christian Marclay is one of the starting points of turntable playing for me. I heard his sound for the first time in Teruto Soejima’s documentary film, which was 8mm film footage of the “Moers Jazz Festival 1984.” After that, I also heard Christian’s sound on a John Zorn’s record, maybe around 1984 or 1985, and I was fascinated by how cool it was. I guess I was already playing completely on turntables only by then.

–You also went to see Christian Marclay’s first performance in Japan in 1986, didn’t you?

Otomo: Of course. I saw all of his Tokyo shows. Or rather, I acted as an assistant to Christian when he came to Japan. It was part of Teruto Soejima’s project. The year before the show, Mr. Soejima asked me, “I am thinking of inviting David Moss to Japan, and I have the budget to invite one more person. Who would you like to invite? I said, “Definitely, Christian Marclay, I’ll help you with that!” (Laughs.) So, during the visit, I followed Christian around every day to help out. And when I saw Christian’s performance in person, I realized I could not compete with him. He was just so cool. The speed and the choice of records were so incredible that I could only prostrate in front of him.

The improvisational collage seemed overwhelmingly new

–Did you find different kind of pleasure in playing the turntables than in playing the guitar?

Otomo: To begin with, it requires an entirely different type of technique. Turntable performance seemed overwhelmingly new to me back then in that it allowed me to collage improvisationally, which was different from composing collages. I was able to create collages from recorded materials extemporarily. There were no proper samplers at the time, so the improvised collages seemed so new to me. It seemed to have potential. I felt like I could go beyond the cassette tape collages I had been doing before that.

At the time, Masayuki Takayanagi was working on a cassette tape collage, and I was the one who had made the equipment for him. So I had been doing that kind of collage for quite a while; cassette collages inevitably end up being like compositional works in terms of production speed. Turntable production is more improvisational and cooler than that. In that sense, what struck me the most musically in my life was, after all, the moment I saw Christian Marclay’s live show.

Now I can confess that the one of the biggest reasons why I left Mr. Takayanagi was the encounter with Christian Marclay. He made me want to do shows right away, but Mr. Takayanagi wouldn’t let me do them if I kept studying under him. To be honest, I had been doing shows in secret even before I met Christian, but after that, I was like, all I wanted to do was do shows. Then, my show was introduced in a magazine, which led to a massive argument. That’s how I ran away from Mr. Takayanagi. Therefore, in retrospect, Christian was the catalyst for that.

–In the 1980s, it was very rare to have a live experimental turntable performance at jazz-oriented venues, wasn’t it? Or maybe you were the only one who do that kind of performance. How did the musicians around you recognize that?

Otomo: Yeah, I was lonely. Most of the so-called jazz folks didn’t recognize me. However, there were some people who were interested in me back then, such as Junji Hirose, Kyoko Kuroda, Hideki Kato, Masahiro Uemura, Yuji Katsui, and Naruyoshi Kikuchi. After joining Ms. Kuroda’s band in 1987, I started to get acquainted with jazz musicians. But I didn’t necessarily want to play jazz at that time. It just so happened that I did my first performance in the jazz scene. Then I started playing with Hoppy Kamiyama and Reck, leading me to play in the rock scene. I felt that rock was much more open than jazz music at the time. It was like, anything that sounds interesting was affirmed in the rock context. I remember now that when I played rock with Hoppy Kamiyama and Reck, I also played the guitar.

So, it was all about Mr. Takayanagi, after all. I think there was an excuse in my mind that “rock music has nothing to do with Mr. Takayanagi.” I played noise guitar in the rock shows but occasionally played rhythm guitar too. I felt at ease with Hoppy Kamiyama and Reck’s band because there was no linkage with Mr. Takayanagi. It was when I went to jazz shows, you know, that I couldn’t take my guitar with me. My excuse for playing live on the turntables was like, “It’s OK to play live because it’s not a guitar” (laughs). The presence of Mr. Takayanagi was such a big part of my life. But as you just said, turntables were indeed rare at that time. No one except for hip-hop players brought in turntables. On top of that, in my case, I was using a turntable that I had made myself, not a Technics turntable. There was no one like that in Japan.

The speed of turntable performance cultivated through kung-fu movies

–Turntables were originally a device for listening to music, not a musical instrument designed for performance. I think it is difficult to react as instantly as you do with a guitar during a session.

Otomo: It may sound like I’m boasting, but I was able to react relatively fast even on the turntable, which was probably why I was invited to perform in various opportunities. I was even a guest member of HIKASHU for about a year in 1990.

–Did you sometimes refer to hip-hop music in terms of your turntable technique?

Otomo: No, I was not influenced by hip-hop at all. I’m not even into scratching. Instead, it was more like just making collages really fast. So I’m totally self-taught. Of course, I got influenced by Christian Marclay, but I’ve been doing it since before I met him. My starting point was a wish that I would do a live version of what Pierre Schaeffer would do, and then I discovered Christian, which made me think, “This is it! “

At first, I was mainly using tape recorders, and of course, I was checking out the music of people who used cassette tapes in their live performances, like Mr. Takayanagi and Bob Ostertag. But back then, I felt that tape-based sounds were too much like composed music and tended to unfold slowly, which made me want to create something fast, like a cut-up. The music of John Zorn was a significant influence, and I thought the turntable was the perfect instrument for doing collages and live cut-ups like Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth’s “Peking-Oper” myself. I could cut up at a moment’s notice and add changes in response to a fast beat. Since I just wanted to play it fast, I practiced turntable playing to Hong Kong kung fu movies (laughs).

— Do you mean all that you were seeking was speed?

Otomo: Yeah. Speed. I wanted my performance to be faster than anyone else. Well, I may sound like Kaoru Abe (laughs). Perhaps I was influenced by Kaoru Abe, whom I admired in high school. Anyway, I was pursuing speed. I thought Christian’s performance was so outstanding that I couldn’t compete, so I had to establish my own approach. At the time, I used Hong Kong kung fu movies as a reference. I would repeatedly watch VHS videos of movies starring actors like Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao and make sounds from a turntable to match their movements exactly. It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Well, it was indeed stupid. But I had played that way up until the mid-1990s. Thinking back now, I realize that turntable usage led to the technique of playing the guitar with a U-shaped bracket because both were for speed and strong accents.

Sampling Virus Project ~ “Dear Derek,” an unreleased album

–In the 1990s, you were an advocator of the “Sampling Virus Project,” and in 1993 you released an album titled The Night before the Death of the Sampling Virus. Was this project an attempt on the extended line of the turntable collage?

Otomo: For that album, I didn’t use turntables, but mainly cut-and-paste tapes, like Pierre Schaeffer did. I did use turntables, but it was a compositional work. I also used digital audio sources for the mastering of the CD.

I started working on the “Sampling Virus Project” largely because the idea of “sampling” was new at the time. I felt the possibility of reusing sound sources, which was different from collage because the term “sampling” was introduced to describe what, until then, could only be defined as “collage.” On the other hand, that was also the time when so-called “computer viruses” were beginning to appear, and I decided to explore these things, including copyright issues, centered around the keyword “virus,” which had no clear identity. However, at that time, we still had only simple computers, and there was no network that could instantly connect us to the world via the Internet like computers do today, so I was exploring them only in my mind under such circumstances.

— However, your perception of music in relation to others, exemplified by the idea, “the seeds of sampling viruses spreading out of your own hands while proliferating/changing,” had been succeeded by into how you organized orchestras, how you interacted at the Asian Meeting Festival, and how devices reacted to each other in your art installations. You have been working on a different project, from the “Sampling Virus Project” to “Ensembles” and so forth, but would you say that your philosophy has remained consistent?

Otomo: Indeed, it may have been consistent. The idea behind all these things is that the creation of an individual is not the only thing that constitutes something. It is a way of thinking that assumes various external factors are intertwined with the individual’s intentions. However, in the 1990s, the network environment was not as well developed as it is now, so it was still a network imagined only in my brain.

–In the 1990s, you must have seen the emergence of CDJs, but why did you not switch to CDJs and why do you still play on turntables?

Otomo: I was really into it at first. For a while, I even made a piece dedicated to Derek Bailey called “Dear Derek,” using only CDJs, which I didn’t end up releasing. It was a CDJ collage of sound sources sampled from Bailey’s performances, and I had permission from Bailey himself, but right before releasing it, I felt it was boring, so I stopped releasing it.

But I got tired of CDJs pretty quickly. The same goes for samplers. Maybe I got tired of sampling itself. Computers and samplers were getting increasingly advanced, and I began to feel that CDJs were nothing more than very inconvenient samplers. Digital data sampling was developing more and more, which made me think we would soon be able to do this more efficiently at a higher capacity. Then, I almost spontaneously lost my interest in it. I felt that turntables were more imperfect and enabled me to play more freely. I hated it when I couldn’t just pick it up, drop the needle, and go “poof.” I thought digital was too slow and only produced the same sound. I also tried a little on a laptop, but it was too slow, and I couldn’t stand it. Of course, after that, I saw many people doing extraordinary things with that kind of equipment, which made me realize that I was entirely of the old generation and an analog person (laughs).

From turntable performances without records to installation pieces

— Considering the similarities with guitars, you have also taken the approach of generating feedback noise on turntables, haven’t you? Had you already been experimenting with such a technique since the 1990s?

Otomo: Yes. I was already using feedback in the mid-1990s. Turntable feedback is less controllable than guitar feedback, which was interesting to me. Of course, if you keep doing it, you get some control over it, so I could say that’s why my work got closer and closer to noise music like INCAPACITANTS.

–I think there are two aspects to your turntable performance: one is the sampling/collage aspect of existing music, and the other is the aspect of generating the immediate noise of the turntable itself, without necessarily using a record. Especially in terms of the latter, why did you start a kind of extreme turntable performance without using records?

Otomo：I guess seeing Martin Tétreault’s performance was a significant factor. In 1997, I was working on “Consume Red” with the band, Ground-Zero, thinking it was time to stop the cutting-up method. I had known Martin before that through Christian Marclay, and I had listened to his albums, but he was a turntable player who did collages, originally from the visual art field. But when I saw him at the Angelica Festival in Bologna, Italy, in 1997, he was a part of a duo with a sampler player, Diane Labrosse, and they hardly used records. They played mainly with turntable noise. While on stage, they weren’t playing instruments much but just making squealy noises (laughs). But it was fantastic, and I was shocked at how they thoroughly focused on simple things. I was watching the show with the members of Ground-Zero, but only Sachiko M and I were amused.

–The following year, 1998, you released your first album with Sachiko M on Filament.

Otomo: Yes, that’s right. So, it was during that period that I decided to break up everything that was going on and go in that direction. I thought, “It’s not a collage anymore.” Again, Martin had a significant influence on me. Soon after that, Martin and I started to play as a duo, so we began to play more and more turntables on stage without using records or collages, and we learned more and more moves and techniques from each other. I think there was a tremendous mutual influence.

–Turntables can be used as an automatic sound system, right? Your first installation work, “without records” (2005), also used a portable record player. Was it on the extension of the same line of this kind of turntable performance?

Otomo: Yes, that was clearly the case with the first “without records.” The way I handled turntables without using records was directly connected to the installation works. What was important, however, was that later, at the time of the “ENSEMBLES” exhibition (2008), we began to work with turntables that various people had created, and this led to the inclusion of more and more works that were not the creations of myself. That was the big difference from my own turntable performances.

“Whether you deal with a motor that moves on its own, or you deal with fixed, vibrating strings”

–In the late 1990s, you shifted to a non-collage direction, but later returned to a collage approach, and your latest release, Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable, includes some of your turntable performance of this kind. What made you decide to work with sampling/collage again?

Otomo: Frankly speaking, I thought I didn’t necessarily have to be so ascetic, and it was okay to do it occasionally. Also, I used to make collage my main focus, but now it doesn’t constitute as big a part of my practice as before; it’s more that I just use the sounds on the record. In the 1990s, the essential theme for me was what the collage sounds meant and how they were cut up, but now I treat it as a texture-creating element of the sound on the record. If there were a slight implication, it would be that I was using Kaoru Abe’s records. That might be similar to the fact that I play “Lonely Woman” on guitar.

–Now, you use both guitars and turntables, which is easier to handle?

Otomo: Well, they are both my main instruments. And I can’t say which one is easier. But I do think to myself, “This kind of music would go better with the guitar,” or “For this kind of partner, the turntable would be more suitable. For example, I might think a guitar would be better when I play with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano. It didn’t happen, but there was a time, in his later years, when I thought it would be nice if Sakamoto-san played the guitar and I played the piano.

–I remember that you also released a live piano performance disc, Piano Solo (2013).

Otomo: Personally, the piano is on the extended line of the guitar. I think of it as a guitar with many strings. So it doesn’t feel like piano playing. It is closer to the idea that I am dealing with an extreme multi-stringed guitar.

–What do you find interesting about playing on a turntable?

Otomo: Turntables are attractive because they are separate from the player’s will and are imperfect devices with many deficits. Digital devices don’t have such deficits. For example, there are almost no other ways to use CDs than to play sound on them. Of course, like Yasunao Tone, it is possible to put adhesive tape on a CD and cause it to malfunction, but a turntable can be used in many different ways. Essentially, it is just a motor and a microphone (cartridge).

A guitar is strings and microphones, but a turntable is a motor and a microphone. They both have the same amplified sound coming out of the amplifier, which means they can also induce feedback. You could say the only difference is whether you deal with a motor that moves on its own, or you deal with fixed, vibrating strings. But again, the important thing is that they both have microphones, and the sound comes from an amplifier. That’s what they have in common, so the sound can be similar whether you’re playing guitar or turntables.

“My music is probably closer to the context of noise music than that of free improvisation.”

— One of the features of Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable is that it is not a live recording, but a studio recording, and it contains many short tracks. Each track is numbered; is this the number of takes?

Otomo: Yes, it is. Actually, I followed the way Derek Bailey numbered respective tracks in “Solo Guitar” (1971). I think “Solo Guitar” is the only other person’s work I was conscious of at this time. I guess I had the idea of making it like the A-side of “Solo Guitar.” It’s not that long and contains various improvisations, but each song doesn’t have a different concept.

— “Solo Guitar” is an album that leaves a strong impression on people who hear it for the first time, but for you, is there anything that feels fresh when you listen to it again now?

Otomo: Honestly, I don’t think I can listen to it with the same freshness decades later, but I just think it’s always amazing. I’m like, “Derek, how did you get to this place?” It’s still outstanding. Of course, Derek Bailey has released many great albums after “Solo Guitar,” but it’s incredible that he suddenly released that one as his first solo album.

— There is a big difference in terms of meaning and reception between a recorded work of free improvisation released in, say, the 1960s or 1970s and the same kind of work released in the 2020s.

Otomo: Well, it would be totally different. Because doing free improvisation now is not an adventure or a challenge by itself. It is just a common approach that can be found anywhere. That’s why I made Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable as one of those things that can be found anywhere.

–But that doesn’t mean that you just wanted to record a style of free improvisation, does it?

Otomo: No. There are many styles of improvisation besides free improvisation, and I made this album based on the basic premise that there are many styles. I sometimes think that my music is closer to the context of noise music than to that of free improvisation. When I play with European free improvisers, I often feel that I am playing in a different context from theirs. They hugely influenced me, and I enjoy playing with them, but I think we probably speak different languages.

–What exactly do you mean by the difference in context between free improvisation and noise music?

Otomo: It seems to stem from the significant difference in how they perceive music history before and after their emergence. It’s hard to say, but in the case of the early days of free improvisation, it was based on the idea that “it has to be improvisation,” which led to how it is today. But I don’t think noise is based on the idea that “it has to be noise.” Once you do noise, you are at a dead end, and you are allowed to do whatever you want to do. And I improvise based on that realization, which may sound a bit abstract, though. As a teenager, I was struck by Kaoru Abe’s live performance and Derek Bailey’s free improvisation. After meeting Mr. Takayanagi, I was blown away by Christian Marclay and John Zorn and I met many people of the same generation who played noise and improvised music. Then, I worked with the Otoasobi no Kai and other groups. So this is a very personal piece of music made by a person who has passed through half a century of practice, going through all these encounters.

■”Otomo Yoshihide “Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable”
Release date: August 16, 2023
Price: (CD) 2,000 yen
Track List
1.turntable with a record 8
2.guitar 2
3.guitar 6
4.turntable with a record 1
5.turntable without a record 1
6.guitar 4
7.turntable with a record 10
8.guitar 5
9.guitar 1
10.turntable without a record 4
11.turntable without a record 6
12.turntable with a record 2
13.guitar 7
14.turntable without a record 3
15.turntable with a record 5
16.turntable with a record 9
17.turntable without a record 5
18.guitar 8
19.turntable with a record 3
20.guitar 3
https://otomoyoshihide.bandcamp.com/album/otomo-yoshihide-solo-works-1-guitar-and-turntable-3

Photography Masashi Ura

The post Interview with Otomo Yoshihide, The Mastery of Guitar & Turntable Achieved in His Mid-60s -Part 2- appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

Otomo Yoshihide
Otomo Yoshihide is a musician born in 1959 who has been creating a wide variety of music from improvisation and noise pieces to pop music, always simultaneously and independently, and performs all over the world. As a film music producer, he has composed music for more than 100 films. After the earthquake disaster, he launched Project FUKUSHIMA! in his hometown Fukushima, and has continued various practices up to the present. He is also the director of the renewal of the signature summer festival in Fukushima, “Waraji Matsuri”.
https://otomoyoshihide.com

Musician Otomo Yoshihide started his live music performances in earnest in the late 1980s and has since built a one-of-a-kind career spanning more than 35 years. He has been active in the independent noise/improvisation scene, has composed music for numerous films and TV dramas, and has been involved in public participatory project, as well as creating installations and serving as director of art festivals. In August 2023, Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable, a fully improvised studio album he recorded as a guitarist and turntablist, was released.

Few musicians can perform as original as Otomo Yoshihide, both as a guitarist and turntablist. Solo Works 1, an album consisting of 20 small tracks, is a clear record of where he is today. In the first part of this interview, we focus on Otomo’s musical practices as a guitarist. We asked him why he started playing guitar again and how he came to establish his own distinctive style.

The reason why Otomo started playing guitar again

–You first picked up a guitar when you were in middle school, but since then, your relationship with the guitar has undergone various changes, such as learning under legendary jazz guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi when you were in your 20s, and building your own guitar that only produces noise. How do you view your career as a guitarist?

Otomo Yoshihide (Otomo): When I studied under Mr. Takayanagi from 1980 to 1986, I had yet to make a name for myself and was just a guitarist in the making. After I left Mr. Takayanagi, I thought I had failed and was determined not to make it as a guitarist anymore. So, from the end of the 1980s to the 1990s, I decided to use turntables instead. However, I wanted to keep the guitar element, so I dared to use a guitar I made by myself. I also wanted to make an ostensible excuse for not being a “guitarist” by using the guitar as a noise generator that could not be tuned.

It was around 2000 that this situation changed. It is true that Naruyoshi Kikuchi and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki always encouraged me to play the guitar, but more than that, I honestly wanted to play the guitar, which I had been holding back for so long. So I started playing guitar again around 2000, thinking that it would be okay to play guitar as long as I didn’t try to play like everyone else. So after that, I officially started my career as a guitarist.

–You could have stuck to using the guitar as a tabletop instrument and a noise generator like Keith Rowe, but why did you decide to play guitar in a normal manner?

Otomo: It was because you did not necessarily need a guitar to make a noise generator. I could do it with a turntable and all kinds of self-made gadgets I made back then. I still wanted to play a standard tuning guitar. In the first place, I joined Mr. Takayanagi’s class because I wanted to work as a so-called guitarist. After leaving him, I gradually became more liberated from a mentoring relationship with Mr. Takayanagi, so I decided again to play guitar, not as a noise generator.

–What guitarists were you listening to at that time? Were there any albums that struck you?

Otomo: It was when I was with Mr. Takayanagi that I listened to and studied a variety of guitarists’ albums. I just listened to many different music. When I restarted playing the guitar, I had to start practicing it all over again, so I was re-listening to many classics like Jim Hall. Of course, that does not mean I wanted to play guitar orthodoxly, so I just referred to how he makes harmonies instead of adopting his playing style. My aim was to become able to play guitar in my own unique way.

On the solo album Guitar Solo released in 2005

–One of your most significant milestones as a guitarist must have been your solo album Guitar Solo released in 2005. It was also the first release for a label doubtmusic. What motivated you to make that album featuring guitar sounds?

Otomo: One of the motivations was to present a sound source to my old friend Jun Numata to congratulate him on founding his own label after retiring from the record store Disk Union. I couldn’t spend too much money on it, so I recorded it live at Shinjuku Pit Inn instead of in a studio (The sound was recorded on October 12, 2004). Since it was meant to be a gift, I thought other musicians’ participation would complicate things, so I decided to make it a solo project. I had started doing solo shows just a while before that and playing guitar for film scores – in fact, I played guitar a little bit for film music in the 90s as well – so I decided it was time to make a solo guitar album. But I didn’t have the skills that other guitarists would typically have, so that album was a challenge of playing solo guitar to the extent that I could.

–In 2002, Derek Bailey released a solo album called Ballads on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. The content is totally different, but I see an overlap between that and Otomo’s Guitar Solo. In other words, both albums are not entirely improvisational but feature composed pieces that are played in a different way than they were originally meant to be. Both of them are peculiar in that they were created as a result of performances of composed pieces by musicians who have always worked on improvisation and noise music.

Otomo：It is true that when Ballads came out, I was stunned by it and thought, “Oh, this way of playing music is possible?” I remember that I listened to it so many times. Of course, Derek Bailey had always been my favorite since I decided to do music, but the fact that Bailey released Ballads may have been significant for me. For example, “Ballads” opens with a song called “Laura.” And if you follow the standard theory of jazz, you keep the chord progression and bars of “Laura” as the song develops. But if you listen to Derek Bailey’s music, it’s not like that. The song starts with the theme, but then it develops freely and comes back to the theme again. But that works totally fine. I thought that was very free and nice.

However, I had already tried that approach with the New Jazz Quintet. I had a theme at the beginning of the piece but would develop an improvisation utterly different from the theme, or the piece would take an unexpected direction and then return to the theme at the end. I had been experimenting with approaches that did not fit into the traditional jazz format, and I think “Ballad” made me realize that it was okay to do that with solo guitar. Of course, I can’t play like Derek Bailey, so I tried to do it my own way.

–Did you also consider making a solo guitar album completely based on noise/improvisation, rather than composed pieces?

Otomo: It was not an option at that time. I even thought that recording only with noise and improvisation was something I didn’t need to do anymore. I did it a lot at shows, though. But actually, I had released a guitar improvisation piece on CD-R called Guitar Solo Live 1 (1999). But I didn’t find it very interesting, and I thought improvisation should disappear right after it’s done. If I was going to release it as an album, I wanted to keep the composed music in some form. It seemed more fresh at the time.

Actually, solo improvisation is complex, and it’s not really improvisation in the true sense of the word. In terms of duos and trios, players tend to think about what to play during the performance, but with solos, that’s not really the case. The performances are strongly tied to my previous experiences, and it is very hard to break out of them. And there had been many great solo improvisation albums like the one by Derek Bailey before mine. I was not the type of person who had pioneered improvisation in that way. So at that point, I didn’t feel like making a solo guitar album only consisting improvisation and noise.

“Lonely Woman” is “homework” left by Masayuki Takayanagi

–If we were to place improvisation and composed pieces at the two ends of the spectrum, I feel that “Lonely Woman” is positioned in the middle of them in the case of Otomo’s guitar performance. Ornette Coleman originally wrote it, but when you perform improvisation completely live, melodies of “Lonely Woman” sometimes pop up naturally, doesn’t it?

Otomo: Yeah, sometimes. Well, when I worked on improvisations on the guitar, it was not like I didn’t have any references. But among all, Mr. Takayanagi’s solo guitar album Lonely Woman (1982) was the most influential. I tried not to listen to it when I picked up the guitar again because I would be influenced too much by it. I tried to store it in a distant part of my memory, but I couldn’t help thinking about it. It was in the 2000s that I decided that it would be okay to play “Lonely Woman” every time. I didn’t care how I played it. It could come out of nowhere in an improvised performance, or I could play “Lonely Woman” from the beginning and break it up to create a rhythm or whatever. That means Takayanagi-san, rather than Ornette Coleman, was the most influential figure for me when playing the guitar.

Of course, Ornette Coleman was influential as well. In my opinion, “Lonely Woman” was his first harmolodics-oriented piece. It may also mean that I somehow want to be connected to the history of jazz. However, I haven’t played almost any of Ornette’s songs except for “Lonely Woman,” so I’m aware that I still see the history of jazz through the lens of Mr. Takayanagi.

–Did the song “Lonely Woman” mean a lot to Mr. Takayanagi as well?

Otomo: That is a mystery. As far as I know, Mr. Takayanagi only performed “Lonely Woman” in his solo performance. I saw almost all of his live performances, but he never played “Lonely Woman” in a group like Angry Waves. Moreover, at that time, Mr. Takayanagi didn’t say anything about Ornette Coleman in particular, and I always heard him talking about Albert Ayler. So I honestly don’t know why it was “Lonely Woman.”

However, the last time Mr. Takayanagi played “Lonely Woman” was probably in 1984. He toured Hokkaido with Teruto Soejima and played “Lonely Woman” at the first concert, and everything else was noise. After that, he didn’t play “Lonely Woman” anymore, even after returning to Tokyo. He shifted to “Action Direct,” which was about generating a lot of noise. As I watched, I kept thinking, “It would be good to play ‘Lonely Woman’ in Action Direct,” and I told Mr. Takayanagi about it, but every time I told him, he would say, “Otomo, you don’t understand that. They are different things.”

That convinced me, but I was also driven by the desire to play them together. That is why I have been playing “Lonely Woman” as something that suddenly appears out of the noise or starts with that theme but develops into something completely different. For me, “Lonely Woman” is like an “assignment” left behind by Mr. Takayanagi. Takayanagi himself had moved on to the next phase, like action direct, and just left me with the song.

The process of establishing Otomo Yoshihide’s guitar style

–It has already been almost 20 years since the release of Guitar Solo, and your career as a guitarist has been longer. If I were to put it this way, you have your own unique guitar style. When did you begin to establish such a style for yourself?

Otomo: Maybe I did it through the 2000s. Partially, I had already been doing it since my early 20s, but one of the things I was particularly focused on in the 2000s was how to handle audio feedback. Mr. Takayanagi also dealt with feedback, but it rarely appeared in Lonely Woman. So, I wanted to include feedback in it, or rather, I was wondering if I could make it the framework of the song. Mr. Takayanagi also has a recording of a song called “Feed Back”, a song included on the 1969 album We Now Create, which he recorded with Masahiko Togashi and others. I wondered if I could create something like a mixture of that and “Lonely Woman”.

So I tamed the feedback and developed a guitar approach in which I could switch from it to melody and harmony while dealing with the parts I could control and the parts I couldn’t. I spent about ten years in the 2000s working on that. Until then, feedback was just noise. It was not something that could be controlled. I was developing this uncontrollable noise guitar style into something in which I could play with some control, still retaining some of my uncontrollability.

–In terms of guitar feedback, you often mention the influence of Jimi Hendrix.

Otomo: In most of Jimi Hendrix’s performance, he was using feedback in the context of blues, but as for the live performance of the American National Anthem at Woodstock in 1969, the song turned into sounds composed solely of feedback in the middle. That sounds still so cool and amazing now. So, from the first time I entered Mr. Takayanagi’s class, I knew I wanted to play free jazz in the way Jimi had played the Anthem, though it was totally different. But anyway, I was influenced by Jimi Hendrix in that respect.

—-There are free jazz guitarists like Attila Zoller, Larry Coryell, or Sonny Sharrock, but you　 wanted to play free jazz like Jimi Hendrix, right?

Otomo：Of course, Sonny Sharrock and Larry Coryell both use feedback, and I like them very much, but I overwhelmingly prefer Jimi Hendrix’s way of controlling the melody line and feedback. I’ve been thinking about that since I was in my early twenties. But it was in the late 2000s that I was able to do that at a level that satisfied me. I tamed the guitar at live shows and formulated my own approach.

How the guitar sounds in relation to the drums

–In the 2000s, when you were establishing your guitar style, were there any session partners who particularly influenced you?

Otomo: I would have to say Yasuhiro Yoshigaki. When I played with Yoshigaki on drums, both in a session and a band, my biggest interest was how my guitar sounded. How can I make my guitar sound satisfactory with those drums? Especially in the 2000s, I felt like I was making my style with Yoshigaki. Just as Yosuke Yamashita created that style with Takeo Moriyama. I created my own guitar style, including rhythm and accentuation, to respond to Yoshigaki’s drumming.

I played not only with Yoshigaki but also with various drummers, and each combination has a way of matching. But in any case, I was creating my own performance while matching various drummers. That was the first step. On top of that, I became able to deal with sessions with saxophone and piano a little later. When I think of free improvisation, jazz, or pop music, I tend to focus on the drums first, and then how guitar and drums should sound against the bass. Next comes the saxophone. It was fascinating to think about how to make the audio feedback sound in combination with the saxophone sounds.

I can focus only on tone and rhythm when I play with drums without thinking about harmony or chords. Even if a bass player joins in, as long as the single notes are in harmony with each other, the harmony can be varied in any way. So when I played with a pianist, I was initially too concerned about the harmony and thought I couldn’t do it. But things have changed in the last ten years or so, and it has become rather exciting. The fact that I started working with Ryuichi Sakamoto was also a significant factor. I can take a different approach from the one I take when playing with the drums. I can use the tones and pitches of the guitar strings and see how the harmony blends with the piano sounds. I started to be able to do this around the beginning of the 2010s. Now I enjoy playing with the piano, and it has been exciting to have sessions not only with Mr. Sakamoto, but also with Ms. Satoko Fujii and Mr. Masahiko Sato.

–You had your first duo session together with Mr. Sakamoto on the radio broadcast on January 1, 2011, and you also played “Lonely Woman” at that time.

Otomo: Yeah. Actually, it was Mr. Sakamoto who suggested that we use “Lonely Woman” as a motif. “Lonely Woman” is in the key of D minor, and at that time, I was playing it while trying to figure out what notes he was playing for D minor. The session with Mr. Sakamoto made me realize that I could make something interesting with such an approach because, until then, I didn’t think I could take a harmonic approach very well. So, as I mentioned, I was exploring only tone, pace, and groove in relation to the drums, but after the duo with Mr. Sakamoto, I began to think that it would be interesting to explore harmonies as well.

A change in the way I perceive improvisation

–In a conversation with Mr. Sakamoto in that radio program, you mentioned the Otoasobi no Kai and said that it made you rethink about “freedom.” Did your perception of improvisation change around that time?

Otomo: Yeah, it did pretty drastically. This may sound strange, but until then I thought that improvisation had to be done properly as improvisation. In other words, improvisation must not have included conventional melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. But since I started working with the Otoasobi no Kai, I have become less concerned with such things. Before, when I worked on “improvisation,” I used to think about how to incorporate various histories that were in different contexts from improvisation, but then I realized that my approach of focusing on improvisation itself was very biased. When I faced the children in that group, nothing would get started if I brought my history as the main focus. So, I changed my mindset and started thinking about the people I was playing with.

Also, it was a time when Mr. Sakamoto began to re-evaluate the improvisational music he used to play, so I feel that we were both influenced by each other. Of course, it is interesting to play improvised music as it is, but it was no longer a time when that was all that mattered. And this also coincided with the time when I started playing the guitar again. Perhaps because of this, I came to honestly believe that I don’t necessarily have to play the guitar with an obsession with noise. It didn’t matter if I tuned it or not anymore. I think that was a massive shift for me.

–In other words, rather than aiming for something new aesthetically through improvisation, you have come to emphasize communication between people as a methodology?

Otomo: I think so. Improvisation is like a conversation, and new things may come out of it, but that is not the only purpose. Besides, I have come to think that we should not place too much value on improvisation.

Well, when I say “conversation,” I don’t mean that you have to respond to the sound that another person makes with specific types of sounds that would correspond to it. It is a state of free exchange with the person you are performing with, with or without progressions. I thought I could do that more freely on the guitar than on the turntable. With a turntable, I am limited in how I respond, and above all, setting it up takes some doing, but with a guitar, I felt a bit more lighthearted.

Of course, it was my guitar, no matter how far I went, so I felt that frustration. However, in the past, I had to think a lot when I played free jazz, and I couldn’t play without having what I did with Mr. Takayanagi in mind. Since the 2010s, I haven’t thought about that too much, and I’ve moved toward doing what I can do. In the process, I became able to do various things frexibly.

“The situation I’m in now may not last 10 years.”

–What do you feel is the joy of playing the guitar for you now?

Otomo: I don’t know if this is good or bad, and I don’t know if this is the right way to put it, but my performance is getting better and better, which is fun. I become able to do more and more things that I couldn’t do before in terms of speed and accuracy of the performance, and techniques related to audio feedback. I have no idea whether this is good or bad musically, but I can’t resist the desire for such fun.

As long as I am physically able to do so, I will focus thoroughly on improving my techniques, such as increasing the speed and the ways I approach the sounds. Of course, there are physical limitations, but I feel like I can go further and further now. That’s why I decided to record this album, Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable. The fact that my opportunities to perform in front of people were drastically reduced due to the pandemic also motivated me to record. However, I also had a great sense of urgency that this situation I am in now may not last ten years, or even worse, it may only be ephemeral. Because people of my generation and a little older than myself have died one after another, especially in the past few years.

People like Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Michiro Endo, with whom I launched Project FUKUSHIMA!, passed away around the age of 70. Considering the fact that I am 64 years old now, I may not be alive 10 years from now. Due to this realization, I became even more motivated to release a solo improvisation album, which I have not released often. This is not only the case with my guitar but also with turntables. Technically, guitar and turntables are totaly different, but I’ve been able to play turntables far more freely than before, so I wanted to record both of them in their current state.

■Otomo Yoshihide “Solo Works 1 Guitar and Turntable”
Release date: August 16, 2023
Price: (CD) 2,000 yen
Track List
1.turntable with a record 8
2.guitar 2
3.guitar 6
4.turntable with a record 1
5.turntable without a record 1
6.guitar 4
7.turntable with a record 10
8.guitar 5
9.guitar 1
10.turntable without a record 4
11.turntable without a record 6
12.turntable with a record 2
13.guitar 7
14.turntable without a record 3
15.turntable with a record 5
16.turntable with a record 9
17.turntable without a record 5
18.guitar 8
19.turntable with a record 3
20.guitar 3
https://otomoyoshihide.bandcamp.com/album/otomo-yoshihide-solo-works-1-guitar-and-turntable-3

■ONJQ : Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Quintet EUROPE TOUR 2024
Periods: January 26 – February 11, 2024
February 1 Jazz Club Loco, København [DK]
Feb. 2 Nasjonal Jazzscene, Oslo [NO]
Feb. 4 Pardon, To Tu, Warszawa [PL]
Feb. 5 Pardon, To Tu, Warszawa [PL]
Feb 6th NOSPR, Katowice [PL]
Feb. 7th Divadlo29, Pardubice [CZ]
Feb. 8th In Situ Art Society, Bonn [DE]
Feb. 9th Handelsbeurs, Gent [BE]
Feb. 10 Centro D’Arte, Padova [IT]
February 11 Area Sismica, Forlì [IT]

Photography Masashi Ura

The post Interview with Otomo Yoshihide, The Mastery of Guitar & Turntable Achieved in His Mid-60s Part.1 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

GEZAN
Formed in Osaka in 2009, GEZAN is an alternative rock band consisting of Mahito the People (vo., gt.), Eagle Taka (gt.), Yakumoa (ba.), and Roscal Ishihara (dr.). In 2012, the band moved its base to Tokyo and has been active throughout Japan based on its unique perspective. They run Jusangatsu, a label that sends out a variety of domestic and international talent. Since 2014, they have been holding the “Zenkankaku-Sai Festival,” a donation-based outdoor festival organized by Jusangatsu, which is free admission, with the idea of “letting people decide the value of fun for themselves.” The band released their fifth full-length album KLUE in January 2020, and in May 2021, they were joined by a new bassist, Yakumoa, and performed in “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL”. The band released their first full-length album in three years, Anochi, produced with Million Wish Collective, on February 1, 2023.
http://gezan.net
Twitter：@gezan_official
http://mahitothepeople.com
Twitter：@1__gezan__3
Instagram：@mahitothepeople___gezan

February 24, 2023 marks one year since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Why do human beings walk into an extremely tragic war? Not a few people must have lived their lives wondering how to overcome the worst of the situation, but feeling helpless and powerless to do anything about it. It is against this backdrop that GEZAN’s new album, Anochi, was released.

Even though it does not have the power to directly stop the war, the anti-war rally “No War 0305” organized by GEZAN’s own label “Jusangatsu” in March 2022 had great significance. Of course, anti-war demonstrations were held in various places. But most of them were organized under the slogans like “with Ukraine” or “anti-Putin.” This is not to say that they are wrong, but the logic of friend/foe itself has a dangerously close resemblance to the logic of war. In contrast, the focus of “No War 0305” was simply “anti-war.” Whereas one of the so-called powers of music is to unite people’s bodies and souls, this rally existed as a place where diverse opinions coexisted as they were, yet still offered a glimpse of the possibilities of solidarity through music.

The music of Anochi is also full of diverse and complex sounds and voices. It can be described as rebel music of a new era. At first glance, it sounds like an anti-war album, but Mahito the People says, “They are not protest songs.” The interview explores what exactly this album is. 

A cry of anger and a prayer for hope

–The theme of Anochi, which you created with the voice ensemble Million Wish Collective, is “voice.” However, even within the same theme, the first half of the album is charged with a sense of anger and screaming, while the second half, which is more like a prayer, seems somewhat more hopeful. If the first half is a real voice emanating from the streets, the second half can be seen as a science fiction-like world that offers a futuristic and panoramic perspective on what is going on now. What was the concept behind this dualistic composition?

Mahito the People (Mahito): I think that the various events you mentioned earlier (in the first part), such as the pandemic and the war, would be completely unrealistic to people in the time before they happened. Rather, they would probably think all these are the stuff of science fiction. No one would have predicted in the 2010s that Shinzo Abe would be gunned down. In other words, the reality is already in the world of science fiction. So, even if I am just doing my music, I have no choice but to work on a piece that has science fiction-kind of sounds. 

In terms of movies, for example, old science fiction like E.T. (1982) was predominantly centered on earthlings, and the story was about human beings meeting aliens, but now, works like Blade Runner 2049 (2017) depict the viewpoint of replicants. In a way, the film focuses on what was said to be “the other side.” In such films, we are not looking at them, but we are looked at by them. In such films, we are not seeing them, but being seen by them. So this process seems natural to me since at least science fiction is already free from the genre of glimpsing the “other side” and we are in such a confused and unknown zone.

We are also at the point of no return on the issue of climate change, but what is happening is a problem that cannot be grasped by individual human beings, unless it is measured over a very long span of time. But we have to face it. In a sense, the way to face this reality is to have a science fiction perspective. The same is true of the end of the planet Earth. If we start using nuclear weapons in a war, it will definitely break down, but now the danger has become so real that it doesn’t even seem like a far-fetched fantasy. So I thought it would be hard to face the reality of a science fiction-like situation without thinking about it through a street sensibility.

However, the fact that the second half of the album sounds more hopeful means that the world is clearly more chaotic than when I made KLUE, and that I have also been driven into a tougher situation. I didn’t want to depict that realistically in the midst of the sense of stagnation. I wanted to lie properly. The percentage of hope contained in Anochi is also a reflection of how distorted the world I am looking at is. I needed to say that there is hope, because when you are running after hope even your feelings become clearer.

Thoughts behind “No War 0305”

—Anochi is infused with strong anti-war sentiments, yet it is slightly different from what is called an anti-war album. Instead of upholding a specific ideology as it is, it seems this rebel music was created as a result of profound reflections on why anti-war/peace is necessary and on how human beings are living. How did the Russian invasion of Ukraine and “No War 0305” held at the south exit of Shinjuku affect the production of this album?

Mahito: I always think that I don’t want to judge people by some kind of symbols because the times we are living are so complicated that it is dangerous to make any clear statements. Everyone has a different background and sees different things, so it is not so simple to say that one side is an enemy and the other side is a friend. We sometimes use symbols to make discussions easier to understand, but that is not the right way to make judgements about others. With this in mind, I think even the symbol “I” is impossible. There are many other beings, including fungi, wriggling around inside me, and even if there is only one word or feeling that comes out on the surface, there are many thoughts and feelings behind it. There are angels and demons, but through a kind of small democracy, the first person “I” plays the role of being responsible for them. That is how messed up everyone is, and there is no way to categorize anyone.

So, while I don’t want to divide people into categories and foment fragmentation among them, even so, there would be no room for debate about “Anti-War”. As I wrote in my statement for “No War 0305,” I didn’t mean to talk about nationalism, insisting that Ukraine is all right and Russia is all wrong. There are many opinions, but at least there is no justification for people to kill other people, right? I thought it is worth getting together even for that, and that this feeling should be expressed more frankly. The symbol “No War” is used as a political term, but I think it should be used in the same way as “Love” or “Peace,” or even as a synonym. On top of that, it is not even a genre, considering how close it is to our lives and that everyone is a party to it, without exception. So, rather than clearly stating my principles and opinions, which will potentially divide people, I wanted to at least liberate our senses more.

That is also what I did with this album. So I don’t think of it as an anti-war album at all. Well, you can say that all the songs touch on something similar to that, but as I said, even love songs can also do so. It’s no different from affirming life.

–So, you are saying that even the song that cries out “Fight War Not Wars” is, in a sense, not a protest song, right?

Mahito: Yes. I don’t think it is even necessary to push it into such a genre. At the time of “No War 0305,” for example, Ayano Kaneko and Ikuko (Harada) did not assert anything in their stage banter, they just stood on stage and sang the songs they always sing and left, but I think that was rather very important. For me, it was like, why can’t we do what we usually do in a usual way? Why is it that when there is a war, people say, “No, no, each of us has our own position, ……” and get stuck? It’s not a question of position or anything, but from a primitive sense, war sucks without argument. So this album does not feel like a collection of protest songs at all, maybe it is even less protest-oriented than KLUE.

–What struck me about “No War 0305” was that even though Ayano Kaneko did not sing an anti-war song, the phrase “You will never get me, my tears are overflowing” in her song “爛漫(Ranman)” sounded as very sincere words. There were a lot of moments like that. So I thought that the very fact that “Anochi” is not a protest song, is exactly what connects the song deeply to politics that is different from ideology.

Mahito: Yes, right before we did “No War 0305,” I ran into a musician at a pub who said, “I can only sing love songs, so I can’t participate in the demo. But then I thought to myself, “No, no, no, you should think about how it is possible to sing love songs or to be in love. If peace is not guaranteed, how can we do all these things?” As you can see from these examples, many things, which do not seem to be related to “No War,” are linked to it. Or rather, many activities are allowed only in times when there is no war.

So it is not even about whether you are directly protesting or not. Spending time at home with your cat, drinking coffee, or taking a walk with someone you love are all connected to “No War.” One of the purposes of “No War 0305” was to show the three-dimensionality of such things, and in fact, I think the scope of the word itself should be expanded more. But I think more and more people are becoming aware of such things. Yuta Orisaka tweeted at the beginning of this year, “I wish you all a happy New Year. No War.” I think this word should be used as frankly as that

The contemporariness reflected in the music

— Some listeners seemed to associate this “Anochi” with, for example, Nanao Tabito’s “911FANTASIA”. What kind of rebel music have you yourself been influenced by or like to listen to?

Mahito: It may be totally different, but I sometimes feel a sense of reality when I listen to Nina Simone. When Maki Asakawa mentioned Nina Simone, she said something like, “Jazz is the body heat of black people,” and to me, the way she was breathing and the way she was there itself seemed like rebel music. I feel the same way when I listen to her music now. I think we should pay more attention to things like human breath. Nowadays, people tend to pay more attention to symbolic things. The act of having AI draw pictures is very popular, but from my point of view, it is not funny at all. If that thing evolves, in a few years there will be no more jobs for illustrators. The same thing is happening with music. In the not-too-distant future, songs written by AI will be comparable to those written by humans. Not only that, but the amount of learning that AI is capable of will far surpass that of humans. In other words, unless what is called culture takes responsibility and prepares to properly call beautiful what such symbolic manipulation cannot do, we will not be able to find the meaning of being human. That is why the AI boom is not funny at all.

For example, in Yoko Ono’s installation, The Blue Room Event, there is a line drawn, and below the line are the words, “This is part of a very large circle.” It is said that humans cannot draw a straight line, that even when we think we are drawing a straight line, the left and right sides of the line are slightly off, and that if we stretch it out, it becomes a circle. I think the strength of human beings lies in this inability to draw straight lines. I would have to say that there is potential in such strength, ambiguity, and imperfection.

–Nina Simone is also known for her quote, “An artist’s duty is to reflect the times.” Some people argue that musicians should just focus on making music, but do you share Nina Simone’s stance?

Mahito: Of course, I sympathize with Nina Simone’s stance, and I don’t know how I can create a sound that has nothing to do with the times. Whether you have words or not, you must have lived through this time, been hit by the same rain, been frightened by the same invisible virus, and felt the same sense of entrapment. I don’t know how you can remain irrelevant in the midst of it all. If I stay cooped up in my house all the time and produce music with the blackout curtains closed, even when missiles are flying outside or it is raining, maybe I can remain irrelevant to the outside world, but I can’t even imagine it.

I also wonder why those who insist that musicians should just make music cannot realize that even what is made in this way will reflect the contemporariness. And I think the attempt to ignore the contemporariness is, in itself, an expression that reflects the times as a reaction against it. I believe that not only facing the times hand in hand, but also distancing oneself from the times, or being out of step with the times, is also part of a relationship with the times. This is the same as what I mentioned earlier about the song sung by Ayano Kaneko embodying “No War.” There are not only straightforward ways of relating to the times, such as facing in the same direction or moving forward together, but also diverse and complex ways of relating. So, from that perspective, no one can be unrelated to the times.

I think it is narrow-minded to insist that musicians should just focus on making music. If you take that a little differently, you end up with something like “a careful and mindful life,” which is a lifestyle that only aristocratic people are allowed to have, but even such people could not have been unaffected by the pandemic and the war. Obviously, Anochi also reflects the times. However, as for me, I did not try to confront the times, but only to find a struggle within myself and focus on something like hope.

Experiences gained from involvement with the Ainu people

–Was your relationship with the Ainu people and the Utasa Festival in which GEZAN performed a major part of the source of inspiration for the making of Anochi?

Mahito: Yes, indeed.

–When did your involvement with the Ainu people begin?

Mahito: The first time was three years ago when I went to the first Utasa Festival in 2020. I was shocked at how close people were to the music. I am a musician, so usually I am singing on stage and there is an audience listening to it, but in the Ainu Upopo (one of the traditional forms of Ainu group singing), there is no boundary between singer and non-singer, professional and amateur, on and off. and the distance between the singer and the song is shocking. That close distance to the music was shocking and very interesting. Moreover, they are singing songs collectively and psychedelically, and I was simply drawn to them musically. The way Ainu people interact with songs seemed really new to me.

Bon Odori may be similar. Partly because of my occupation, I have a kind of obsessive thoughts about my identity, like “I have to be unique,” but when I become a part of everyone going around in a circle like that, I feel like I’m free from that kind of obsession. I don’t have to stand out, I just have to be part of the circle. It reminds me of a kind of animism, a sense of being one with nature, and it felt good. That is how I fell in love with Ainu’s songs.

–How does the experience you gained from your relationship with the Ainu flow through Anochi?

Mahito: Of course, I am the vocalist and tell the words as a storyteller, but a different story continues through the chorus. But there are actually many layers like these in the real world too. For example, there is the time ticked by the second hand of a clock. However, if you step outside, the season is slowly changing toward spring. There is also the time that the biological clock ticks inside me, and there is the time of my life span. There is also the speed at which the memory of the Utasa Festival that I saw the day before yesterday (February 5) is gradually becoming a memory. We live in a world where these multiple times coexist.

It is absolutely wrong to say that we live only in one mechanical chronological time, in fact, we all manage to live in multiple time periods. In Anochi in particular, I was conscious of the fact that multiple time frames revolve in an overlapping manner. This way of thinking was derived from the time I spent with the Ainu people at the Utasa Festival.

–By the way, I am not familiar with the word “Anochi” in the title. Is it related to the Ainu culture?

Mahito: No, it has nothing to do with it (laughs).

— Could you explain the origin of this term?

Mahito: For me, it is a kind of sense of the birth of something like a single living organism. For example, the komainu (guardian dogs) at shrines and temples have an “A” (open) and an “N” (closed) mouth, so they form a pair. Actually, this relationship between “A” and “N” implies life and death. And the “A” is the sound of the beginning. That’s why I wanted to put “a” there.

Re-encountering for the Zenkankaku-Sai Festival

–I see, I understand. Finally, I would like to ask you about the Zenkankaku-sai Festival (Festival of All Senses), do you plan to hold it in 2023?

Mahito: I would like to say that we will do it this year. We haven’t made any progress yet, but we will definitely do it. After all, in terms of what we lost during the pandemic, it was also significant that the festival crew fell apart. We weren’t connected by a business contract, so the team was inevitably fractured by the change in environment. So we have to re-encounter people properly to get a fresh start. I hope that anyone reading this now who has the passion to do so will meet with us. It is not so much that we need your help, but that we need to feel like we have been struck by lightning.

The song “Just Love,” which was included in the Anochi, has quite naive lyrics. The song goes, “I’ve been waiting for a night like this all my life / That’s why / I love to sing. I wrote those lyrics while imagining myself singing them at the Zenkankaku-Sai Festival. So I think “JUST LOVE” is not complete unless I sing it at the festival, and that is one of the reasons why I want to hold the festival this year.

–Do you think that also means that Matsuri (the Japanese form of the festival) is necessary for human beings?

Mahito: I do think so. Matsuris are different from so-called music festivals in that they are more integrated into our daily life, and they affect our lives before and after the matsuri. I do not want to present correctness, but rather to present the experience of an event that makes people’s cells perk up. The kind of live performance I love is like that, and there are many such experiences in our daily lives that are not even within the scope of music. Eating a meal can be one such experience. I feel that there is something inside me that I can only do at the Zenkankaku-Sai Festival because this festival is the only place where I can realize these things in a three-dimensional way. I think this is something that goes one step further than Anochi.

Photography Yuki Aizawa
Translation Shinichiro Sato

■ Anochi
Release date : February 1, 2023
Format : CD / Digital
Price : (CD) ¥3,300
TRACKLIST
1. A story before Life /  (い)のちの一つ前のはなし
2. Chuken – Death Penalty Dog / 誅犬
3. Fight War Not Wars
4. We Can’t Take It Anymore / もう俺らは我慢できない
5. We All AFall
6. Tokyo Dub Story
7. SUITEN – INTERSECTION / 萃点
8. SORA TAPI WATASHI TAPI (bird talk) / そらたぴわたしたぴ(鳥話)
9. We Were The World
10. Third Summer of Love
11. Prelude to Finale Red caught Anochi’s eye / 終曲の前奏で赤と目があったあのち
12. JUST LOVE
13. Linda ReLinda / リンダリリンダ
https://gezan.lnk.to/ANOCHI

■Anochi release BODY LANGUAGE TOUR 2023
January 27, 2023 at WWW X, Shibuya, Tokyo
February 1, 2023 at Sound lab mole, Sapporo, Hokkaido
February 25, 2023 at FORCE, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka 
March 2, 2023 at CLUB UPSET, Nagoya, Aichi
March 4, 2023 at UMEDA CLUB QUATTRO, Osaka
March 18, 2023 at LIVEHOUSE CB, Fukuoka
March 19, 2023 Hiroshima 4.14
March 21, 2023 at YEBISU YA PRO, Okayama 
March 31, 2023 at F.A.D YOKOHAMA, Yokohama, Kanagawa WITH Soushi Sakiyama
April 2, 2023 at Saitama HEAVEN’S ROCK shintoshin VJ-3 / WITH Ohzora Kimishima trio
April 18, 2023 at Sunplaza Hall, Nakano, Tokyo
https://gezan.net/live/

The post Mahito the People talks about GEZAN’s new work Anochi and the possibility of alternative music;Part 2: On Hope for Peace, Songs of Ainu and the Pluralistic Flow of Time appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

GEZAN
Formed in Osaka in 2009, GEZAN is an alternative rock band consisting of Mahito the People (vo., gt.), Eagle Taka (gt.), Yakumoa (ba.), and Roscal Ishihara (dr.). In 2012, the band moved its base to Tokyo and has been active throughout Japan based on its unique perspective. They run Jusangatsu, a label that sends out a variety of domestic and international talent. Since 2014, they have been holding the “Zenkankaku-Sai Festival,” a donation-based outdoor festival organized by Jusangatsu, which is free admission, with the idea of “letting people decide the value of fun for themselves.” The band released their fifth full-length album KLUE in January 2020, and in May 2021, they were joined by a new bassist, Yakumoa, and performed in “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL”. The band released their first full-length album in three years, Anochi, produced with Million Wish Collective, on February 1, 2023.
http://gezan.net
Twitter：@gezan_official
http://mahitothepeople.com
Twitter：@1__gezan__3
Instagram：@mahitothepeople___gezan

GEZAN, a rock band led by Mahito the People, have released their sixth full-length album in three years, Anochi. While their previous album, KLUE, brought about innovation in dance and physicality by setting the tempo of almost all songs at 100 BPM, this new album brings in the Million Wish Collective, a voice ensemble consisting of 17 members, and results in an unprecedented work filled with countless “voices.”

The most significant change they have gone through after the release of their fifth album was the pandemic outbreak. The release tour was canceled due to major restrictions that prevented the band from performing live as they had done in the past. Furthermore, the world has been changing at a dizzying pace with the global spread of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, and the shooting death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Bassist Carlos Ozaki left GEZAN. However, during the pandemic, there were also new challenges for GEZAN, such as the “Zen-Kankaku-Sai Festival”. Above all, Yakumoa joined as a replacement bassist, and the band also met Million Wish Collective. It was in this ever-changing world that they created Anochi.

We interviewed Mahito the People, a core member of GEZAN, to find out how the pandemic affected the band, what possibilities he believes alternative music has in these turbulent times, and why the band focused on the theme of “voice” for their new album.

The loss of physicality in the COVID-19 pandemic

–In January 2020, just after the release of your previous work, KLUE, the pandemic occurred. How did the pandemic impact GEZAN’s activities?

Mahito the People (Mahito): I think the biggest thing was the loss of physicality. After the onset of the COVID pandemic, we could no longer do live shows. A Live show meant more to us than just making a financial profit, it was rather a place of communication where we could share the same water, so to speak. In the same space, we and the audience would salivate and sweat together, inhaling and exhaling the droplets together. That was very important for the band.

Right after the start of the pandemic, online live shows became popular. They can deliver visual/audio information similar to that of a live show, but they lack the exchange and collision of temperatures that is an essential part of a live show. I had been salvaged by such physicality, so I became terribly unbalanced. So did the band members. Carlos’ departure from the band was also due to the loss of pace in our daily lives, so in that sense, the pandemic had a great impact on us.

But at the same time, what was lost gave us an opportunity to question what was important to us. We tried to do some online live shows ourselves, and we even did some interviews online. Words like “thank you” and “good-bye” are only a few words when written, but when spoken face-to-face while sharing the vibration, the same words can have a completely different meaning. This kind of thing still meant a lot to me, so I realized what I had truly relied on.

— In May 2020, you held the “Zenkankaku-Sai (Sai here refers to a kanji 菜 meaning plants and vegetable)” instead of the “Zenkankaku Festival. I myself was watching it in desperate hope, and at that event, Roscal Ishihara challenged a 30-hour drum marathon, pushing his body to the limit. I think it was also an attempt to deliver a certain kind of physicality and live feeling through the Internet. What was it actually like for you?

Mahito: At that time, there were strong calls for “stay-at-home,” and we felt as if the world we live in is all about what is inside our rooms. Of course, there were people who had to leave their rooms, but inevitably we spent more and more time exposed to information. The information provided on cell phones and TV about the number of infected people and the updates on the development of vaccines acted just like a god, and we had no choice but to pray to it. I got tired of that.

Rather than trying to communicate something to people, I wanted time to just focus on the movement of the bass drum, snare, hi-hat, and the physical strength of the Roscal, without worrying about what was going on in the world. So I was very comfortable during those 30 hours. I tried it because I thought it would be possible to convey a kind of temperature through an online show, and I don’t think it was unsuccessful, but I don’t know now if we should dare to do it, going through all that trouble. It was so hard that it killed us (laughs). And right after it was over, there was the BLM movement that was growing increasingly visible. Even though I felt like I had been saved somehow by blocking out information, this movement confronted me with the reality that the times were moving in such a situation. I felt like I couldn’t run away even if I wanted to. So that experience had these two sides.

–Some musicians said that “Stay-at-Home” allowed them to have more time for recording and production, while others said that it strengthened the unity of the band. Was there any positive impact on your band that was brought about by the pandemic?

Mahito: Well, as far as we were concerned, I don’t think we could behave consistently. I would be lying, if I said the pandemic brought the band member closer to each other. One of two aspects of making an album and performing live was having something become a message through singing something, and the other half was confronting the monster inside me through shouting and strumming my nameless impulses as they were. These two coexisted. While I could send out messages through our records or even through social media, I didn’t know how to face the madness and impulses inside me when I stopped playing live. That’s why I became unbalanced and couldn’t behave consistently.

But that can be a positive impact because, as I said before, I became aware once again of how important live performances are. That is partly why I decided to make the film (“i ai”). A film can lie as long as the work is set in a different time period. So if you say, “This is set 10 years ago,” you can have a live show and mosh. While the “Zen-Kankaku-Sai Festival” was not possible, I was saved by the nature of fantasy, which allows you to lie. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, I was really afraid that the world would become a place where we would never be able to perform live again, so I felt it was necessary to properly record the memories of that time. So perhaps one of the positive impacts the pandemic had on us was that we were able to make that film.

–It is true that in a fictional world, it is possible to have a live show. The reason why people couldn’t gather in the first place was, of course, to prevent the spread of infection, and because the live houses were closed, but also largely due to what sociologist Ryosuke Nishida calls the “infection of anxiety”. In other words, even if there was zero risk of infection, the gathering itself attracted criticism.

Mahito: Someone even tsked at me when I just got on the train with a guitar on my back (laughs). It was just like the structure of bullies at school: people set up some target of attack and direct their negative energy toward it. It is not because the bullied children have done something wrong, but even if they have done nothing in particular, the people are looking for such a structure itself. I feel that the very human society in which adults live has the same structure as bullying. That’s how live houses were the focus of attention during that period. But the communication at those live houses kept me alive, and I became more aware of that, so I was determined to catch up on it.

Also, at the start of the pandemic, many things happened, such as band members leaving the band and people close to me passing away. It was not only because of COVID-19, but the silence of that pandemic made me think about how I should deal with such losses. Fortunately, I am now in a job where I can leave something behind, so I feel that I must create something not only through music but also through various other means.

“In the first place, being distorted in the same way that reality is” 

–In retrospect, the dawn of the 2020s actually began not with the pandemic, but with the bombing of Iran’s national hero, Commander Soleimani, by the U.S. military. At the time, there were even fears of World War III. Then the emergence of the pandemic, the global spread of BLM, the corruption-ridden Tokyo Olympics, the war between Ukraine and Russia, the shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and so on, and the world situation has been changing at a dizzying pace. So-called alternative music can be said to be something that has been confronting the fragility of common sense and footholds in reality, which can crumble at any moment. How did you accept that reality when you actually entered a world where existing common sense did not prevail?

Mahito: I think we have no choice but to be messed up along with the social destabilization, and first of all, we need to be distorted as much as our society is in order to get in tune with it. The word “pure” has always been considered a virtue, but now I don’t think it is such a beautiful word anymore. For example, as soon as you say “pure Japanese,” the term “pure” becomes a word used in the context of discrimination. Being pure, unblemished, and spotless is not beautiful at all; in fact, there are many layers intertwined and woven together. When confronting such a complex thing, I felt that I had to be messed up as well, otherwise I would not be in tune with it. I don’t think that straight-forward expression is the right answer at all.

This may sound too abstract, but I think that “first of all, being distorted in the same way that reality is” is an absolute requirement for expression in this day and age. I think many people create their own world by symbolically combining various things in their minds, but that doesn’t seem right. We have to face reality somehow. At least I can say that to dye the world in one color with one strong light is some kind of violence now. There was a time when it was considered a virtue to say, “A man’s gotta focus on one thing and break through it.” We are no longer in the age of that kind of force or violence.

I like horses. So I sometimes study a lot about horses, and when they are in a herd, they always have a leader. But in a horse herd, the leader is not the one who is bigger and stronger, but the one who is the fastest. In other words, in the event of an attack by a predator or some other danger, the leader is the one who can escape first. So horse leaders are the opposite of someone like Donald Trump (laughs). As you mentioned earlier, many things are happening in rapid succession, and the world is so messed up that can even be described as an emergency situation. To have a leader who is the first to be properly frightened, properly confused, and able to escape in such a situation is the exact opposite of the masculine aesthetic of focusing on one thing and breaking through it by force. I think that kind of feeling is very important.

–You went through a number of such chaotic events after the release of the previous album KLUE. How did the idea of releasing a new album come about?

Mahito: The day after Carlos left, we already started having studio sessions with members of the prototype of Million Wish Collective. I believe that when we let go of something and it disappears, it is time to seize the next something to replace that loss. Of course, I was very sad. But at the same time, I knew that if I stepped forward and made a move, there would always be encounters waiting for me, so I was like, “Let’s take this opportunity to play a new instrument with all the members.” Then Taka found the bagpipes, I picked up the trumpet, and Roscar started beating the bicycle (laughs). The day after we announced that Carlos was leaving, we had already started practicing.

I personally think that encounters and partings are set up to be equal in number. Well, as a matter of course, everything that you have encountered will always end up saying goodbye to you in the end when you are gone. The number of one cannot be greater than the number of the other, so even if something big leaves you, you will always have another big encounter. That’s how I understand from my life experience so far. So while I was sad, I was ready to start preparing for the encounter. In that sense, I guess I was already thinking of making the next album the moment Carlos left.

–It is unusual to pick up bagpipes, even if you are starting a new instrument.

Mahito: Taka has a weird monster inside him. He’s been like that since we first met. Anyway, I think he was also motivated to move his body, sweat, and play something. But bagpipes sound very political when you listen to them carefully. They are played at festivals, and they are also played in military songs. I think he has picked up an amazing instrument. It’s also inevitable.

A record of imperfection that can never be perfect

— You teamed up with the voice ensemble Million Wish Collective and performed for the first time at the Fuji Rock Festival in 2021. Why did you decide to focus on the theme of “voice”?

Mahito: After the start of the pandemic, what has been seen as the worst thing to do was to gather with a large group of people and talk and sing in a loud voice. Our first performance as a group was the show on The Red Marquee stage at Fuji Rock Festival, and the stage was filled with those two prohibitions (laughs). But I think voices are really diverse. When I was a student, I was sometimes told that I had a strange voice, but I don’t think there is a good or bad voice at all, although there may be a voice that is generally seen as useful, convenient, or comfortable. Even if that is the case, I have lived my whole life with this voice, and it has carried all the burden of conveying something to someone else, so it would not be real if I cannot affirm this voice.

Recently, when you record a song, you correct the pitch and remove noise to make it sound beautiful. It is true that my voice is distorted in some ways, but that is the complexity of my voice itself, and I don’t think it is right to remove it on the basis of whether it is useful or not. Also, the photos are all retouched. When I see celebrities removing some moles and leaving others, I realize how strange the world has become. We don’t even know if what we are seeing is a photograph or a composite image anymore. Even on Instagram, there are so many photos that have been beautifully manipulated with apps.

The problem is that the kids who see the pictures―or it may be right to describe them rather as composite images―of beautiful models, look at themselves in the mirror and think, “How ugly I am.” Thus, there are various mechanisms in the system of capitalism to fuel people’s sense of inferiority, accelerate their desire to buy more cosmetics or spend more money on plastic surgery. The same thing happens in the world of singing and the sound of musical instruments. Even though they call themselves a band, many groups make music that is no different from electronic music. For example, when it comes to drums, the hitting sounds and the fluctuation of the rhythm are the traces of a human being playing the drums, and it is not enough to have the snare or bass drum sounds in the exact position that they are supposed to be on the score. But then you get a smooth guitar and bass, and a song that could be sung by a machine.

But the truth is that the distorted voice has traces of the person who vocalized it. That is why I wanted to affirm such voices, and I think this realization led to the Million Wish Collective. In the first place, the members of Million Wish were not chosen because they have good voices. When we actually sang together, there were times when I was surprised to hear that they could sing much better than I had expected. (laughs). 

— You were able to create choruses by layering and looping recordings of multiple voices, as you did on the previous album, and some of the songs on this album stand out for their interesting use of that collage-like format. But you are saying that there focused on the diversity of voices more than anything, right?

Mahito: Yes, that’s right. I think it is something that could be called spirituality. The same can be said about photographic works, but I like works that have the smell of the times when they were taken inside them, and that will properly age and become a thing of the past. Many expressions aim for eternity, and many creators create their work with that eternity in mind in its various forms. But I would like to cherish how things become old. In recording sessions, I strive for perfection in both the vocals and the band’s sound, but I also value the imperfections that prevent me from achieving them, and that is what I like about my works. I think that is what it means to be involved with others in the first place. Of course, we make choices when we create an album, but I focused on how to encapsulate that kind of “atmosphere”, not as a document, but as fantasy.

So, when you listen to Anochi five or ten years from now, the voices and other elements recorded in the work will make you think, “Ah, that brings back memories.” Becoming old means becoming the past, but at the same time, such properly aged things can shine with a futuristic brilliance. I believe that time doesn’t just flow in one direction. This is even more true now, especially in the age of archives on the Internet. So I really enjoy how time is becoming more and more open in both directions. Conversely, I am not looking for something futuristic that no one has done before.

This interview continues in the second part

Photography Yuki Aizawa
Translation Shinichiro Sato

■ Anochi
Release date : February 1, 2023
Format : CD / Digital
Price : (CD) ¥3,300
TRACKLIST
1. A story before Life /  (い)のちの一つ前のはなし
2. Chuken – Death Penalty Dog / 誅犬
3. Fight War Not Wars
4. We Can’t Take It Anymore / もう俺らは我慢できない
5. We All AFall
6. Tokyo Dub Story
7. SUITEN – INTERSECTION / 萃点
8. SORA TAPI WATASHI TAPI (bird talk) / そらたぴわたしたぴ(鳥話)
9. We Were The World
10. Third Summer of Love
11. Prelude to Finale Red caught Anochi’s eye / 終曲の前奏で赤と目があったあのち
12. JUST LOVE
13. Linda ReLinda / リンダリリンダ
https://gezan.lnk.to/ANOCHI

■Anochi release BODY LANGUAGE TOUR 2023
January 27, 2023 at WWW X, Shibuya, Tokyo
February 1, 2023 at Sound lab mole, Sapporo, Hokkaido
February 25, 2023 at FORCE, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka 
March 2, 2023 at CLUB UPSET, Nagoya, Aichi
March 4, 2023 at UMEDA CLUB QUATTRO, Osaka
March 18, 2023 at LIVEHOUSE CB, Fukuoka
March 19, 2023 Hiroshima 4.14
March 21, 2023 at YEBISU YA PRO, Okayama 
March 31, 2023 at F.A.D YOKOHAMA, Yokohama, Kanagawa WITH Soushi Sakiyama
April 2, 2023 at Saitama HEAVEN’S ROCK shintoshin VJ-3 / WITH Ohzora Kimishima trio
April 18, 2023 at Sunplaza Hall, Nakano, Tokyo
https://gezan.net/live/

The post Mahito the People Talks about GEZAN’s New Album Anochi and the Possibility of Alternative Music; Part I: Farewell and Encounter in the Pandemic, or Toward the Recovery of Physicality appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

The event was held at YCAM over two days from June 4 to 5 this year, after a year and a half of joint research and development by Ishiwaka, YCAM, and AI researchers. During the performance, Ishiwaka did an improvisational session with an AI (artificial intelligence) agent that had been trained on a data set of Ishiwaka’s own musical performance, and he was joined by saxophonist Kei Matsumaru on the second day.

We conducted an interview with Ishiwaka and Matsumaru after the second performance. In the first part, we asked them about the reason for having Matsumaru as a collaborator, their creation process complemented by a trial live performance, the sense of time and some kind of human will specific to AI that they felt during the performance, and their respective attitudes toward solo improvisation.

The second part highlights how their perception of improvisation changed through the creation process, their ideas on how they utilize the system created this time, and their insights into the future of music education.

The way of thinking about improvisation changed through the performance

–Shun, in a public talk after the performance on the first day, you said, “My way of thinking about improvisation has changed (through this creation).” What exactly was that change?

Shun Ishiwaka (Ishiwaka): In the process of creating co-performers using AI and other technologies, I verbalized my improvisation method to have the AI learn it. At that time, I was confronted with the question, “Can we really call what we have verbalized an improvised performance?” At that time, I was like, “If players other than myself can play, isn’t it actually composition? No, even so, it is still improvisation. No, no, it may not be improvisation.”

As for improvisation, sometimes I play music with an idea of the kind of sound I want to make, and other times I play without any particular idea in mind. Even when I try to create the sound I am aiming for, coincidence sometimes works in the right direction, and unexpected and interesting developments may occur. I realized once again that I am doing improvisation in these kind of many different layers, and this production was an opportunity for me to think about such things in detail.

When I improvise, I look forward to seeing and hearing things I have never seen or heard before. But I used to only intuitively perceive what that is, what was happening during improvisation, and how it could be interesting. It was just sort of fantasy. In the process of teaching such things to my mechanical collaborators, I began to break down my improvisations into their component parts and verbalize them, which gave birth to many new questions. But in any case, it increased my level of understanding.

Kei Matsumaru (Matsumaru): By participating in this project, I feel I’ve been faced with very important questions about what improvisation is and what moments in music make people feel that what they hear is “good.” Kazuhisa Uchihashi once made a strong statement in conversation about the difference between “good improvisation” and “bad improvisation,” which I could really empathize with. In other words, I think there is a vague yet somewhat common understanding about what kind of improvisation is not good.

　However, it is difficult (and dangerous) to verbalize what is good and what is bad. At the same time, the beauty of improvisation as a method may lie in this very difficulty. Music with clearly defined style is rather easy to verbalize. It is relatively unchallenging to extract the characteristics and teach them to others in the academic world and to perform in a similar style. With improvised music, it is quite difficult to do so. Nevertheless, there are definite differences between “good improvisations” and “bad improvisations,” which I am always trying to figure out.

Ishiwaka: Mr. Uchihashi said, “Most of the improvisation that exists in the world is fake.” And I can sympathize with that. But it is difficult to teach “good improvisation” to someone else. For example, this time, I had a hard time thinking, “When I am playing like this, what kind of performance by which agent would be appropriate?” I myself don’t necessarily play the quiet sounds just because my collaborator starts playing quietly, but I sometimes do. So I wondered how to teach such things to the machine, which may sound like a Zen riddle (laughs), but I wanted to create a state where you never know what will happen once the performance starts.

Difference between jazz improvisation and free improvisation

–For example, jazz music also has an improvisation aspect, doesn’t it? Do you feel that there is a difference between free improvisation like this and jazz improvisation in terms of “how you can teach others how to improvise” even though both of them are forms of improvised performance?

Ishiwaka：It is based on a vast amount of music accumulated by our great predecessors. And there is a lot of data that says, “This is how you should play a solo on this piece of music.” I think that by studying and practicing such data, we will be able to improvise jazz music.

Matsumaru: I think jazz is a music that focuses on history, even if the performers themselves are not conscious of it. It uses historically established musical vocabulary, and the types and tendencies of chord progressions are to some extent fixed. Improvisation in jazz is part of that history. But in the case of free improvisation, I am not trying to dedicate it to any kind of history, nor am I trying to focus on history. Of course, there may be musicians who want to play music in the context of free improvisation as a genre, but that is not the case with me.

Ishiwaka：Since I am very much at the point where I like to create music with computers, I had the sense that I was designing something that could be freely improvised and sessioned. For example, neither I nor the rhythm AI play eighth-note beats in a straightforward manner. Technically, I do make beats, but using a fixed rhythm pattern and fitting it into the computer to make music is not what I want to do.

Matsumaru：If it had been a drummer other than Shun, there might have been moments where a rock-style rhythm suddenly pops up, for example.

Ishiwaka: Even though I call it free improvisation, I sort of had the form of music I wanted to play in mind while I was working on the project. What was at the core was to simply develop the idea of “wanting to perform with myself.”

The idea of “wanting to perform with myself”

–Kei, do you also feel that you would like to perform with yourself?

Matsumaru：Not necessarily.  Most likely because of the nature of the saxophone as an instrument. I simply don’t like the musical texture of the sound of just two saxophones playing simultaneously. In jazz as well, but especially in improvised sessions, two saxophones are a bit too much.

Ishiwaka：In terms of drums, there can often be free sessions with twin drums.

Matsumaru：Yes, with drums, it’s listenable. There’s more blank space, no matter how dense the rhythm ist. On the other hand, saxophones have a clearly audible pitch range, and every note is very assertive, so when there are two saxophonists playing at the same time……. That’s probably one of the reasons why I wouldn’t really think of performing with myself.

–Shun, you mentioned that one of the reasons why you find it interesting to perform with yourself is that you can look at yourself objectively. For example, recording your own performance and listening back to it also leads to “objectivity,” but what do you feel is the difference between that and having an AI learn from you?

Ishiwaka：It’s all about real-time performance. That is what I focused on when creating the agent. At the beginning of the creation process, after performing once at the Black Swan (blkswn welfare center), we performed again for the same period of time solely based on memory, and overlapped the recordings and videos of those two performances. Then I felt there is some kind of commonality between these two and sort of connection to myself. However, I wanted to do this interactively, not with my past performance, but with something that was going on at the same time. In other words, I wanted to create ears that would listen to my performance. And I wanted it to not only listen to me, but also to learn my performance and respond to it in real time.

“I want other musicians to use the system.”

–Shun, you mentioned that you would like other musicians to use the AI system you created this time.

Ishiwaka: I used six different agents this time, including a meta-agent, and I am very interested in how the system would sound if other musicians have each agent learn their own improvisations. This is how it turned out this time, but I think other musicians will have different sounds they want to express on the computer and different ways of having the computer learn their performance. In that case, I wonder what kind of sounds the rhythm AI or melody AI would produce. Besides, someone would think, “I want to make this kind of instrument to produce this kind of sound,” and new ideas for new agents might emerge.

–Matsumaru, you said earlier that you don’t feel like performing with yourself. But do you have any desire to utilize this system?

Matsumaru: Definitely. For example, I think it would be very interesting if what I play comes out in different sounds from different instruments. I am not really interested in having saxophones perform with me, but as I did in the foyer at the end of this performance, it was very stimulating to have automated cymbals that used my performance data and to perform with it. When data acquired from one instrument is output from another kind of instrument, I think t ideas may be produced that are not or cannot normally be done with that instrument used as the output. I think there are new possibilities there.

For example, with the saxophone, there must be some rhythmic elements that are specific to the performance of this instrument, and if data is extracted and output from the drums, the performance would be different from that of normal drums. Of course, in reality, there would be a more complex conversion process, but either way, I feel that it would be an opportunity to discover new possibilities for the instrument.

“I came to see again what I cannot do.”

–Shun, don’t you think that the great achievement of this project was the fact that it became not only an opportunity for you to “perform with yourself” on the stage, but also an opportunity for you to “look at yourself” even during the production process?

Ishiwaka: Yeah, absolutely. This was what we talked about at the after-party, but the first thing I thought after the performance was “I want to practice more and broaden the range of my techniques& ideas!!!”(laugh). There were many moments when I felt, “I want to play this kind of sound in response to the development of the session but my technique is not enough.”

　Also, listening to the percussive sounds produced by the rhythm AI for a long time, I wondered how a human could play them in a cooler manner. More specifically, the feedback sound of the cymbals, which gradually changed its tone as if one tweaked synth filter without changing pitch, made me wonder what kind of playing technique I could use to express this kind of sound change. I am sure that if other musicians do what I did with AI, they will also discover something new, and come up with new ideas and new views that they have never seen before.

　I also found the speed of technological development to be much faster than I had imagined. Just comparing now with two years ago when I started working on this project, it has already changed significantly. So I think that by continuing this kind of technological collaboration in some form or another, we will be able to make new attempts in the years to come. However, even if we do not necessarily stick to technology, I think it is interesting to keep searching for something new and different to acquire, rather than aiming at some destination and ending up with some results, no matter what kind of music it is. This time was just focused on AI and other kind of technologies and improvisation.

Thinking about the future of music education through improvisation

Matsumaru：Thinking deeply about improvisation like we did today is the same as thinking deeply about music itself, rather than about a specific genre or context. I felt that this performance in particular could develop into something significant educationally. In the field of music education, most of what is done is routine-based, and at least in my experience, it rarely touches the core aspects of music.

　Even children who were originally curious about many things develop a preconception that says “this is how music is supposed to be” after taking such classes, and as a result, they will come to have music that they dislike without reason, music that they find difficult, and music that they find easy to listen to. However, if we can develop this kind of performance into an educational tool, we may be able to break free from such ways of thinking.

Ishiwaka：Yeah, you are right. I think this work has many layers. From how we perceive music, to how we improvise, to how we choose sounds, there are parts that are usually done without explanation, but during the creation process, we have to explain each of these multiple layers in detail. If such way of explanations could be introduced into music education, I think it would change the way young children interact with music. Those things should be considered first before, for example, the stage where children become able to play the Do Re Mi on the recorder, or to sing in a chorus together.

Matsumaru: Yeah, I agree with that. It would be better to teach things like, “This is a historically important piece of music,” at a later stage after what you just mentioned. I think one of the wonderful things about music is that it can stimulate and expand the imagination. Not only for our imagination associated with music, but it also leads to developing an imagination for many other things.  A person receiving a musical education that stifles the imagination, may grow up to be a person with that kind of mindset about other aspects in life.

　In a sense, for me, getting into improvisation was a way to break free from the stereotypes that I had developed as a child. In my case, I grew up in a closed community in Papua New Guinea, in a very biased environment. But there was a time when I tried to move my fixed thinking in a different direction, and I started to work on improvisation alongside that.

Ishiwaka: If showing such performances can be a chance to think about the future of music education, I think it is important to create opportunities to present them by myself. I was introduced to Takeo Moriyama’s free jazz when I was a child, and I studied orchestral and contemporary music later, but even now, what underlies in myself is free music. Since I have lived my life in this way, I feel anew that I must continue to present my own music and that I have a mission to create opportunities for that purpose.

Shun Ishiwaka
Born in 1992 in Hokkaido, Japan, Shun Ishiwaka graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts after studying percussion at the high school attached to the Faculty of Music of Tokyo University of the Arts. Upon graduation, he received the Acanthus Music Award and the Doseikai Award. In addition to leading Answer to Remember, SMTK, and Songbook Trio, he has participated in numerous live performances and productions by Kururi, CRCK/LCKS, Kid Fresino, Kimijima Ozora, Millennium Parade, and many others. As a recent practice, he presented Sound Mine, a new concert piece by Miyu Hosoi + Shun Ishiwaka + YCAM at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media[YCAM]under the theme of evoking memories through sound and echoes.
Official website: http://www.shun-ishiwaka.com
Twitter: @shunishiwaka

Kei Matsumaru
Though born in Japan in 1995, Kei Matsumaru was raised in a small village in the highlands of Papua New Guinea where he calls home. From there, he moved to Boston to study music in 2014, after which he relocated to Japan in late 2018.
Kei is currently based in Tokyo and has been active mostly in the jazz and improvised music scene, but has increasingly been collaborating with artists from other musical genres and creative disciplines, such as contemporary dance, visual arts, and various media arts. Kei is a member of SMTK, a rock/free jazz/instrumental band, as well as mºfe (em-doh-feh), an electro-acoustic trio. In 2020, he released Nothing Unspoken Under the Sun as his quartet’s first album.
He also periodically presents “dokusō”, a series of live 90-minute solo saxophone performances through which he explores the relationship between time, space, body, and instrument and how the performance affects cognition and perception of these elements in both the audience and himself.
Recent: Eiko Ishibashi, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Jim O’Rourke, Otomo Yoshihide, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Dos Monos, etc.
His 2nd album The Moon, Its Recollections Abstracted is set to release on October 19, 2022.
Official website: https://www.keimatsumaru.com
Instagram: @kmatsumaru
Twitter: @keimatsumaru

Photography Yasuhiro Tani / Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]
Translation Shinichiro Sato (TOKION)

Photography Yasuhiro Tani / Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]

The post Technological Co-Creation of AI and Improvisation — Shun Ishiwaka × Kei Matsumaru Special Talk, Part 2 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

Yuko Mohri

Yuko Mohri is an artist. She approaches installation and sculpture not to compose or construct but to focus on phenomena that constantly change according to different environmental conditions, such as light and temperature. She uses everyday things, junk, and objects found worldwide. Her recent solo exhibitions include “Parade (a Drip, a Drop, the End of the Tale)” (Japan House Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, 2021), “Voluta” (Camden Arts Centre, London, 2018), “Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance” (Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan. 2018). She has also partaken in many domestic and international group exhibitions, such as the “14th Biennale de Lyon” (Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, 2017), “34th Bienal de São Paulo”(Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, 2021), and “the 23rd Biennale of Sydney” (Sydney, 2022) and more. She is a recipient of the New Face Award, the 67th Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts, Japan. The exhibitions “Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik” at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery and ” Moré Moré Tokyo” at Akio Nagasawa Gallery were successfully closed on December 3 and December 24, respectively.

Yuko Mohri
Yuko Mohri is an artist. She approaches installation and sculpture not to compose or construct but to focus on phenomena that constantly change according to different environmental conditions, such as light and temperature. She uses everyday things, junk, and objects found workdwide. Her recent solo exhibitions include “Parade (a Drip, a Drop, the End of the Tale)” (Japan House Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, 2021), “Voluta” (Camden Arts Centre, London, 2018), “Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance” (Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan. 2018). She has also partaken in many domestic and international group exhibitions, such as the “14th Biennale de Lyon” (Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, 2017), “34th Bienal de São Paulo”(Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, 2021), and “the 23rd Biennale of Sydney” (Sydney, 2022) and more. She is a recipient of the New Face Award, the 67th Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts, Japan. The exhibitions “Moremore Tokyo” at Akio Nagasawa Gallery are respectively open until December 24.
https://mohrizm.net/

In a larger sense, sound is part of sculpture

–I am sure that you have had many occasions to explain your practices to people you meet for the first time as you participate in many exhibitions abroad. You used to refer to yourself as a “sound artist,” but what term do you use now to describe your activities?

Yuko Mohri (Mohri): I try to explain myself as a “sculptor” outside of Japan for the time being. Sculpture refers not only to those made of wood or stone, but also to various type of works as can be seen from the term “kinetic sculpture,” and in a larger sense, I think we can consider sound to be a part of sculpture. Therefore, I explain that I create my works by dealing comprehensively with sound, readymade, and kinetic elements. On the other hand, if I use the terms “sound art” or “sound artist,” I would possibly be misunderstood as an artist who uses only sound as material.

–Do you feel there is a difference in reaction when you explain your activities between Japan and other countries?

Mohri: It seems that the word “sculpture” more naturally implies multiple materials overseas. For example, “sound sculpture” is often considered a type of sound art in Japan, but overseas, it overlaps with and is connected to sculptures made of various materials. The number of artists who do not specialize in a particular material, but use sound, video, and clay to create kinetic works of art, has increased tremendously in the past 10 years or so, and I feel that the terrain described by the word “sculpture” is broader than that of “sculpture” in Japan.

–I see. It is true that you use various materials other than sound in your works, but I think it is also very important that your works are related to sound and music in some way.

Mohri: If I were to explain my work in depth, I would certainly say that I am very much inspired by the sound/music element. However, I think it would be better not to have people focus only on that in the first explanation. Maybe that’s because I used to have a hard time with the way I was defined by the term “media art” in the past. When I was a student, the term “media art” was overused. It seems that cutting-edge theme at the time was to “use the media (e.g., computers) to question the media itself (the object nature of computers)” —do you see what I mean?—but, since not everyone was able to make perfect use of this concept, the term was so broadly defined that any kind of expression using computers could be included in the field of media art. Of course, my works were not very matured, but I intended to be creating them within a larger context…, so I had discussions with my seminar professor, Ms. Seiko Mikami. Perhaps I suffered from the trauma of being forced into a genre in terms of the medium rather than the content.

Error, Improvisation, and Feedback

–In the past, you have mentioned “error,” “improvisation,” and “feedback” as three keywords for your artistic practice. All of these elements are associated with “movement,” but have your perceptions of these keywords changed after the pandemic?

Mohri: I feel that I now perceive them a little more broadly. For a while after the pandemic, I was living a kind of primitive life in a cabin on the shore of the northern part of Lake Biwa, where I built a bonfire every day. Then, I had the thought that it would be a bit of a preposterous to continue creating artworks just for the sake of exhibitions, and that if I found a place that moved me when I walked around the lake, maybe I could create artworks there. It would be nice if someone visits the place 10 years from now and discovers, “Oh, I didn’t know such a work existed there.” Even if I create a temporary work with the keywords “error,” “improvisation,” and “feedback,” I would like to think that the viewer can watch it more freely at any time.

–Eric Dolphy once said, “when you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air, you can never capture it again.” And “movement” is also something that will transform and disappear unless experienced on the spot. In order to be discovered 10 years from now, the work will need to be fixed in some way. Which do you feel more strongly about, letting the work change as it does, or stopping the change and leaving it as a kind of universal object?

Mohri: There are works that I wouldn’t mind if they are broken down and gone, and there are others that I would like to save. Perhaps the decision to create a record work this time and the decision to exhibit Moré Moré Tokyo with photographs were also based on this idea of “wanting to save my works.” However, records are not actually permanent and universal, and the sound gradually changes as the vinyl gradually attired. That is partly why I thought it would be interesting as a means of preserving them. Either way, I feel that my desire to preserve my work has become stronger recently. In the past, I used to think that it was okay if a piece broke after it moved properly on the spot, or that it was done when the battery ran out, but now I want to think about the responsibility of a piece of art within a longer time frame. Even records still have a short history, and even if they remain for 100 years, I have no idea whether they will remain unbroken in 1,000 years. When I was recently in Korea on a study tour for the Gwangju Biennale to be held next year, I saw earthenware vessels from the first half of the 8th century (the Nara period in Japan) at a museum. It looked as if it had been buried only yesterday, and I was impressed by how beautiful it was. It is interesting to see how something once forgotten suddenly reappear after long periods of time. Maybe I should make a record out of stone or ceramic, too (laughs).

Mohri’s Idea of “Improvisation” or Longing for Music

–I would like to ask you a little more about “improvisation,” one of the keywords you mentioned earlier. After the pandemic, more emphasis tends to be placed on planning, advance preparation, and management. Under such circumstances, how do you now view the improvisational element in the creation of your works?

Mohri: This may not answer your question, but when I thought about improvisation again recently, I realized that I should confront what I felt on the spot frankly, rather than just letting my momentum guide my expression.

When I went to Gwangju, I decided to see the dreadful history that Japan had made during the occupation with my own eyes, so I asked for arranging a dialogue with a university professor over there. Instead of using a normal pavilion as an exhibition venue for my show, we decided to use a building that had remained from the time of the Japanese occupation, which was a very challenging development for me. As I toured the venue, I was reminded that the history of Japan’s invasion of the Korean Peninsula and other Asian countries and what I see when I create something here and now can be overlapped, and that I want to be sincere in interpreting them and creating artwork from this history in my own way. The city of Gwangju has another tragic past, not only the Japanese occupation, but also the rise of the democratic movement and its suppression. I wanted to create a crude piece of work out of an honest feeling I had in that place in a way that this multilayered history is present compatibly with the fact that I was moved by the sounds and lights when I visited the venue.

–For example, Christian Marclay said that the most important thing in improvisation is “collaboration with others,” and from what you just said, I was wondering if “facing the site” is the key for you.

Mohri: I place emphasis on the site, or rather, the site-specificity of the work. The other important thing for me is the objects. Markley is not only a visual artist but a musician, so he sees improvisation as an extension of musical performance, so he probably thinks about the relationship between people. Of course, that is also a major element of the relationship created in improvisation, but I take different view about it from that of Markley. I think it is interesting to see improvisation in the context of the instruments, the venue, the atmosphere, and the situations before and after. For example, whether you go to a concert after eating or on an empty stomach may affect the way you hear music, and your approach to your work will change in an improvisational manner depending on whether you are in a small venue or a large one. To put it in an extreme way, I think of improvisation as an act of going to a site empty-handed and doing something (laughs).

–How did you develop this interest in the idea of site-specificity?

Mohri: My interest in the site-specific nature of art, or the act of expressing something rapidly on site instead of exhibiting works that have been prepared in advance, may come from my admiration for the pace of music. Compared to visual art, music is very fast, and I feel that it is a form of expression that allows you to quickly solidify fresh material and incorporate what you are feeling at the time. I would like to express myself in this way in the art world as well, even if it is only in rough form, just like releasing demos in the form of records.

The Off Site and “Punk Spirit” of Fluxus

—In the sense that music is not only about the content of the performance but also about the space in which it is performed, the “weak sound improvisation” at Yoyogi Off-Site (2000-2005) and Sachiko M.’s exhibition “I’m here” were also expressions of sound that were truly based on the specificity of the space. Did your encounters with such attempts have an influence on your activities?

Mohri: Yes, they had a big influence on me. The Off Site looked very fresh even in the context of art. Nowadays, we kind of feel that contemporary art has taken root in Japan, but that is a very recent phenomenon. I even felt that a little rustic image was attached to it. I would say that Takashi Murakami was the only one who seemed to be keeping the heat on, but I personally didn’t feel that was my cup of tea. I found it more interesting to go to live houses than to museums because I found the unfamiliar things going on in the music scene more stimulating as an art form. It was during this period that Atsuhiro Ito and Yukari Fujimoto established “Off Site” in Yoyogi. Also, Shinro Ohtake was very important to me at that time, and I still have a vivid memory of seeing his “Dub-Hei & New Chanel,” an automatic/remote-controlled band, at the Setagaya Art Museum in 1999. I also felt sympathy for the way Ohtake was involved with music, as he had a band called JUKE/19. around 1980 and released a live album with Kazuhisa Uchihashi.

I felt a sense of familiarity, as well as a sense of “maybe I could do this, too” with various attempts done in Off Site (laughs). Though I had never shown my work at Off Site, I remember that I had a chance to play with I.S.O. (an improvisational unit made up of Yoshimitsu Ichiraku, Sachiko M and Yoshihide Otomo) at GRID605, a studio and event space that Otomo had opened. The most important thing is the fact that you can show your expression casually. For me, it didn’t make sense to rent an old-fashioned rental gallery in Ginza to present my work because I couldn’t afford to rent it in the first place and the form of expression born in such a place would be lame (laughs). I think the pace of the music scene suited my nature better than that.

–Setting aside the question of whether you can actually do it or not, in the sense that it makes you think, “Maybe I can do it,” I feel it’s similar to punk.

Mohri: Yeah, you are right. Also, Fluxus was completely in line with that too. They didn’t take art as something to be respected forever, but rather saw everyday life as an expression as well. In the history of art, it is rare to find a movement that has produced as many artists as Fluxus, and it is very important that Fluxus created a place for minorities such as Asians and women to be active in the American art world, which used to be a white male-dominated world. I still love the spirit of challenge, the punk spirit, and the spirit of experimentation.

–In a conversation with Yoshihide Otomo included in a book “Between Music and Art,” a collection of, you mentioned that the “Ensembles 2010-Resonance” exhibition at Art Tower Mito “could become a big movement like Fluxus.”

Mouri: Did I say such a cheeky thing? (laugh) But it is true that I was more enthusiastic about doing sound art before the 3.11 disaster. I feel that all of my motivation was totally spoiled by the earthquake. So I recognized that it was not that easy. Now, I just want to continue my own production and hope that 100 years from now, people will see there was some kind of movement.

Mohri as a Performer

–Speaking of punk, Mohri-san was a vocalist in a hardcore band called “Sisforsound” when you were in college.

Mohri: Haha (laughs). I recently digitized all the recordings I had made on DAT. I’ve been in touch with the members in the hope of releasing them someday.

–Oh, is that right? You performed vocals that sounded like a wordless scream in “Sisforsound,” but why did you decide to work as a visual artist rather than a musician?

Mohri: Simply because those vocals are something that I could only do with alcohol (laughs). Well, seriously, everyone has the desire to express something. Especially when I was young, I had a tremendous amount of energy, but I couldn’t express it in words. So I expressed it under the influence of liquor. That’s all there was to it. So when I look back on it in a calm way, I feel embarrassed, or I think it’s hard to get drunk every time (laughs).  With art, I can adjust those desires, so I thought that was more suited to my vibes.

–Do your musical activities during the Sisforsound period have any connection to your current artistic practices? Or is there a disconnect there?

Mohri: I think they are connected. The underlying motivation for my activities was and still is a desire of doing something that no one else has done, but at first I was still like a baby, and since I didn’t have the language or methods, I just got drunk and expressed my energy as it was. Gradually, however, I learned various methods, and I think I became able to control my desires and energy to a certain extent and incorporate them into my work.

— Tetsuya Umeda and Kanta Horio, for example, are actively involved not only in exhibitions but also in performances, if not being involved in bands. Why don’t you perform much?

Mohri: When I perform, I have to be out in front and I’m not very good at that (laughs). Even in an exhibition venue, I feel uncomfortable when I am there. I have a loud voice, so it clashes with the sound my work makes (laughs).

So I thought it would be better to avoid going out in public as much as possible, but two years ago, when I held the “SP. by yuko mohri” exhibition at Sony Park in Ginza, I decided to try something new just because of the pandemic, and I did a performance with Akio Suzuki. However, I was too nervous to do something like a performance while sober, so I followed Akio as he performed to record the sound of his performance with a gun microphone. Specifically, the gun mic picked up and analyzed the pitch of Akio’s sound, and at about the same time, the automatic piano played the same sound as Akio’s sound live. I had it filmed by my friend’s video production company, Hoedown, and compiled it into a video piece called “Parking for Quarantine.” It has only been screened a little in the local area, but I am quite satisfied with the result. Last May, I also did a performance of the same mechanism with Rie Nakajima at a music festival in Amsterdam.

–So you haven’t decided not to do performances, but are you likely to do them in the future if the opportunity arises?

Mohri: Yes, I am. I am trying to work on various forms of expression in my own way. Even with Decomposition, which uses fruit, I want to show how the expression changes dynamically in a short period of time, so I am currently experimenting with the possibility of creating a performance piece.

“I want to think more about East Asia.”

–Lastly, could you tell us about your goals and prospects for the future?

Mohri: I would like to learn more about and think about East Asia. I am currently being approached by an American curator living in Taipei about a sound art exhibition using a park as a field. It seems that he is talking to Takahiro Kawaguchi, Jun Yang, and other sound artists from Japan, China, Taiwan, and the United States. There is a stone lanterns in a national park in Taipei with speakers installed, and they want to do an exhibition using them. During the Japanese occupation, radio programs were played from the speakers to “educate” the people of Taiwan about the Japanese language and culture, and each of the artists from the four countries will present sound works about the colonial and post-colonial periods from their respective countries’ historical standpoints.

I am now considering what kind of work to create, but as I mentioned earlier, I would like to avoid composing the music for the sound work. I was thinking about how to weave sounds about Taiwan during the colonial period from the perspective of the occupying country, and I thought that the archives of the Tokyo University of the Arts might be of use. At the time, Tokyo Academy of Music was the only school in Japan, the only imperialist country in East Asia – and therefore in East Asia – where one could “learn authentic Western modern music from Westerners.” Not only Japanese students, but also many aspiring musicians from East Asian countries under Japanese rule came to study there. The history of the intermingling and subversion of various gazes, including those of East Asian countries as well as Western imperialism, still lies dormant in this educational institution.

What Japan has done to East Asian countries is a history that will never disappear. Since I plan to participate in this exhibition in Taipei and also in the Gwangju Biennale next year, I would like to take this opportunity to do more research. As a Japanese, I think it is very important to reflect on how we think about East Asia.

–In turning your attention to East Asia, do you also want to break through the Western-centered art world?

Mohri: Well, it is not that easy to break down it. But at least you can make a statement. After all, people are incredibly ignorant about East Asia. When I do exhibition in the U.S. or Europe, I have to explain literally everything, which sometimes leaves me dumbfounded. I have to explain every possible thing to them, even though I know it’s not the most sophisticated approach. For example, the essay “Akiba,” which was published in Iwanami Shoten’s “Tosho” in 2021, was a process of repositioning the origins of my expression, which began with building electronic devices using junks I scavenged in Akihabara, in the geopolitics of postwar East Asia.

What I want to think about “East Asia” is a different perspective from the framework of binary opposition between “the West and the East.” If we look back in history, Japan is obviously a derivative of continental culture, and it is only recently that it has been divided. Of course, this does not mean that all of East Asia is the same culture, but rather, I would like to consider the differences that exist among them. I was reminded of this very recently when I read the interview between Toru Takemitsu and Yun Isang, the composer who wrote the symphonic poem Exemplum in Memoriam Gwangju. I hope that one day I, too, can be seen as an East Asian artist.

Photography Hiroto Nagasawa
Edit Jun Ashizawa(TOKION)
Translation Shinichiro Sato(TOKION)

The post The State of Post-Covid Sound/ Art According to Yuko Mohri Part2 : Her Eyes on East Asia and How She Faces the “Site” appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

What sort of changes has there been in Yuko Mohri’s career post-covid? What interests of hers have remained the same? And what is her perspective on sound? We spoke to the artist, who’s having her first solo shows in Tokyo in over two years: “Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo)” at Akio Nagasawa Gallery from October 28th to December 24th and “Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik” at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery from November 2nd to December 3rd.  

Yuko Mohri 
Yuko Mohri is an artist. She approaches installation and sculpture not to compose or construct but to focus on phenomena that constantly change according to different environmental conditions, such as light and temperature. She uses everyday things, junk, and objects found worldwide. Her recent solo exhibitions include “Parade (a Drip, a Drop, the End of the Tale)” (Japan House São Paulo, São Paulo, 2021), “Voluta” (Camden Arts Centre, London, 2018), and “Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance” (Towada Art Center, Aomori, 2018). She has also partaken in many domestic and international group exhibitions, such as the “14th Biennale de Lyon” (Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, 2017), “34th Bienal de São Paulo” (Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, 2021), “23rd Biennale of Sydney” (Sydney, 2022), and more. Her upcoming exhibitions include “Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo)” on October 28th at Akio Nagasawa Gallery and “Neu Fruchtige Tanzmusik” at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery from November 2nd.  
https://mohrizm.net/

Overcoming the difficulty of working remotely on exhibitions during covid-19

–You’ve been very active recently. Last year, you participated in more than twice the number of exhibitions in previous years. This year, you exhibited your works in Hong Kong, Sarushima, Sydney, and more. Can you describe your current situation?  

Yuko Mohri: These past two years since the pandemic hit have been a clear turning point for me. I used to travel to different places and make art before, but I’ve been creating art at the Toride studio (Tokyo University of the Arts, Toride Campus) these past two years. During the pandemic, I bought a MIDI piano and speakers to do some research and make art in the studio. Before I knew it, I had created a lot of art (laughs). Many projects fell through, as usual, but I still had many opportunities to showcase my work.

Nonetheless, I mostly worked remotely. For my solo shows in places like Taipei, São Paolo, and Oslo, I first rented a space that was as big as the actual venue and made the art piece there. Then, I took it apart, wrote the instructions on how to build it, and shipped it off in boxes. The receiver would watch an instructional video and put it back together like Ikea furniture. I did that over and over. I had always conceptualized my works based on the locations they would be shown in, but since I set my artworks up remotely without actually visiting the physical spaces, the exhibitions felt quite distant. Even when the curator would tell me that my show had been set up, it didn’t click (laughs). 

–So you didn’t ever go to the physical venue when you worked remotely. 

Mohri: I didn’t. I had a lot of exhibitions, but it didn’t feel like I showcased my work. My participation in Sense Island, an art festival in Sarushima, was confirmed just as I was wondering whether I was okay with [feeling the way I did]. I was at a physical venue for the first time in a long time at Sarushima. My exhibition space was in a long, brick-lined tunnel, so I felt this physical rawness with my skin, like the sound reverberations and cool temperature and humidity while walking. I felt more excited than I thought, making me want to make more art that way.  

The mechanism of my piece, I Can’t Hear You, was quite simple: the title came from D.T. Suzuki, whose words I played from two slightly out-of-sync speakers around 100 meters apart. Because of my work schedule, I had to add finishing touches to the piece before the festival started. I listened closely to the sounds and made minor adjustments for two days. I created something I was thrilled with. When I went to the space once the exhibition opened, I saw that the piece next to mine had loud motor sounds, which made me panic. I was like, “No one told me there was going to be another sound piece!” (laughs). It made me realize how unexpected things can happen on-site. It also reaffirmed my desire to make artwork that can communicate something that photos and moving images alone can’t.  

The rawness of slowly decomposing fruit

–Did you make any other pieces after covid?  

Mohri: I made numerous new artworks, one of which is Decomposition, a piece that incorporates fruits. It’s also on the cover of Stone Stone Stone, Yoshihide Otomo’s album, which I made the artwork for. I put electrodes in different fruits so that you can hear the sound of a synthesizer from the speakers. The sound changes according to the shift in resistance value. 

–Why did you use fruits? 

Mohri: I participated in a group show in Hong Kong last spring and was supposed to be there first. But I couldn’t go because of covid, meaning I could only work remotely. I enjoy watching energy change in a fluid way or sound and light change depending on the space. When I brainstormed how to express those natural phenomena, I came up with using fruits. I wanted to express the physicality of the venue through fruits because I couldn’t be there in person. I felt it would be interesting because you can get fruits anywhere in the world, and the type of fruits you can get differs depending on the region. 

With that said, I didn’t know how my piece turned out because I couldn’t go to the show in Taipei and Hong Kong. Of course, I tested it myself numerous times, but they were just tests at the end of the day. I didn’t know how it changed for a few weeks to months. Amid all that, I showed Decomposition at Yuko Hasegawa’s “Art and New Ecology” show, a commemorative exhibition for her retirement from the Tokyo University of the Arts while I was in Europe during this spring and summer. I finally had the chance to show my work in Japan, but I was abroad, so I had to install the piece remotely (laughs). After I returned to Japan, I went to the venue at the tail end of the show. The heat and humidity of the summer, the smell of rotting fruits, and the psychedelic sound all merged into one, creating an indescribable space. It made me go, “This! This is what I wanted to make!” I’m currently interested in incorporating the things I feel on-site into the narrative of my work, much like the minor adjustments I made to my piece in Sarushima. 

Another reason I used fruits is that they’ve traditionally been used as a motif in Western paintings. That’s the art [history] context. 

–Do you always go with the same type of fruit? 

Mohri: No, I don’t. It’s easy to reference still life in historical paintings and choose fruits that way, but that’s easy. It’s something you see often. I see Decomposition as an open-end sculpture, so it’s not entirely up to me as an artist. I have a rule where the curator or another artist could choose which fruits to use. I witnessed so many fruits I had never seen before for my Taiwan piece. Taiwan is a country full of different fruits; it exceeded my expectations, so that was fun (laughs). Even the sounds were surprising. I didn’t care much about how my artwork smelled at first, but I realized just how important of a factor it was when I saw “Decomposition” at the “Art and New Ecology” show. 

Approaching the release of a debut record

–You re-discovered the value of site-specific art once you overcame creating art remotely.  

Mohri: Right. I was reminded of something I almost forgot during the pandemic. I was able to feel something, so I want to explore that more. I plan on using big vintage Bozak speakers for Decomposition. Until recently, I used a horn loudspeaker, the type used for school announcements, to create a sound resembling a human voice. Horn loudspeakers were initially made for making announcements, so they capture midranges very well, making any sound appear nostalgic and human-like. I wondered how “Decomposition” would sound with a different type of speaker when I heard it in person. Raspberry Pi, a microcomputer, is what emits the sound, so the audio signals are pretty good. The audio range sounded so beautiful when I tried using the Bozak speakers. My piece transformed into something completely different. 

–Why did you buy those speakers? 

Mohri: Last year, I worked on a new project called Tablet & Marble’s Tokyo Vernacular Pop Song Adventure with Manabu Yuasa and Tablet Jun. The two chatted, played songs with local references like a radio show, and went around the city on a bus. I enjoyed making it. We’re making the Kanazawa version right now, so I’ve been going back and forth with Yuasa. One day, he said, “Yuko, try looking up Bozak on Yahoo! Auctions,” and when I did, a bunch of vintage speakers showed up. He said he wanted to listen to music on Bozak speakers but had no space for them because he already had a lot of big speakers. So I decided to buy them (laughs). Two speakers arrived, so we listened to a vinyl record together. The music sounded so beautiful that I felt moved. I had mostly been listening to music on Bluetooth speakers, so my need for quality sound grew stronger. Before I knew it, I had a collection of Bozak speakers (laughs).  

Nowadays, most speakers have one or two cones that play high to low-range sounds all at once, but Bozak speakers have 11 cones, where each unit receives electricity to emit subtle sounds. The speakers can play detailed sound ranges of different instruments because they’re well-suited for orchestras. When I listened to Tatsuro Yamashita’s Softly, I felt like I saw many small faces of his at the beginning of the opening track, Phoenix (laughs). He layers his vocals, right? It was like I “saw” the vocals in an intricate way. I thought it’d be interesting to use them for fruits. I would create sounds using a synthesizer, but I’m toying with the idea of putting vocoder effects on different voices and whatnot. I’m planning on exhibiting this at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery. 

–The show’s title is “Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik,” right? 

Mohri: Yes. The direct translation from German would be “new fruity dance music.” The acronym is NFT (laughs). I went with a German title solely for this pun, but I also think it has an electronic music feel. I’m planning on selling a record at the show. I asked zAk to do the mastering for it. This is my first time releasing one. But I’m not releasing it regularly; I’m thinking of cutting the custom-made records like dubplates and selling them in limited editions. You could hear the fruits in real time at the exhibition, but I plan to document three different audio patterns for the vinyl record. I want to record the changing sounds of rotting fruits accurately. I wouldn’t say this is a return to analog mediums, but records and audio are interesting. Sounds change when you play them on a turntable; they can transform by changing the cables. It’s so fun manipulating sounds on-site.

The authorship of sounds or not composing music

–In terms of the sonic aspect of Decomposition, I’m assuming the focal point is how to convert the data you get from the fruits into sound. Your authorship as the artist would inevitably appear in the sound, right? 

Mohri: You’re exactly right. I first converted fruits into sound 15 years ago, when Tetsuya Umeda and friends had a show in Denden Town in Nipponbashi, Osaka (“Denki-hibition” at the Technopolitan Museum, in 2006). A junk shop called Digits specialized in electronic parts and sold different types of electrical resistors. I felt it’d be interesting to sell things like eggplants and cucumbers. Because vegetables contain water, you can measure their resistance value like an electrical resistor. I measured the water volume of the vegetables, marked the resistance value with colored tape, and sold them at the electronic store. That was my exhibition. Eggplants and cucumbers are objects, so you’d think their respective resistance values would remain the same. But when I tried to measure them by sticking electrodes in the vegetables, the water volume changed more than I expected. As a result, the numbers changed too. I was moved by the fact that the outward appearances stayed the same, yet the water volume inside altered. That experience stayed in the back of my mind, so I felt like I could create a piece with frequently changing sounds by converting the resistance value of fruits into sound. 

I spoke to a programmer about how I could make it happen, and we went through trial and error and landed on using Sonic Pi, a programming software for Raspberry Pi. I periodically measure the resistance value from fruits and change the pitch using synthesizers. There are various synth tones, so I first used a Casiotone, but it was a typical synthesizer. I’m currently in the middle of testing different methods because I want to focus more on the tone, like figuring out if I can sample my voice or object sounds.  

–Are you trying to listen to the “voices” of vegetables? 

Mohri: Perhaps. I’m the type who makes things as they go rather than establishing what to make at the start, so I’m still thinking about what the final concept will look like. I also came up with the title, Decomposition, in the middle of making it. I left Tokyo for a while to live in the countryside during the pandemic. I was composting food, and the title came to me then. Decomposition means disintegration or rotting, while composition could mean songwriting or constructing something. It has the “de” prefix, so you can interpret “decomposition” as the opposite of composing music. Rather than making music, this piece is about the pitch of sounds changing according to the water volume of fruits. That’s why I thought “decomposition” would work perfectly as the title. 

It also works as a statement: “I don’t compose music.” The fruits design the sounds on their own. I might come across as an accidental composer, but that’s part of the concept. Pierre Boulez once called John Cage’s music “chance by inadvertence,” and I don’t see inadvertence as bad. The statement, “I don’t compose music,” means I, as the artist, don’t choose the sounds. In Cage-like words, I let the sounds be. Live electronics are at the root of the idea behind Decomposition, after all. But I don’t completely leave things as they are, as I have some principles. I try to see the overall balance, which might be an eternal pursuit for me. I don’t want to make music; it’s about figuring out how far I should go to create optimal sounds if they exist.

Anti-tympanic or movements that shift fluidly

–I feel like your approach could generally be separated into three categories: sounds that intervene in one’s sense of hearing, sounds that are born from accidental movements, and sounds that use music as a motif. Do you ever categorize your work like this when you make sound art? 

Mohri: No, I don’t. The thing I’ve always been most interested in is movement. I’m interested in how the cityscape and society change fluidly, and I always think about what I’m looking at and what I can create. It’s more so about movements than sound. I have a big show from next year onwards, and I plan on making “movements” the theme. As you said, sounds are born from movements. But those movements don’t always come from the artwork. The artwork can change according to the viewer’s movements. By walking through the tunnel, the viewer could hear I Can’t Hear You in Sarushima differently. Likewise, I want my next exhibition to be one where the experience is affected by where the viewer stands and how they move rather than a change in the environment. It sounds quite abstract, but I want to make a show where the viewer can look at the ocean while standing or something like that (laughs). 

–In the official book for “Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance,” Minoru Hatanaka praised the exhibition, probably with Duchamp’s “anti-retinal” paintings in mind, saying it didn’t limit itself within an audible range and that the thought behind it wasn’t limited to “tympanic” sounds. Dealing with sound as movement could be considered as such a movement.

Mohri: When I listen to sounds, it feels like I’m looking at electricity. To be obsessed with audio is to polish dirty electricity and make it pure. It’s about how you can create clean electricity onto sound by changing cables and sources of electricity. That’s why when I listen to music on Bozak speakers, I can’t help but wonder how electricity is moving inside. With Decomposition, it goes without saying I’m interested in its sound, but I’m more concerned with the movement of electricity deep inside when I’m putting it together. When I used water for Moré Moré (Leaky), a three-dimensional sculpture, the main point was the water movements. Many objects guided the movement of water, but I was interested in the movement of the water itself. You had to consider gravity, and water is a difficult material to control because it’s hard to adjust the water pressure using a pump. The fun part about that sculpture was how you could try to control the water but end up with a shape you didn’t even think about.  

For my exhibition at Akio Nagasawa Gallery, I’m planning on making big prints out of 22 photos taken from Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo). After the Tokyo Olympics ended, I tried observing the streets of Tokyo again. When I walked the streets for the first time in a long time, I saw that the measures to fix water leaks became boring. Ten years ago, train station workers used various objects in unique ways, but now, they connect parachute-shaped transparent vinyl funnels to hoses. That’s become the norm. Efficient methods to stop water leaks feel boring. I felt like it was the end of an era, so I decided to put on a photo exhibition. This isn’t limited to water leaks, though. So many things that were normal ten years ago have changed; for instance, listening to music via Bluetooth is becoming the norm today. That’s why. I’m interested in figuring out how we should deal with those big societal changes.  

–What you spoke about just now—Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo)—illustrates how improvisation has become stagnant.  

Mohri: Yeah, exactly (laughs)! You’re right. Even with improvised music, when people start trying to show something they’ve mastered each time, it can make you think, “Well, that’s enough of that.” It’s not a bad thing to fix water leaks efficiently. Quite frankly, I felt like it was the end of an era. I thought it was a good time to have an exhibition to mark the end.   

Art and politics, or an infinite number of small movements and resistance 

—Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo) has a similar aspect to improvised music, which is interesting, and at the same time, it has a political aspect. It suggests the government’s negligent, ad hoc attitude toward infrastructure development. What are your thoughts on the relationship between art and politics?  

Mohri: Every time I go to different places abroad, I run into many political environments. For instance, censorship in Hong Kong is ramping up right now, and even with Decomposition, people ask me whether the fruits have a political meaning. In China, I had an exhibition with American artist David Horvitz, and the location in his video was a golf course that Trump goes to often. My video showed the Pacific Ocean at dawn, so it might’ve seemed like I had some message from Japan to America (laughs).  

The Global Art Practice Department at the Tokyo University of the Arts, where I started working five years ago, is unique. Over half of the students are from other countries. There are students from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, not just the West. I teach the classes in English. My students often tell me real stories regarding how danger is so close to home. For example, Russia might become omitted from the list of partner countries for scholarships, an ideological decision. There’s nothing wrong with the individual students themselves. In today’s world, we tolerate the idea that we can split deep, complex individuals by enemy or foe and change how we treat them. Everything is complicated, so when we assert one opinion, we inevitably hide the other side’s tragedy without seeing it.  

Japan is an isolated country in terms of language, so many things present themselves as one-sided. I can’t entirely agree with the tendency to hastily come up with an answer by thinking of things in terms of extremes because they’re multifaceted. Of course, there is a lot of amazing political art, but I can’t help but think of things from multiple perspectives. I can’t make something that presents an issue in just one way. 

I feel like my political statement lies in how I create many small, meticulous resistances, just like what I did with “Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance.” I want to view things in the world by creating many small movements or vibrations and resisting them. It is an abstract expression, so I don’t know when and to whom I’d be able to communicate that.  

When I look at paintings from the Russian avant-garde era and Vladimir Tatlin’s sculptures today, a century later, I can feel that they were resisting in subtle ways. It makes me realize that there were people who resisted 100 years ago. The interesting thing about art and music is you can feel something, even if they’re abstract. If I can leave my work behind for posterity, I hope they can feel like, “I didn’t know an era like this existed” by looking at my subtly resistant artworks. People might discover meaning in my work by looking back 100 years ago, as how people view or apply meaning to things can change drastically in just a decade, like in Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo). 

■Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo)
Date: October 28~December 24
Venue: AKIO NAGASAWA GALLERY GINZA
Address: Ginsho Bldg. 6F, 4-9-5 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
Hours: 11:00-19:00 (closed 13:00-14:00 on Saturdays)
Holidays: Sunday – Monday and national holidays
Admission: Free
Web site: https://www.akionagasawa.com/en/exhibition/more-more-tokyo/

■Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik
Date: November 2~December 3
Venue: Yutaka Kikutake Gallery
Address: 2F, 6-6-9 Ropoingi, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Hours: 12:00-19:00
Holidays: Sunday – Monday and national holidays
Admission: Free
Web site: https://www.yutakakikutakegallery.com/en/

■21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa Art Bus Tour Tablet & Marble’s Kanazawa Pop Song Adventure Presented by Yuko Mori

Date: November 3
Venue: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Address: 1-2-1 Hirosaka, Kanazawa-shi, Ishikawa, Tokyo
Hours: 10:00～、13:30～（About 2 hours and 15 minutes）
Admission: Varies depending on the program (Kanazawa and Toyama citizens receive free admission to exhibitions hosted by the museum / proof of residence such as a driver’s license is required).
Capacity：20 (prior application priority)
Disc jockey: Jun Tablet (mood singer and comedian), Manabu Yuasa (music critic)
Web site：https://www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.php?g=69&d=1991

Photography Hiroto Nagasawa
Edit Jun Ashizawa(TOKION)
Translation Lena Grace Suda

The post The State of Post-Covid Sound/Art According to Yuko Mohri Part 1: “Anti-Tympanic” Movements in Sound  appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

The two-day event, held June 4-5, centered on Ishiwaka’s idea of performing with himself, in which he and AI (artificial intelligence) agents (a device that records Ishiwaka’s performance data, extracts performance characteristics, and performs autonomously/semi-autonomously based on that data), improvised sessions. On the second day, saxophonist Kei Matsumaru participated in an interactive improvisation session with a variety of sound-installation-like automatic instruments that were placed at the venue just as on the first day.

This event was realized after about a year and a half of his joint research and development with YCAM and AI researchers. What possibilities did “improvisation with AI” open up? We asked Ishiwaka and Matsumaru about their thoughts immediately after the performance.

Reasons for inviting Kei Matsumaru as a co-performer

–In this performance, the main theme was Ishiwaka-san’s collaboration with himself. So Ishiwaka-san, why did you bring in Matsumaru as a co-performer?

Shun Ishiwaka (Ishiwaka): My initial idea was to show the “before and after of Shun Ishiwaka” through the two days of performance. In other words, I was going to focus on how I change between the first and second days, but the focus of the second half, which was simply going to feature “me after I changed,” shifted to “me performing with co-performer, after I changed.” Well, I had been working with YCAM for more than a year on this project, and I had experienced playing with the computer for a long time, so I wondered what would happen if another artist joined and played with me, and what new discoveries might be made there.

When I thought about who might be interested in this kind of work using leading-edge technology, the first name that came to mind was Kei Matsumaru. We had performed together countless times, and since I have participated in his quartet and performed with him in SMTK, I myself feel a great deal of sympathy for the music he is trying to make and the methods he uses to realize that music. I wanted to have someone with a similar view of music to me be involved, and I also thought that if Kei had this kind of opportunity, he would think about many different things, which might lead to even greater development of the performance.

Kei, I wanted to ask you this, but do you think my way of performing has changed through this creation?

Kei Matsumaru (hereafter, Matsumaru): Well, I can’t really say as of yet.  . Maybe I haven’t noticed much of a change because  we’ve been playing together for a long time..

Ishiwaka: I personally think I have changed a lot.

Matsumaru： When we look back after a while, I might be able to start seeing  this creation  as a turning point in hindsight,  but I can’t really give a clear answer now. Not because I think there haven’t been any changes,  but it may be similar to the way you don’t really notice when someone you live with loses or gains a little weight , for example.

“The experience of the time passage is different from usual.”

— Did you feel any difference between your usual duo session and this performance with the agents including AI?

Ishiwaka: We talked with Kei during the rehearsal about how the experience of the passage of time was different from usual due to the fact that the co-performer of the session is not a human being. We are creating something with the AI, and when the meta-agent gives commands and the five different agents switch between them, the work we are creating may suddenly end in the middle of the process, or we may be made to feel that we should continue. I felt what was going on during the performance was totally different from those with ordinary human performers.

Matsumaru：I have done many duo improvisation performances not only with Shun, but also with many other people, and I can say with confidence that this performance felt considerably closer to improvising in a trio setting rather than duo. When there are only two performers in a session, decisions are made only on one end or the other, in turn or at the same time. . But when a third party is added, it not only adds one more option for decision making, it exponentially broadens the scope of the relationships that can happen simultaneously. After three players, you don’t really feel the difference, which is why I think improvisations can be broadly categorized into ”solo”, “duo”, or “trio or more”, with each becoming a different kind of music. This time it was closer to the feeling of a trio than a duo.

Ishiwaka：That’s true.

Matsumaru: Playing as a trio means that three patterns of duos may be created within the trio. Therefore, a duo and a trio have very different feelings, almost in a way that a two-dimensional thing becomes three-dimensional. Moments of engaging with another player with intention and situations where multiple textures exist in parallel suddenly become a lot more complex. . In this performance, there were only two human players, myself and Shun, but the meta-agent was also present as another player, and there was a sense that the three of us were creating something together.

After a trial show, the performance became more “free”.

–One month prior to the performance, a trial show was held at Shibuya Koen-dori Classics with Matsumaru. How did you brush up the performance after that?

Ishiwaka：The live performance at Classics was just an experiment, more like a demonstration. We focused on playing with each agent in the first set, and in the second set, person behind the stage switched the agents manually during the performance to create a musical flow. Based on the results, we created a meta-agent, a higher-level entity, with which the computer can switch between the agents.

Matsumaru: Also, at the time of Classics, my performance data was not reflected in the agent, so it didn’t feel like a trio improvisation as in the actual performance. An interactive duo situation was created between me and Shun, and between Shun and the agent, but between me and the agent, there was no interactive communication. We may have influenced each other indirectly, but we never directly communicated as a trio, which was a definite difference from the actual performance. In the performance at YCAM, what I played on the saxophone was also reflected in the meta-agent.

Ishiwaka：It was great that we were able to play more and more freely in this process toward the final performance. During the one at Classics, there were times when we had to change the way we perform for each scene, and at other times, I felt that we taught too many techniques and the agents were too close to the human side.

Matsumaru: If we had not had the trial performance at Classics, perhaps we wouldn’t have been completely satisfied with the final performance.

Something close to a human will felt in the meta-agent

— During the performance, did you ever sense anything like human will in the meta-agent?

Ishiwaka: Yeah, I did a lot. I think if player has the certain sound image he or she wants to make, we may consequently feel as if the meta-agent has a will. For me, there are times when I want to create a sound with a beat, times when I value coincidence and create an idea randomly, and times when I create a very quiet sound. In order to express these different sounds, each agent is allocated to a specific role, and the meta-agent, who has a bird’s eye view of the whole, creates music as if it were playing with a will. In other words, we gave the agents “ears” as well.

Matsumaru: That kind of human-like will was an element that we didn’t feel at the time of the performance at Classics. I was a little surprised at how different it felt  after introducing the meta-agent in the performance,  because it felt like we were making music together.

–Among the agents, the “Rhythm AI,” which produces percussion sounds, was the closest automatic instrument to Ishiwaka-san’s performance. Did you ever feel “Shun Ishiwaka’s character” in the sound AI produced?

Ishiwaka: Yes, I did. Especially on the first day, I felt a swingin’ feel. When I had the Rhythm AI learn, I set the tempo and the number of bars, and tried various patterns of swing rhythms with an electronic drum called Roland V-Drums. I had it learn as many patterns of my favorite phrases as I could think of. Sometimes when I listen to the agent’s performance while playing, I could recognize the swing rhythms that I had had the agent learn.

Matsumaru: Especially in terms of the rhythm AI, I could feel elements similar to Shun’s improvisation in the density and changes in density of the sounds produced. . Instead of improvising with the same rhythmic density all the time, there was a wide range, just like in Shun’s performance. At times, certain parts of the agent’s rhythm were much less dense than others, and at other times, a very small part of the rhythm had high density. These shades of density repeated in certain cycles may have reflected his characteristics.

The sound from a sampler has little touches of humanity

— Were there any scenes in which you felt that a co-performer was not human?

Matsumaru：I was always conscious of the fact that the agents I was working with were not human. However,  one thing that was unexpected was how the sampler functioned. There was an agent with a sampling machine that played fragments of our past recordings through speakers. We thought  this would easily bring out  human-like qualities because it played  actual recordings, but instead  it gave us the opposite impression. The human quality was rather weak precisely because it merely played back samples. . The way it chose the sounds and played them didn’t feel human at all. .

Ishiwaka：When I first decided to use a sampler, I had the idea of creating a raw sensation or subtle fluctuations in sound and changes in texture that only humans can create. It was interesting that, although that was my original goal, when I actually tried it, it sounded less human-like.

Matsumaru：If the agent had learned from the performance data of a musician who usedg a sampler as their main tool, the choice of sounds played by the agent might have sounded more human-like. In our performance, the sampler just extracted clips  from past recordings with similar sound characteristics to the real-time performance.

–The sampler sounds had a slightly lo-fi texture, so you can tell at first listen that it is a sampler sound, even if it is the sound of the same instrument., right?

Ishiwaka: That’s right. All of the other agents had a mechanism for physically tapping the instruments to produce sound on the spot, but in the case of the sampler, the sound is played back from the speakers, so the sound source can be processed. In order not to confuse the sampler sound with the live sound we were producing in real time, we dared to apply effects to the sampler sound to change its texture.

In search for a view we have never seen before

–This event can be seen as an extension of Ishiwaka’s solo performance. Are there any barriers that you have felt you wanted to break through in your regular solo improvisation performances?

Ishiwaka：The main problem for me is when I get bored with myself. If I feel that what I am looking now is the same as what I saw before during the performance, I may suddenly realize that I am bored with myself. To avoid this, I experiment with various ideas and try to create a situation that feels fresh by keeping my ears sensitive. I always want to go somewhere I have never seen before.

Matsumaru: In my case, I sometimes  imagine there being  something beyond this type of boredom. I am interested in how far I can go with  repeating an idea. When I get really tired of listening to an idea, my perception of that musical idea starts to deform and unravel,  sometimes to the point where  I can’t think about what will happen next. So, for example, I may think about how many times I can repeat the exact same phrase during a solo, and I believe  this kind of patience also plays an important role in improvisation. I’ll sometimes explore this  not only in solo performances, but also in duos, depending on the person. .

Ishiwaka：There was a time when I was challenging myself to keep on playing the same drumming phrase over and over again. If I keep on drumming the same phrase, my ear gradually becomes more sensitive. Then I could sense subtle changes in the accents, and I would explore what I might be able to see if I stretched this or that part. But there is a procedure and a pattern, and I am looking for something I could see by continuing the prescribed movements, so I thought it was improvised but also composed, so I named the performance and did it as a concert piece. Recently, I tend to do the improvisation in a different way. Maybe what we are looking for in improvisation differs depending on the general character, role, and features of the instruments. In the case of drummers, we are basically repeating a fixed pattern all the time in order to generate beats in their everyday performance. In order to escape from such a situation, I think that improvisation for drummer is an attempt to expand the range of expression of the drums in various ways.

Matsumaru：That’s true. In that sense, saxophone players are the opposite.  We’re often  required to play melodies at specific parts, develop solos in specified places, and play ideas that are  fairly non-repetitive. Of course, there are many different saxophonists, but in my case, perhaps it is because of the instrument’s characteristics and given role  that I’m curious about  repeating  ideas when I improvise.

(Continued in Part 2)

Shun Ishiwaka
Born in 1992 in Hokkaido, Japan, Shun Ishiwaka graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts after studying percussion at the high school attached to the Faculty of Music of Tokyo University of the Arts. Upon graduation, he received the Acanthus Music Award and the Doseikai Award. In addition to leading Answer to Remember, SMTK, and Songbook Trio, he has participated in numerous live performances and productions by Kururi, CRCK/LCKS, Kid Fresino, Kimijima Ozora, Millennium Parade, and many others. As a recent practice, he presented Sound Mine, a new concert piece by Miyu Hosoi + Shun Ishiwaka + YCAM at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media[YCAM]under the theme of evoking memories through sound and echoes.
Official website: http://www.shun-ishiwaka.com
Twitter: @shunishiwaka

Kei Matsumaru
Though born in Japan in 1995, Kei Matsumaru was raised in a small village in the highlands of Papua New Guinea where he calls home. From there, he moved to Boston to study music in 2014, after which he relocated to Japan in late 2018.
Kei is currently based in Tokyo and has been active mostly in the jazz and improvised music scene, but has increasingly been collaborating with artists from other musical genres and creative disciplines, such as contemporary dance, visual arts, and various media arts. Kei is a member of SMTK, a rock/free jazz/instrumental band, as well as mºfe (em-doh-feh), an electro-acoustic trio. In 2020, he released Nothing Unspoken Under the Sun as his quartet’s first album.
He also periodically presents “dokusō”, a series of live 90-minute solo saxophone performances through which he explores the relationship between time, space, body, and instrument and how the performance affects cognition and perception of these elements in both the audience and himself.
Recent: Eiko Ishibashi, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Jim O’Rourke, Otomo Yoshihide, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Dos Monos, etc.
His 2nd album The Moon, Its Recollections Abstracted is set to release on October 19, 2022.
Official website: https://www.keimatsumaru.com
Instagram: @kmatsumaru
Twitter: @keimatsumaru

Photography Yasuhiro Tani / Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]
Translation Shinichiro Sato (TOKION)

The post Technological Co-Creation between AI and Improvisation — Shun Ishiwaka × Kei Matsumaru Special Conversation, Part 1 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

As the 62nd Grammy Award nomination of the compilation album Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990 (2019) illustrates, Japanese environmental music of the 1980s has recently made a comeback. Satoshi Ashikawa, who passed prematurely in 1983 at the age of 30, was someone who had made a mark on the world of Japanese ambient music. While incorporating contemporary music and Murray Schafer’s theory of Soundscapes, he created his own “music as a landscape.” Not only did he create serene and discreet music, he designed sounds that could be utilized effectively in everyday life, and started his company in 1982. A tragedy occurred the following year after he started his company Sound Process Design. After Ashikawa’s passing, Munetaka Tanaka took over the company and continued Ashikawa’s legacy, working on sound design for cultural, commercial, and transportation facilities. One of the sound designers on those projects was Yutaka Hirose.

In 1986, Hirose released Nova, the only musical album to come out of the Misawa Home Sound Design Research Lab’s “Soundscape” series. Although the record remained out of print for a period, Hirose assisted with the resurgence of ambient music, and re-issued the record with bonus, previously unreleased recordings on the Swiss label We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want, in 2019. The re-issue of Nova, a record that holds as much significance as Midori Takada’s Through the Looking Glass (1983) and Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), amassed a great deal of attention. Now, Hirose has completed his second album Nostalghia, his first in 36 years.

Nostalghia is an album made up of two LPs, including one CD with seven tracks and another with nine. The album includes recordings based on works created after the release of Nova and newly edited versions of environmental sound designs recorded between 1987 and 1991. Thus, this work is a combination between a valuable archive and a brand new musical release. In part one of this two-part interview, Hirose speaks about the changes in his creative process post-Nova, and his background in free improvisation and free jazz.

From notated music to improvised production

– The recordings in Nostalghia were recorded from 1987-91, after the release of Nova in 1986. What was your objective for those recordings back then?

Yutaka Hirose: They were initially created for stereophonic sound. I wanted to build sounds based on space rather than do something musical. Nostalghia was created from two left and right channels. But at the time, the sounds were built from eight unmixed channels with disparate sound sources randomly playing in history museums and science museums. The sounds were intended to be constantly changing, and were to be played at specific facilities. I had no intention of listening to it in stereo back then. I ended up creating a two-channel mix solely to keep a record of it.

– Nova was released as a part of “Soundscape,” Misawa Home’s environmental music series. The concept was to make music to play in a specific environment. How do your new record differ from Nova?

Hirose: For Nova, we used sheet music and input each note into a computer. Afterwards, during the mixing process, we added environmental sounds to build atmosphere. But in Nostalghia, I didn’t use sheet music or input anything into a computer. Instead, I added notes improvisationally. For example, I recorded a number of melodies and phrases that I played improvisationally, and designated each sound lump a “group.” I used each “group” and composed them as if I were splicing them together.

– Why did you change your approach?

Hirose: I’ve always liked improvisational music, but it also took a lot of time inputting notes into a computer. So much so that I thought that would be all I would do for the rest of my life (laughs). I thought it would be faster if I played the notes myself then selected and spliced the notes together afterwards. There was also more freedom that way. Instead of pre-selecting notes by writing them out, this album was created much more freely by playing the sounds, combining notes that I thought would fit together, adding effect A to one and effect B to another, then splicing and shifting them.

In Nostalghia, I wanted to focus more on the sounds themselves rather than melody. Since people have a tendency to get caught up by a melody, my intention was to create a sound organically. I wanted be able to hear the sound objectively, to let it speak directly to people’s souls, or to create a space in which people can enter into the world of sound.

– Was being able to create interesting tones an advantage of creating music improvisationally?

Hirose: Yes. I usually lay down the foundation of my work first with low end and keep adding layers of harmonics until I end up with high end notes. If you think about that, it’s important to consider how those tones are created, and how they affect my playing. My playing is influenced by the tones I hear. In other words, the timbres of the sounds lead where the music goes. If you start inputting that into a computer, it has to be notated properly which then makes it difficult to come up with interesting tones. Instead, the instrumental elements tend to come to the fore. Even synthesizers end up sounding like instruments. I wanted to try something else for it to not end up that way, which is how I ended up improvising.

Being influenced by Derek Bailey’s tone in his teens

– You mentioned earlier that you’ve “always liked improvisational music.” Which musicians did you like specifically?

Hirose: I’d say I liked most of the music released on Incus records. I listened to artists like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Tristan Honsinger a lot. And Anthony Braxton. I listened to Bailey’s Lot 74 – Solo Improvisations (1974) in my teens, and even went to the MMD trio (Min Tanaka, Milford Graves, Derek Bailey)’s 1981 performance in Japan.

Bailey’s shows were extremely interesting. He opened my eyes to different uses of harmonics. It was really fun to watch him play. I could enjoy his music sincerely since my first listen, without ever rejecting it. A while after, Evan Parker came to Japan and had a great show at the Nippon Seinenkan Hall in 1982. I could listen to his circular breathing sax solos forever; it was so satisfying to listen to. There was barely any audience there, though (laughs).

– Have you ever felt there were ambient elements in Bailey’s music?

Hirose: His tone was so captivating. To me, his nonlinear approach to improvisation felt more ambient than chaotic. I never really listened to ambient music, though. I started listening to ECM in high school and grew interested in free jazz after that.

– ECM was created in 1969, and represented artists like Bailey who created eccentric works. They continued to build an aesthetic label/sound throughout the 70s. Did you like the works from that era?

Hirose: I liked Bailey and Dave Holland’s duo record Improvisations for Cello and Guitar (1971) and Paris Concert (1971) by Chick Corea’s jazz group Circle, which Braxton was a part of. But within ECM, I actually really liked Eberhard Weber, Steve Kuhn, and the like. I loved their sound, and simply thought their music was pretty.

Most ECM works are not very lively, meaning they work in spatial settings, as well. You can listen to it naturally, you can listen to it as sounds, and you can enjoy it without putting emotion into it. You’re able to enjoy the music in different ways because there’s no specific climax to the music. The way I listen to sounds is more free, and has changed dramatically through my exposure to ECM.

Being conscious of the free jazz structure during the creative process

– In Nostalghia’s liner notes, Toshiya Tsunoda writes that the record was “conscious of the free jazz structure.” What specific structure was that referring to?

Hirose: The first song, “Seasons,” is the most obvious example. Most of its structure is free jazz, and is mostly improvisational. There are a bunch of detailed elements scattered throughout. It’s made to not repeat the same thing from start to finish. Some good examples with similar structures are Albert Ayler’s New York Eye and Ear Control (1966) and several of Don Cherry’s albums.

I also like contemporary music even more than I like improvisational music, and listen to artists like Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen came up with a technique called “group composition.” Instead of keeping track of individual sounds via total serialism, you utilize different groups of sound by scattering them and tracking their changes. Instead of categorizing structures of individual sounds with serial composition, it categorized things into groups and scattered them. I talked to Mr. Kakuta about how we were conscious of that sort of approach and of other free jazz structures.

– Speaking of free jazz, you often mention that you like Masahiko Togashi’s albums and listen to them a lot.

Hirose: That’s true. When I was reading Swing Journal, I thought I would try listening to Japanese jazz as well, and not just Western jazz. The record I stumbled upon first was Mr. Togashi’s. I used to listen to Spiritual Nature (1975), Guild For Human Music (1976), and Essence (1977) a lot. Mr. Togashi’s music is very Eastern, very Japanese. That caught my eye, and I got really into the drumming and percussion elements of his records. They sounded like falling water droplets; it was very comforting to listen to.

– How about Japanese free jazz musicians like Yosuke Yamashita and Masayuki Takayanagi?

Hirose: I used to listen to Yosuke Yamashita. But I never got to Masayuki Takayanagi back then. As far as I know, none of it was even playing on the radio. I just listened to the music that I happened to stumble upon.

– How about people in the 1980s, musicians like Masabumi Kikuchi, Yoshio Suzuki, and Yasuaki Shimizu, who incorporated ambient sounds from a jazz perspective?

Hirose: I didn’t know them back then. I never encountered them.

Yutaka Hirose
Sound designer. Born in 1961 in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture. Released album Nova as part of Misawa Home’s Sound Design Research Lab series “Soundscape” in 1986. In the same year, Hirose joined Sound Process Design, a company started by Satoshi Ashikawa, and worked on the sound design for projects in several cultural and commercial facilities. In 2019, Hirose re-issued Nova. Released by Swiss label We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want, the record included a bonus track with unreleased recordings and gained worldwide attention. In May of 2022, Hirose released Nostalghia, his first album in 36 years. Hirose plans to release Trace Sound Design Works 1986-1989 with the same label on July 1st.

Translation Mimiko Goldstein

The post How the “Japambient” Works were Born – Yutaka Hirose Interview – Part One –<br>From Notation to Improvisation, or Free Jazz Structure and Contemporary Music appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

On December 18, 2021, “INTERDIFFUSION A tribute to Yoshi Wada,” a concert dedicated to Yoshi Wada, a pioneer in the drone world who passed away in May of the same year, was held at an abandoned school in the mountains of Hokuto City, Yamanashi Prefecture. A special venue covered entirely with white cloth was set up in the gymnasium of a former elementary school about an hour’s bus ride from the nearest train station. Before the performance began, a mysterious purple light created an mystical atmosphere. Due to a severe cold wave that hit the mountainous area where the venue was located that day, the audience gradually lost sensation in their limbs. However, it was certainly an unforgettable audiovisual experience, as if they had wandered into an unworldly other world.

The concert featured a 10-member ensemble performing an 80-minute composition created by musician/composer Koshiro Hino and pipe organist/sound artist Yosuke Fujita (FUJI|||||||||||TA), who had collaborated on the piece for this occasion. The electro-acoustic drones that interdiffuse sounds were reminiscent of Yoshi Wada, while each player’s outstanding performance and sound manipulation designed the entire space, creating a subtle yet dynamic sound field. The addition of lighting that kept synchronizing/desynchronizing  the sounds brought about an extraordinary time-space that resembles a religious ceremony, but is also like an immediate experiment.

What does it mean to face Yoshi Wada’s music in this day and age? Or what possibilities can we draw from it? In the second part of the special conversation between Koshiro Hino and FUJI|||||||||||TA, who were central figures in the tribute live show, they discussed the essence of tribute in “INTERDIFFUSION” and how they perceive their musical practices in relation to academic/non-academic and notions of music/art. We also asked them about their music recommendations to listen to alongside of Yoshi Wada.

The essence of tribute in “INTERDIFFUSION”

–I believe that there are many different approaches to give tribute to Yoshi Wada’s musical legacy. What elements of Yoshi Wada did you plan to incorporate into “INTERDIFFUSION” and how did you translate them into the relevant form of expression?

Koshiro Hino (Hino): There was little talk of “incorporating this element as a tribute.” For both myself and Fujita-san, Yoshi Wada is a very big part of our musical activities. So I thought it would be meaningful as a tribute to Yoshi Wada just to create a new work with that as a common understanding. Of course, in the process, I had to reexamine Yoshi Wada in my own way. For example, I used the relationship between the pipe horns and oscillators in “Earth Horns with Electronic Drone” (2009) as a reference, and I went through a process of trial and error to find out how a duo of Fujita-san’s self-made pipe organ and my oscillators could coordinate well. Then, based on the duo, we added other instruments and developed the concept of the music for an ensemble performance. However, such an approach itself was not that important to us, but rather the fact that a generation influenced by Yoshi Wada was creating new forms of expression was the most significant thing.

FUJI|||||||||||TA (Fujita): Yes, that’s right. Rather than incorporating specific elements, in the tribute, our first priority was to approach the music with Yoshi Wada in the forefront of our mind. Also, for me personally, the fact that I was able to perform with Hino-san for the first time because of Yoshi Wada itself was significant and valuable. It was only because of Yoshi Wada that I was able to create such an opportunity. So I thought it would be good for the two of us to simply create a new work together.

–Why did you decide to create a new work, rather than reenacting or rearranging Yoshi Wada’s works?

Hino: In my mind, there were two reasons: First, if we were going to perform Yoshi Wada’s work again in a tribute event, there must be other people who would be more suitable. In other words, there is Tashi Wada, the composer/performer who is Yoshi Wada’s son. So I didn’t feel the need to re-perform the piece myself. Another reason is that I imagined it would also be better for Yoshi Wada to have new music created by people who were influenced by him, rather than to perform the same piece again. So we decided to create a completely new piece as a tribute.

Fujita: That was an unspoken premise that we shared without having to talk about it.

Hino: Yeah. We didn’t even come up with the idea of a revival, but rather, we started by talking about what we should make. Even if Tashi Wada would not perform the piece again in the future, we would have created a new piece anyway. I think that any attempt by a third party to ruminate on Yoshi Wada’s work would be better served by a solid verification process in the academic realm. You know, we are only artists.

“Rigidly committed to the non-academic world as a starting point”

–For example, it can be said that it is only through academic investigation and research that we can carefully delve into the reenactment of past sound works, as pointed out by Tomotaro Kaneko, a scholar of auditory culture theory in his book “Japanese Art Sound Archive.” What do you think?

Hino: There is a man named Kazuhiro Jo, who is an associate professor at Kyushu University, with whom I have been teaching composition classes. In the “Generative Music Workshop” that I am conducting with Kaneko, we are reenacting Steve Reich’s “Music of Pendulums” and Alvin Lussier’s “Music of Long, Thin Wires” in their own way, and they are meticulously examining how acoustic phenomena are generated. Conversely, because excellent researchers like them can play the role of re-enacting, analyzing, and explaining past works, we feel that we must play our own role as people who create new works.

Fujita: I feel the same way. By the way, while you are working as an artist, you are also a part-time lecturer at Kyushu University. In terms of academic/non-academic, where do you position your activities?

Hino: Well ……, I certainly have a strong interest in the academic world. And I am actually teaching. However, I dropped out of college, and I am not what you would call academically educated. So I feel like I am in between the academic and non-academic worlds.

Fujita: What I found interesting about your musical practices is that you start from a non-academic point of view, while at the same time creating your works with an academic context in mind. You exert a presence in the academic world, but your work is based on the non-academic world. I think that is very important. There are very few musicians who work from such a position, and even if they wanted to, it would not be very easy to do so. I think it is possible because you have the ability to actually embody it. I think it’s amazing.

Hino: It is difficult to polarize academic/non-academic, but in reality, I feel that I am still not recognized from the academic side, and I think that there are some people from the non-academic side who may consider me to be an academic. But what is important in this context is that, as Fujita-san says, non-academic is the base of my work. I am sometimes called a contemporary composer these days, but all my projects, such as YPY and GEIST, are based on my experiences and ideas gained in the band. However, I also have a strong interest in academic analysis and methods of expression, so I would like to have both perspectives.

However, the more ambiguous the environment in which I am placed, the more difficult it can be to fit myself comfortably in a certain place. For example, I feel quite out of place in the academic world. And I have to express myself on the premise that my form of expression is not easily accepted within it. Of course, that difficult situation can inspire me, but actually expressing oneself in that situation can be painful as well. The same thing happens when I am in the dance music world. When I am placed in the context of techno music, I am totally different from it no matter what I do. Of course, I am interested in that context, but I don’t necessarily want to express myself in that context. However, depending on the venue or event, the audience is looking for techno, so I often feel I am not welcomed. So being in between the two is always accompanied by suffering. But because of that suffering, it is also a great joy when I am accepted. But working with Fujita-san on “INTERDIFFUSION” was a pleasant experience. That attempt itself was something in between.

Between music and art, or the difference between the two

–Yoshi Wada can be said to be somewhere between music and art. For both of you, do you position him as musicians or an audiovisual artist?

Fujita: I see him as a musically oriented artist. Of course, Yoshi Wada himself had a different perspective from a pure form of music, but in my mind, he is not positioned as an audiovisual artist.

Hino: It is difficult, isn’t it? Yoshi Wada is both an audiovisual artist and not an artist, and the same can be said about his music. He is not on either side of the spectrum, so I think he is somewhere in between the two. The fact that he shifted his main focus onto installation in the latter half of his career only makes it appear as though he has turned toward audiovisual art, but what he was doing was essentially the same.

–The practices of Hino-san and Fujita-san also fall somewhere between music and art. But how do you two view the difference between music and sound art?

Fujita: There are many ways to look at the differences. It is often said, for example, whether or not the artist is on site. If the artist is on site, the work can be categorized as a performance, and if not, it can be treated in the context of art as an installation. The latter would be called sound art, but that is not the absolute definition. There are performances in an art context, and even in music, there are many live performances where the player is not on site. So, it is just a difference in the context in which the expression is located. The other difference is whether the artist himself is presenting it as music, or whether he/she is trying to place it in the context of sound art.

Hino: I think so too. I am often attracted to works that fall somewhere between sound art and music, and that cannot be fully defined as one or the other. There is also the academic/non-academic issue I mentioned earlier. In the case of Yoshi Wada, he did his own practices sensorily, and the resulting works were either musically oriented or sound art-like. But this was only possible through his consistent non-academic attitude. In the academic world, most artists set a goal and an end point first, and then proceed with their work toward that goal. For Yoshi Wada, creating a self-made instrument called a pipe horn was not the first goal he set, but rather the interesting result of experimenting with various things. I think that only because sounds were recorded, they ended up in the format of music.

–Do you actually feel a difference between music and art as an institution when you place yourself in the specific site?

Fujita: I clearly do. For example, the Sapporo International Art Festival 2017, in which I participated with the installation work “CELL,” which made audible the sound of horsefly larvae, clearly existed as a site in an art context. Therefore, the approach is completely different from that of a live performance at a music site. Considering the institutional differences, I feel that I am a person who feels closer to music, and I end up wanting to perform at music venues. I feel safer there.

Hino: I have almost no experience working in the field of art. We have basically done everything ourselves, from fundraising to site preparation for stage performances, and I have almost never been invited to do anything other than music. However, I am currently working on an installation. I am also a person feels closer to music, but I think I would be able to find a new side of myself only through working in an art context.

Fujita: There are kinds of works that are only possible because they are in the form of installations, not live performances. The way of perceiving the time axis of a work also changes between a live performance and an installation, so I think there are many things that can be challenged in this kind of sound art field. Personally, however, I don’t think I am suited to places like museums. Of course, it depends on the site, so I can’t make a general statement, but I find it difficult to come to terms with the archival aspect of a museum. For example, if I were to create a sound installation, I would feel that it would be more interesting to present it in a different space than in a museum. Considering this, I feel that it would be better to create the entire site myself, as Hino-san does.

Music recommendations to listen to alongside of Yoshi Wada

–I believe that there are listeners who started listening to Yoshi Wada’s works because of “INTERDIFFUSION”. For those listeners, is there any music that you would like them to listen to alongside of Yoshi Wada?

Fujita: Although the genres and periods of activity are completely different, I thought of Erik Satie if I were to place someone alongside Yoshi Wada. I feel that he has a strong affinity for Yoshi Wada. Satie is now regarded as a great classical musician who is even in textbooks, but during his lifetime, he was seen as an eccentric, and even after his death, he remained a heretic until the boom of the 1970s and 80s. He created music that was so innovative that it made a mockery of the fine history of conventional Western music. Yoshi Wada’s drone music also has a part that questions or makes the mockery of the existing history of music, and I think they can be comparable with each other in terms of humour as well.

Hino: The album “Gruidés” released in 2015 by Stephan O’Malley of Sunn O)))) just came to my mind. It is an orchestral work, but it is basically a drone that changes slowly, with percussive sounds inserted here and there as if to drive a wedge in the sound. I thought that this kind of approach to composing gave the work a similar feeling to Yoshi Wada’s “The Appointed Cloud”. However, if we were to delve into drone music with Yoshi Wada as a starting point, Stephan O’Malley might be a little too hard-core. Haha.

Fujita: Erik Satie is also totally different from his music.

Hino: If I had to recommend something to someone who hasn’t listened to much contemporary classical or minimal/drone music before and is now ready to delve into such music, La Monte Young would be the best place to start.

Fujita: Also, I would like this kind of person to listen to Pandit Pran Nath. In my case, I actually listened to Pandit Plan Nath before I listened to Yoshi Wada, so when I first heard Yoshi Wada’s album, I felt like I understood how Pran Nath had inspired Yoshi Wada. And let’s not forget Charlemagne Palestine as one of the most important minimal/drone figures. Although a generation younger than Young, he is one of the pioneers of minimal music in American experimental music. I think Palestine’s music is similar to Yoshi Wada’s drone world. If I were to organize an event, I would like to organize a two-men show of Yoshi Wada and Palestine.

Hino: Indeed. Depending on which perspective we delve into, it seems that we may be able to place a variety of music next to Yoshi Wada.

Koshiro Hino
Player / composer for goat and bonanzas. As a solo project, he works on a cassette deck collage of electronic music and field recordings under the name of “YPY,” with a focus on a broad range of genres from dance music to avant-garde collage/noise. He also composes and directs “GEIST,” a live performance mixing numerous speakers and performers. He is also the director of “Birdfriend,” a cassette label that releases underground musicians from Japan and abroad, and “Nakid,” a label that releases contemporary/electronic music.
Instagram: @po00oq

FUJI|||||||||||TA
He has been creating intonarumori, sound installations, film music, music for dance works, with a special focus on his solo performances using his own pipe organ and variety of elements including voice and water. In addition to his solo work, he has collaborated with EYƎ (Boredoms) on the stage “Memoriam” and with Fuyuki Yamakawa on the show “Country Gentlemen”. He has also produced film and animation music, and exhibited sound installations in various fields. He released NOISEEM on the London-based label 33-33.
Instagram: @fujilllllllllllta

■INTERDIFFUSION A tribute to Yoshi Wada

Future plans include the release of a film of the tribute concert (May 2022) and a live recording (date to be determined).
Instagram:@interdiffusion.yoshiwada

Edit Jun Ashizawa(TOKION)
Translation Shinichiro Sato(TOKION)

The post The Creative Practices of the Next Generation of Musicians to Inherit the Music of Yoshi Wada　– A Special Conversation between Koshiro Hino x FUJI|||||||||||TA, Part.2　 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.