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.