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Volume
1
$21.99 CD
Volume
3
$21.99 CD
Volume
4
$21.99 CD
Volume
5
$21.99 CD
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JOJI YUASA
Obscure Tape Music of Japan Vol. 1
(Omega Point)
"My Blue Sky"
MAKOTO MOROI / KOUBOU ABE
Obscure Tape Music of Japan Vol. 3
(Omega Point)
"Akai Mayu"
JOJI YUASA
Obscure
Tape Music of Japan Vol. 4
(Omega Point)
"Oen"
TOSHI ICHIYANAGI
Obscure
Tape Music of Japan Vol. 5
(Omega Point)
"Music for Jean Tinguely"
Serious admiration goes out to Japanese imprint Omega Point for putting out this
deluxe archival series of Japanese tape music. While much has been made of the
electronic experiments of Western composers like France’s Pierre’s Henry
and Schaeffer, America’s John Cage, and Italy’s Luigi Nono, there have
been few releases documenting the rich, parallel activities of composers from
Japan, many of whom actually communicated and collaborated with their counterparts
in the West. Omega Point’s archival series, aptly titled, Obscure Tape Music
of Japan, goes a long way in filling the void with five (so far) volumes of heretofore
hard or impossible to find Japanese electronic music from the 1960s and early
‘70s. Aside from being about as far out and tweaked a collection of sounds
imaginable, these recordings are also exciting because they capture that period
of paradigm- shifting experimentation that came with the realization that the
studio was not just a means of recording sounds, but generating them as well.
The ingenuity of the composers featured in this series -- Joji Yuasa, Makoto Moroi,
and Toshi Ichiyanagi -- is especially impressive when one considers that they
were using equipment that wasn’t really intended to do what they were doing
(these were “tape recorders,” remember). The sounds that make up these
compositions are of every imaginable type -- voices, field recordings, instruments,
“non-musical,” and electronically generated sounds -- and have been
manipulated in every imaginable way, often beyond recognition, and one can hear
the strong influences of both the European avant-garde and Japanese classical
art forms. The austere, emotional minimalism of Noh theater, in particularly,
seems to have been a deep resource for these composers, but one that they clearly
felt at liberty to combine with twelve-tone theory or the contemporaneous ideas
of someone like John Cage. Volume one, Joji Yuasa’s Aoi no Ue begins
with just such a foray, with intense, wrought vocalizations by Noh actors mingling
with electronic sounds in a way that makes it hard to tell where the original
performances begin and the electronic manipulation begins. If you’ve ever
wondered if there’s an ancient stream that Japanese vocal extremist Keiji
Haino is tapping into, Noh is it. The other long piece on this volume, an animated
construction of beeps and echo feedback, is Yuasa’s last with analog equipment;
he made the switch to computers in 1975. I’m jumping ahead to Volume
four because it’s the other disc devoted to Joji Yuasa. Also, two long form
pieces, Music for Theatrical Drama opens with “Oen,” an eerie collage
of inside-the-piano sounds, dark ambient tones, heavy synth croaks, treated bell
sounds, subtle, echoplex style rhythms and sparse, dramatic percussion, and ends
with a 1959 piece for western orchestra and tape that pits twelve tone orchestral
moves against an elastic sortie of sped up and slowed down animal sounds. Volume
three, Music Drama “Akai Mayu”, features one of Makoto Moroi’s
major works (“Akai Mayu”) which is an adaptation of Koubou Abe’s
short story of the same name. Originally intended as a radio drama, narration,
choral arrangements, live instruments, percussion, and tapes combine in this piece
in a style similar to the bizarre, microtonal musical theater of Harry Partch.
The second track, “Arcana 19” is from the same performance, but is just
the tape music component of a larger piece. A surprisingly playful invention of
pitch shifting bleeps and bloops that form rubbery, loping electronic rhythms.
These records are all so different and rewarding that it’s hard to
pick a favorite, but if I had to, it’d probably be Volume five, Toshi Ichiyanagi’s
Music for Jean Tinguely. The title track is a brilliant rhythmic tape piece actually
made from recordings of kinetic sculptures by Swiss artist, Jean Tinguely. “Appearance,”
the center piece of this volume, is a mind-melting noise tour de force featuring
none other than David Tudor on various instruments and John Cage on live electronics
that seems especially relevant to the noise and power electronics purveyed by
artists like D. Yellow Swans, Wolf Eyes, and Jessica Rylan to name just a few.
Printed in small runs and packaged in super-nice cardboard digi-paks with
offset dust jackets (are these people insane!?!), these are definitely fetish
objects. And word on the etherwaves is that there’ll be a vinyl edition soon,
so start saving your lunch money, kids. [CC] | |
