Tag: synth

Haruomi Hosono – 花に水 (Watering A Flower), 1984

In recognition of today’s vernal equinox, I wanted to share a cult classic from the Hosono catalog, originally commissioned in 1983 as background music by Muji shortly after the opening of their first storefront in Tokyo. The tape was packaged in a box set with an 80 page booklet, including photographs, an interview with Hosono, haiku, and work by Nakazawa Shinichi (who I assume made the cover art, though I’m not sure). The story goes that Muji only used one of the tracks for in-store purposes (presumably “Muji Original BGM,” previewed below), and while the tape is still hyper-rare, since then the music has circulated widely online, most famously on YouTube, and has been presented with several different track listings, some including two different versions of “Talking.” I’m including all four tracks here, though the original tape ostensibly only included “Talking” and “Growth.”

Sonically, these tracks are exemplary of Hosono’s brilliance with motif, minimalism, and movement. Those who are familiar with his records Mercuric Dance and Paradise View might find Watering A Flower to sit squarely between the two, both in terms of textural density and mood. The songs are sparse, to put it lightly–bare bones, really. They’re not as neutral, or even chipper, as one might expect for storefront use: they willfully stray into eerie, dissociative territory, suggesting hypnosis and foggy, dreamlike states. Dreamlike in the more honest sense of the word, as I think dreams are often more illogical, dry, and bizarre than the word “dreamlike” gives them credit for. Though the whole tape is beatless–a sacrilegious suggestion for the 2018 retail environment–“Talking” is marked by the insistent chiming of a metronomic tone; whereas in “Growth” the chime is slowed down and flooded with reverb, suggesting underwater sonar. Hosono doesn’t hesitate to lean into dissonance and atonality, and it’s plenty disorienting.

Still, by the time the appropriately drily titled “Muji Original BGM” arrives, Hosono has reminded us that he’s very good at making things that are very beautiful. For sixteen minutes the song cycles, mantric, through small variations on two different phrases, one much moreso than the other, and it’s weightless, unhurried, deeply affecting, and perfect. I’d love to go shopping for minimalist home goods in this world, though I’m not sure that I’d buy anything. Enjoy, and happy spring!

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[Interview] Mark Renner

Mark Renner first encountered punk as a teenager in Upperco, a country town in rural Maryland. Growing up on his family farm, he became a young acolyte of the British exports hitting not-so-distant Baltimore record store shelves in the late 70s, and was baited by an area musician-wanted ad declaring Ultravox a primary touchstone. This nascent band and a pair of other group experiments flamed out, and in their ashes Renner began recording independently around 1983 with a portable 4-track, electric guitar, and classic Casio CZ101 synthesizer. Aside from John Foxx-era Ultravox, Renner’s process was inspired by the period’s electronic pioneers venturing into deeper, romantic pop pastures, like Bill Nelson and The Associates. Apart from his writing, Renner explored music as a complement to visual language: many of the dream-like instrumental passages presented across Few Traces were originally implemented as sound elements for exhibitions of his paintings. Compiled three decades after the music was originally put to tape, Few Traces collects Mark Renner’s early music but strives not to simplify or reframe it. Mark is still an active musician and painter. The instrumental explorations remain on par with the great ambient adventurers of the period (Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Roedelius), while the vocal and guitar-centric songs transverse similar terrains to contemporaries like Cocteau Twins, The Chills, and The Feelies. You can purchase the compilation via RVNG Intl here.

Interview by JD Walsh (Shy Layers)

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Hey Mark.

Hey JD, where are you calling from?

Atlanta, where my home studio is. You said you’d booked some recording time in the studio the last few days, is that still what you’re up to?

Yeah, it’s an ongoing project. I started back in Baltimore in the spring of last year, and then I recorded out in the middle of a field in a trailer this summer, went to Glasgow in November, and then back again to northern Texas, where I am now. The great thing about this setup is that I can enlist the help of other musicians: a few other guitarists, a fellow by the name of Jared Flynn in Baltimore, and Julius Fischer, who’s a music minister in a Baltimore church. He’s a great arranger and pianist, and he plays guitar and saxophone and a few other instruments. Then in Glasgow I got to work with Malcolm Lindsay, who does film soundtracks and composes for orchestra and opera, so I had a wonderful experience reconfiguring and reworking with him. He discarded just about everything from the demos I gave him, just using the structures of the songs.

And after your work’s been arranged and rearranged by collaborators, it must be thrilling to get it back and see what they’ve brought to it.

It’s a great honor to have people even listen to your work, but to have them rethink it without disturbing your original framework, that’s really a pleasure, particularly with Malcolm. He’s a very gifted individual.

You said you had an art studio as well and you work on both—do you find it’s easy to work on music and art simultaneously, or do you need to immerse yourself in one or the other?

Years ago somebody asked me about this. At the time it was like having a jealous wife—if you spend too much time working on one thing, you feel a sense of guilt for neglecting the other. I always take a sketchbook and a travelogue with me everywhere, and I’m the same way musically, so there’s a pull and tug. Luckily now I can do both full-time. I have a visual exhibition of my paintings that I’m working on right now for the end of June, and that’s a looming deadline. The override would probably be my visual work, because I’ve been drawing since I was two or three, my mother told me, and because I approach music in a similar manner as I do color and impression. In the same way as with sketchbooks, I use an app on my phone to jot down song ideas. In the late 80s and early 90s I would call my house and sing an idea over the answering machine. (laughs) I also had one of those little—I don’t know how old you are, if you remember microcassettes? Those were good for that. I don’t know if you had a chance to listen to anything off the last few recordings—

I did.

There are quite a few elegies on Goldenacre. There’s a song called “At The Far Side of the Sea,” which is a true story about two of my high school friends. The three of us made all these nomadic, romantic plans to travel adventurously, build boats and sail around the world, but one of them kind of spiraled downward from the time we graduated high school until he eventually took his own life. He went out on his front lawn and set himself on fire. I don’t know if knowing that makes it easier to relate to the lyrics, or if it accurately did justice to him. At this age a lot of the lyrics I write are intended to be elegies to people I’ve known who have touched me. There are three or four of them on Goldenacre, a couple on Enduring The Going Hence, and the album I’m currently recording has quite a few as well.

When you have something as vivid as that, do the words exist before there’s a piece of music set to it? What’s your process when turning something on the page into the song?

Some visual artists dream their work. Most of my visual work comes from my imagination, but some are things that I come in contact with visually. One of my favorite things is hearing people express themselves, like in a museum or out in the world. I love dropping vocal sound bites into instrumental pieces. You can extract something deeply profound or poetic from things you picked up in conversation. Sometimes it’s a turn of phrase that might be vanishing from our cultural vocabulary. When it was raining, my grandfather used to say, “It’s not fit for man or beast out there.”

Right, I do the same thing, taking notes and phrases like that. But I normally start with a piece of music and try to retrofit lyrics over the melody. I’m interested in what it’s like to approach it the opposite way, starting with something that exists on the page, divorced from a musical context.

Sometimes you’re fortunate to be given a really good melody, and you’re fortunate enough to have the microcassette or the phone next to you so you can put it down. I’ve wondered about musicians like Leonard Cohen, Brian Wilson, or Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout—such great song crafters, to be able to turn you any way they want with the melody or the structure of the song. If I had to get more analytical, I would say act quickly before your idea vanishes.

Yeah, it’s really hard to distill process down to a sound bite. But back to Few Traces, I was looking through the insert that comes in the LP, the text by Brandon Soderberg about The Lost Years exhibition—how it was a literal combination of visual art and music. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Baltimore—being a port town, it has a harbor along the Potomac, with an older section of buildings that date from the 1800s, some even earlier. It was kind of a sailor’s paradise, an unloading point. Anyway, I had an opportunity to do an exhibition at a gallery there, and I think it was shortly after I had just gotten my first 4-track and was thinking about the idea of combining the two mediums. My knowledge of the art world wasn’t very broad at the time, which was helpful because I wasn’t intimidated. (laughs) At the time the Walkman cassette player was everywhere, and I thought, what if rather than blasting the music in the gallery I just made it portable so people could drop it in a Walkman and walk around and view the work? That’s why the pieces from The Lost Years were meant to be brief, because you didn’t want to have to stand in front of the piece for too long, waiting for something that would never happen and might not be able to deliver.

So it wasn’t one piece of music per painting? They were free to look at the different paintings with whatever was on the Walkman at the time?

Yeah. Some of the titles overlapped, but it didn’t have to be strictly adhered to song-by-painting. There was a freedom to traverse the gallery.

That sounds like a fun process. Sound in a gallery is tough, and it gets tougher if you want to localize sound so there can be multiple elements happening at the same time, so I thought that was a clever solution. With regards to Few Traces, how does it feel to see so many years of work in one collection? Do you feel as if it gives you perspective, to see it all in one place?

The reception has been great and overwhelming. As an artist, you know that there’s no greater honor than to have someone invest in your work, to be able to understand it. I think Jean Cocteau said he wanted “not to be marveled at but to be believed.” One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in the process is to take care of your archives! A lot of things escaped this particular package that must still exist somewhere, but I haven’t been able to track them down. A lot of those pieces I haven’t heard in many years, not since they were mastered. Some of them were recorded on a 4-track cassette recorder without compression, so they have an ancient archeological charm to it. (laughs) Matt was very patient, and he really extended himself waiting for me to get it all together. I made a few different trips back to Baltimore to sort through all the work—I had a house there, so I wanted to see if I could locate some of the recordings, and I contacted a few people I used to know to locate videotapes. Mostly I wasn’t successful. What Matt put together mirrors what survived. It’s a great honor, to see that stuff that I sat in a little row house and composed at my kitchen table and never thought it would be of much interest to anyone. Hopefully it can be encouraging to someone too, now that even better, more affordable technology is available—that nothing should stop you from trying.

I completely agree, it’s wonderful. I’ve seen this in the video world as well. In some cases the so-called professionals have some fears, like, “Here comes everybody with their cheap technology, invading our precious space,” but I sort of welcome it. If there’s an easier, more obtainable way for someone to do something creative, I say go for it.

Right, you can’t really have an elitist attitude about it. It’s funny, sometimes I’ll listen to something and think, “Man, I spent two hours trying to play that by hand, and now you can program it into a sequencer so quickly…” (laughs)

Right, and quantize everything, ha! Well, thank you very, very much—I’m such a fan, and I love the collection. I’m excited to see your new work, and I love your visual work as well, so good luck on the exhibition coming up!

That means a lot, thank you.

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Thanks to Mark Renner, JD Walsh, Matt Werth, Brandon Sanchez, and RVNG Intl.
for facilitating this interview. Text has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Luna Set – Art, 1982

Wow! This one came out of left field for me and has quickly become a precious favorite, serving as a reminder of why music hunting is exciting in the first place: as finding unknown and wonderful full-lengths becomes less and less frequent, finding a record that instantly feels like home becomes all the more rewarding.

Though I often presuppose these posts by mentioning that there’s little available information about the artist, this one feels unusual in its total lack of context. Though they released two of their LPs on the German label Jupiter Records, a major hub for disco singles, none of the names associated with the project have led me to any names that I recognize, and I can’t really figure out who their peers were. Still, the first thing that comes to mind is the subdued lo-fi post-punk of Young Marble Giants (a very good sign), complete with coy vocals that, in spite of their shy hushed deliveries, are anything but naïve. But there’s a flattened minimal synth aspect here, that kind of lizardy quality, that suggests minimal wave favorites like Carol and Solid Space, or even the dark drum machine slink of Lena Platonos. There’s also a playfulness, those unexpected flirty details, that make me think of Leda (another excellent record that I hope hasn’t gotten lost in the archives).

But there’s plenty that defines Art as entirely its own, perhaps most notably its use of saxophone. Opener “The Way It Is” starts out with thirty seconds of free jazz sax riffing, echoed again later in the song in a remarkable use of sonic space, moving from a far echo to a dry forefront only to disappear into a puff of reverb. Brass shows up unexpectedly all over the record, always tasteful and always effective. Combined with gorgeous vocal treatment and sharp, restrained songwriting, this is a deeply sophisticated record. Though I haven’t yet spent enough time with Luna Set’s other two full-lengths, this is by far my favorite of the three, striking an ideal balance between minimalism and playful textural interest.

Note that there’s one noticeable glitch in the opening track–this is still the best quality rip I can find, but I’d be thrilled if anyone can share a cleaner version!

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Motohiko Hamase – Reminiscence, 1986

Peak malletcore, except here fretless bass gets a little closer to center stage, dripping all over dense towers of avant-classical synthetic strings. A die-hard fretless enthusiast, Hamase has written several books about the subject and is perhaps most famous in Japan as a coveted session bassist. He’s worked with a daunting lineup including Jimmy Murakawa, Yasuaki Shimizu, Seigen Ono, Isao Suzuki, and Yas-Kaz.

Reminiscence was recorded at Tokyo’s Sound Design Studio, famous for being the home base for most of Kitaro’s giant catalogue. Despite its reputation as an ambient record, Reminiscence doesn’t adhere to stillness in the way we might expect. It moves freely and often in steep, vertical shapes, pulling just as much inspiration from avant-classical experimentalists as from gamelan and its subsequent American minimalism devotees. Though there are many moments of unflinching beauty, Hamase is unafraid to wade out into the deep end, moving seamlessly between woozy, noodling dissonance, transparent puffs of synthesizer rising like early morning fog, and tunneling tonal percussive segments. It’s a bit disorienting, in a good way. There’s a lot to chew on here, and thankfully Reminiscence only continues to open up with increasing generosity upon further listens. This is a longtime favorite of mine, but I only recently got ahold of a good quality rip, so I’m thrilled to be able to finally share it. Enjoy!

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 21: French Disco Special

Here’s my latest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. This one is a French disco, funk, and synth pop special. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 of the mix here.

Tracklist:
1. Judy Larsen – Gambling Man
2. Alec Mansion – Dans L’eau De Nice
3. Black Devil – One To Choose
4. Christopher Moore – What A Night
5. Lizzy Mercier Descloux – Funky Stuff
6. Cerrone – Give Me Love
7. Beckie Bell – Music Madness
8. Zoëlie – Lolo
9. Laurie Destal – Frivole De Nuit
10. Maryse Bonnet – Au Soleil
11. Isabelle Antena – Laying On The Sofa
12. Regrets – L’avion
13. The Manicures – Let This Feeling Carry On
14. Joëlle Ursull – Position Feeling
15. Chagrin D’Amour – Ciao Katmandou

[Interview] Pauline Anna Strom

Fearlessly individualistic and fiercely independent, Pauline Anna Strom self-released a vibrantly diverse series of LPs and cassettes between 1982 and 1988. Long regarded in hushed, reverent tones as one of the finest yet most obscure composers to spring out of the West Coast home-produced cosmic synthesizer music of the 80s, Strom strove to create a sensationally heightened world of alternate reality, pulling from a past and future that isn’t quite ours. Strom’s internal vision is likely so vivid in part because she was born blind, something she feels has strengthened her musical abilities. RVNG Intl. has recently released an expansive and gorgeous 80 compilation of her work, named for her sometimes-moniker Trans-Millenia Consort, a title she uses as a “personal declaration that I have been in previous lives, that I am in this life, and that I shall in future lives be a musical consort to time.” You can buy the compilation here.

Interview by Caroline Polachek (Chairlift, Ramona Lisa, CEP)

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Where are you right now?

You mean physically where I am right now? I’m in San Francisco, at home. My studio is here. I do everything here at home at the apartment. Thank god this city has rent control!

Do you live near a park, or nature at all, or are you mostly indoors? I ask because I’m very curious what your relationship with nature is like. 

Well, when I was married and had a husband that could see and we drove places in the car, I’d spend time at the ocean and different places like Muir Woods. Since I’m on my own now I don’t get to go as much. But my deeper connection with it is in my mind, and my brain, combining experience in time gone by and what I hold onto, and what I can sense and feel. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Are there any specific sonic memories of nature you go back to a lot?

I used to take a recorder, a Sony TC-D5M, and headphones, and record wherever we were and bring the sound and process it, whether it was the ocean, or just the air and trees, or animals, those kinds of things, and just give it space to breathe and to live in with a lot of different effects by giving it the depth and precision of timing. Does the make sense? A challenge to me would be now to create those same sounds, not through sampling or recording, but actually creating them using synthesizers, using all the parameters, time signatures, wave forms, frequencies, everything like that. The challenge is to create sounds, create water. Not just the wave, but to create water—does that make sense?

Well, as a listener I get the impression you’re already doing that in your work—for example, very literally with the Aquatic Realms record. 

All of the sounds that you heard in Aquatic Realms were all created sounds on the Prophet 10.

Yeah, I could tell, almost because they seemed kind of uncanny. The first thing that hit me was an awareness of “Okay, she’s recreating nature with what at the time was very new technology.”

Mmhmm!

But the more I listened to it, it made me think about how the deep sea world actually sounds quite like electronic music in the first place, which then flips inside out again when you remember that nature is actually informing technology development, whether we’re conscious of it or not: deep sea creatures with all the lights, or geometric perfection, efficiency, all that. It sent me on kind of a spiral. 

Yeah!

But your records preceding Aquatic Realms almost seem to exist in a kind of pre-nature place, or post-nature place, like plants, animals, trees, human voices don’t belong in that world. It’s too pure. I imagine a primeval earth, before life exists or after it’s been destroyed. 

That’s the way I think. Usually I create things with my mind and then try to create them in sound as I go, but what you’re expressing is exactly right. I’ve never felt at home in the present time. It’s always like, “I’m here but I’m not in the right place.”

I think a lot of people feel that, they just don’t manage to find an escape. Do you ever feel like that’s the task as an artist, to create the place you feel at home?

I think so. I’m the kind of person who could go to Mars and be perfectly content as long as I had my animal, my music, perhaps a mate, someone I could love, and be able to read.

What kind of animal do you have?

She’s a Cyclura, a lizard. 

Does she make any sounds?

The closest she’ll come, and I’m going to have to try to catch that sometime, is you know, Mommy picks her up and carries her around and she’ll go (whispered) “hhhhhheh” (laughs). Like, “This woman is dragging me around like a rag doll!”

She sighs! A sighing lizard! 

Yes, she does! That’s as far as her capability goes. But I believe that these sounds…probably I could even get a stethoscope and listen to her heart, record that kind of thing too, the blood flowing through her body. But what I’m trying to say is that I’m not really in tune with present time and modernity as we know it today, but the the far flung past, distant future, the primitive.

But both those states only exist in our imagination, and in that way could you say they’re just extensions of yourself?

Yes. Yeah, I do.

You mentioned earlier the idea of “timing”—the way you might handle samples within time, and that’s something that feels quite unique about your work. I come from a pop background where the dynamics, the changes between patterns, is what creates excitement or emotion. You get big moments of impact and movement. But the thing that struck me about your music is how you’ve so completely smoothed out dynamics, and the changes really sneak up on you like watching weather. It doesn’t guide the listener the way pop does. 

Right, right. In other words, you follow a formula.

Not a formula, it’s just a different language—almost like a dance using dramatic synchronized gestures verses a wash of ambient ones. 

Ah, I get it.

It’s a different way of using the same tools. But what I’m curious about in your work is how you use synths like voices coming in and out to create a fairly static picture that always has a very even amount of motion going on—it never goes dead or peaks; it’s like watching an aquarium. And with that in mind, going back to the idea of timing—what does it feel like for you when you’re working with a single layer of sound and deciding its timing? What’s your relationship with knowing when to bring things in and out?

It’s just kind of intuitive—I let it flow and it just happens, without a preconceived way of doing it. It’s right. I live in it. When I’m creating it I live in it, I surrender to it and become it.

Have you ever worked with voice?

Just my own. I’ve worked a lot with processing my own voice. There are a few where I used heavy effects and allowed my voice to come from different areas, and I also sometimes mix with my headphones on. But yes, just allowing the voice—not in the way you would think of singing, but making it like an instrument.

What about synths as voice?

Oh! I don’t have any problem with that at all, especially because there’s so much we can create. In those recordings I used a Prophet 10, a DX7 and an E-mu Emulator…that was all analog equipment. But now I can do all the same things digitally, so I’m learning a whole new world where I’ll have much more control—but it’s structured in a totally different way.

What’s your setup like now?

Right now I don’t have much, just a Korg Kross and an Ultra Novation, and the thing with these machines is (sighs) the manuals. I want the parameters manuals and the operations manuals, and of course there’s no speech driver in the machines. I wish those companies would put something like that in there, because everything is on a display so I can’t get really deep into something the way I want to. So I have a friend that’s patiently, verbally recording the manuals for me.

Would you ever make those audio manuals accessible to the public? 

You can download them from the companies once you do the warranties and all that, but then they’re secured. I wanted to download the manuals into my Victor Reader Stream, which is a device made by Humanware. I wanted to download it into my Victor so I could go through it page by page, but the manuals don’t transfer across devices. So that’s why he’s verbally recording it for me. I don’t think I could upload it for the public, but I do think if they made speech drivers for the machines to allow for a setting you could use as you scroll through the display, it could tell you what’s there and how to get to things. And that wouldn’t be hard to do.

Would you ever collaborate with a synth company to make a system like that?

Yeah, I would. See, with the device I use, I download lots of books from the library and bookshare, podcasts and news services. I can do all that on the Victor and their manuals are burned into the software internally. So when I got the Victor and learned it, I went through the user manual and it showed me all the correct keys with error messages and everything. If they can do that then surely it must be possible with other electronics. But back to music! I really do like the Korg, and another thing is I wanted a workstation. I like it, I really do, and it’s great to be able to save everything on the SD cards.

Is it at all like using an 8-track?

Yeah, my Yamaha QX1 was an eight track recorder. It was digital but it used a floppy disk! (laughs) But I’ve alway been one to save things. I don’t feel comfortable unless I’ve got that backup, like, “I’m going to lose it all!”

At the time, all this gear, especially the digital stuff, was brand new territory. How did you first start experimenting with it and learning it?

I fell in love with the Prophet 10 right away. After that there was the CS80 then the DX7…I’d learn as I’d go. I’d learn through repetition—you could explain something to me technically and it’d probably go right out of my head, but when my hands start doing what I know to do I learn that way. And I just experimented and gradually worked through it all.

Do you ever have dreams where you’re programming? 

No, but I get lost emotionally, and I work at night. I live downtown and it’s noisy, so the quietest time to do anything, when the energy is slower, is at night. So I’m a night person because of that, in a lot of ways. But if I start at six in the evening, it could suddenly be six in the morning and I wouldn’t even be tired. Time sort of stands still. It goes by and you don’t even…you probably experience this.

Yeah. I experience it with editing especially, where you lose so much time listening to long stretches over and over again to just make one adjustment to one little thing. 

The way I did it all—I guess you classify it as overdubbing? I never know what the completed piece is going to be. I just start with an idea and work with it, then build upon it track by track without a plan, just going on what feels right. That’s how I basically did it, and how I’ll do it again once I go digital. Did you ever work with a TX816?

No, what is it? 

Ahh, Yamaha only made a few of them. I’ll tell you, when I eventually make money, the Yamaha—they have a wonderful workstation—that would be the be-all-end-all for me. When they came out with the DX7 they also came out with something called the TX816 which was a big box and it had eight little DX7s. You controlled them through the DX. I’m hoping that I can figure out a way in time, cause I made a lot of sounds for the 816 and you played them through the DX7 and the keyboard…and, oh, I got creative! I got lost. There are some really unique sounds in that thing. I can get lost in creating sounds. Equally intriguing is getting lost in the sounds, and that thing really allowed you to build and build. In other words I would create a sound but it wouldn’t be just one—it would go through all eight boxes and allow you to create some kind of sound you’d never think of. God, I love it, I love that stuff! It’s almost like a drug.

Speaking of drugs, you do have a couple tracks—

(laughs) Oh yeah, I know where you’re going…

I was just curious because some of it feels bleak, and I wondered if you were being critical of drug experience or people’s reliance on them—

You’re talking about Plot Zero and “Mushroom Trip” and those pieces? I wasn’t being critical. I looked at those pieces like a mind trip without chemicals.

Were you going based on other people’s descriptions or your own memories?

My own! (laughs) There’s a very short piece—I’m sure it’s lost, it’s not out there—it’s called “Domestic Peace.” It’s probably all gone, because you know the tape deteriorates, but I put a plate on the table, utensils, and I set all my effect so you’d feel like you were setting that plate down in a vast canyon.

Wow.

And I set the utensils, then I stir fried some vegetables and added that, then poured a glass of water, but then made the water seem to go from one side of the room to the other, and then I added in a baby voice (makes baby voice), and the only music in the whole thing was synthesizer flute very subtly in the background at one point. But what I was creating was a scene. I’d love to do more of that, create different scenes. I remember once a friend of mine was having a Halloween party and he knew I had an imagination, and he wanted a piece for the party, and he called me 24 hours ahead of time so I had to put it together very quickly. I created a heartbeat and a few gongs on the Prophet. They were going to have a guy laying in a coffin, and I created an attack on a woman. I did the voices of both the male attacker and the woman, and then to decapitate somebody I dropped a cabbage in a bucket of water. I created this whole scene and they loved it, but other people I played it for either hated it or were fascinated. But that’s something I want to get back into—making scenes and elements and scenarios with sound. There’s a lot in my mind I could come up with like that.

How do you feel about the potential for virtual reality or interactivity, the fusing of that technology with music? 

I think it’s perfect. I’ve had this preconceived idea in the back of my mind. I’m not a live player, but I think I could interact with things like that. Not the same as a concert, but like what you’re describing. My lizard’s name is Little Soulstice, with a “u,” like “soul.” I could picture this project involving lizards and reptiles in a soft way, with them floating in the air in virtual reality. Little Soulstice floating through the air, creating sound and music and light. There’s a lot that could be done with that kind of stuff.

You mentioned light. What’s your relationship like with light?

I see things in my head. I dream in color. I see things and know how they should be. I just…know. If I go out on the balcony right now I know the sun is there because I can feel the heat. The blindness to me is a nuisance more than anything.

When I listen your work I imagine an immersive 3D environment, which I know isn’t an accident. You’re so tuned to environmental sound. The kind of focus it must take to create the depths of these environments—

I think I know where you’re going. On the album with more Asian material, Japanese Impressions, it has those pieces “Tea Garden” and “Warriors Of The Sun.” I’ve never learned or experienced any culture or nationality of music, but I can sense how to do it myself. Does that make sense?

But you must have listened to music from other cultures, no? 

I mostly listen to classical. A lot of Bach, Chopin, a lot of early music too. Gregorian chant, a lot of very early medieval stuff.

So many electronic musicians specifically reference early music and Bach. Why do you think that is?

Maybe it has something to do with the frequencies and the harmony? I’m not sure. There must be a connection in that way.

There’s something futuristic about—

It’s timeless.

Beyond being timelessly enjoyable, something about the intervals just feels…

Ooohhhh yeah. Speaking of timing, when I had all that equipment, I didn’t just look at the Prophet or the DX, but everything at once. I had a whole rack of that stuff, but I looked at the whole thing as one big synthesizer. I’d use the effects a part of the composition. With the QX1 when you edited, creating intervals that weren’t even played but just layered using effects, the whole setup is one big instrument. I did it all as part of the composition. It’s so expressive, there’s so much you can do. And now of course with these machines, everything in that rack is software now—you can do all that and it’s all in that little thing, in one keyboard. You don’t need tons of stuff like you did before! My hangup about computers, though, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, is the obsolescence that’s built in. I want a solid state machine that I can rely on fifteen years from now. Even if I got something else, I want to be able to transfer work…you see where I’m going? That’s what I resent about all of this.

That’s a good point. A violin you can pick up fifty years later and it’s still a violin. 

Yeah. We’re forced through obsolescence. I don’t have a smart phone and I don’t want one. I have a little flip phone. We’re on a landline right now, plugged into the wall. But I can’t do this “every three years you gotta buy the latest thing”…when it comes to making my work I need something I can rely on, that I can trust, so I’ll never have to throw all my past work out the window. Ugh! That’s a big part of my upset with the whole thing. (laughs)

I’ve been screwed by that a few times, and yet I keep coming back to it without a second thought. It’s something everyone takes for granted too.

You mentioned that one of the pieces you heard, Aquatic Realms, where you hear the water dripping? When I created the water dripping on the DX, when I created water dripping with my fingers—you’ll think I’m crazy, but I could feel the texture of the water in my fingers as I played. You can’t do that on a computer. You can’t feel that kind of connection on a computer.

They do make very good midi controllers now that give you the contact a piano or a nice synth would have.

Mmm.

But zooming out a bit, I wanted ask you about the RVNG reissue. How do you feel having the music repackaged for a new audience? 

I’m very happy with it. I think it’s a beautiful job and I have no complaints about it. But you know, maybe because the label is out east and I’m here, I know it’s real but I sort of feel a disconnect. Nobody’s fault, but the reissue is a reality out there, but not for me. When I can begin to create new things, that’s where I connect with reality.

Do you have plans for new music?

Ohhhh yeah, once I can get these manuals!

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Thanks to Pauline Anna Strom, Caroline Polachek, Matt Werth, Brandon Sanchez, and RVNG Intl. for facilitating this interview. Text has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Baffo Banfi – Ma, Dolce Vita, 1979

Guest post by Peter Harkawik

I recently found myself in line at an airport Starbucks, earbuds pumping the second and standout track on Giuseppe “Baffo” Banfi’s excellent 1979 album, Ma, Dolce Vita. The scene was transformed. I watched as headset-clad baristas twirled in a choreographed dance of whipped cream and chocolate sauce, gleeful panache emerging in their faces. Glowing QR codes passed under holstered laserbeam scanners. Boxes of soy milk changed hands in time with symphonic Moog crescendos, and petulant children spun on Samsonite between rounds of stereophonic cabasas. Such is the power of great music: to transform the ordinary into the sublime. I’m no expert in prog, Berlin School, Italian Library, or anything that qualifies me to write about this record. I just like it.

Banfi was a member of the hallowed Biglietto per l’Inferno (“Ticket to Hell”). As the story goes, Klaus Schulze took an interest, but when Trident folded in 1975, leaving their second album in limbo, the group disbanded. Banfi went on to release several solo albums on Schulze’s Innovative Communication label. Ma, Dolce Vita, the entirety of which is reprised on the compilation Sound of Southern Sunsets, is his second, and I’ve been able to find out very little about it. The cover suggests an Archizoom kiosk, half a Joe Colombo or perhaps something made by the German artist Rebecca Horn. (Apparently it’s a photo by Ezio Geneletti.) It is an album that very quickly outstrips its hazy psychedelic trappings.

Dolce Vita opens slowly with “Oye Cosmos Va,” which, like much electronic music of its era, would not feel out of place in a Carl Sagan special. Its plodding, trippy synthesizer loops quickly give way to the more expansive and exuberant sound of “Sweet Summer on Planet Venus.” A driving beat propels this airy, probing melody through multiple sonic landscapes. It’s a jubilant effusion of interleaved percussive elements that resolves quickly as the gas runs out on each layer. It will always leave me wanting more. “Vino, Donne E Una Tastiera” picks up with a syrupy, rattlesnake swagger, suggesting the dim saloon of a spaghetti western. “Astralunato” employs a contrapuntal bassoon-like sound that I’ve only heard used to such great effect by the British armchair duo Woo. It gives the song a sort of self-satisfied, delirious schmaltz that ambles along at its own pace. The album’s final track, loosely, “Fantasy of an Unknown Planet,” is a dark, arpeggiated voyage, accompanied by tentative high-hat and ersatz flute. 18 minutes in length, it builds steadily to a climactic bass line dropout and melodic redoubling.

If last year’s Blade Runner sequel is a testament to the enduring sound of the synthesizer, then Ma, Dolce Vita, like the original film, reminds us that the 1970s still sound like the future.


Michael Stearns – Planetary Unfolding, 1981

A cosmic touchstone. Highly influential and ahead of its time. For the unfamiliar, Michael Stearns’s work was regularly featured on the Hearts of Space radio show, and his large catalogue of output includes scores for movies like Chronos and Samsara. In terms of purity of spaciousness, I can’t help but think of Steve Roach’s Structures from Silence (and unsurprisingly, the two went on to collaborate on several projects), but this is much denser and more detailed, filling in the gaps between broad instrumental strokes with many smaller layered sounds. It’s gorgeous stuff, and having realized that it’s been awhile since I posted anything in this wheelhouse, I think this is the most polished return to form I can think of. Try it in headphones!

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Mix for Sanpo Disco

Honored to contribute a mix to Sanpo Disco, a very inspiring Melbourne-based mix series that I’ve been a fan of for a long time. This is meant to be a pushback against the most brutal New York winter in recent memory: tropical and Latin textures, pillowy synths, ocean waves, sunny Japanese garage pop, crickets. Yes, that’s John Martyn covering “Over The Rainbow,” and it’s just as weird-good as you’re hoping. You can download an mp3 version here. Cheers, and stay warm!

Tracklisting:
1. John Martyn – Over The Rainbow
2. Art of Noise – Crusoe (Ambient Version)
3. Pili Pili – Be In Two Minds
4. Yoshiaki Ochi – Ear Dreamin’
5. Unknown Cambodian Artist – Side B, Track 1 (Edit) (Sayonara Sound Productions 16)
6. Akira Ito – W・A・T・E・R
7. Sally Oldfield – Blue Water
8. The Coconuts – Did You Have To Love Me Like You Did?
9. Yuki Okazaki – アイドルを探せ
10. Grace Jones – The Crossing (Ooh The Action…) (Edit)
11. Ana Gabriel – Parece Que Fue Ayer (For C)
12. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Put Your Hands Up
13. Karin Krog – Hymn To Joy
14. Sven Grünberg – Temaga
15. Владимир Леви & Ким Брейтбург – Не Уходи, Дарящий
16. World Standard – 私の20世紀 (My 20th Century)
17. Piero Milesi & Daniel Bacalov – Camera 2 Parte

Ryuichi Sakamoto – Esperanto, 1985

Guest post by Andy Beta (Twitter / IG)

Last year was brutal in almost every aspect, from the social to the international to the personal. Amid such rubble, there was a bit of a silver lining, in that I achieved a noteworthy professional achievement: interviewing Ryuichi Sakamoto for the Gray Lady. We sat one afternoon and sipped tea at a café near his West Village home and discussed his stunning new album, async, and also drifted onto some other topics. He talked about his recent interest in La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 #5 as well as the works of Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki. “One of his early pieces was a big concrete cube in a gallery and he pushed it so it made a sound of friction on the floor,” Sakamoto enthused. “It’s beauuuutiful music.”

We even briefly touched on one of my favorite solo albums of his, 1985’s Esperanto. Originally commissioned for a dance performance from New York-based choreographer Molissa Fenley, it’s one of Sakamoto’s earliest forays into sample-based music and it’s as bewildering, playful, formidable and forward-looking as anything in his catalog. He told me that the computer he used to make the album was massive, holding his hands out wider than his body to show the size of the actual discs that stored mere seconds of sound. The album also features tasteful percussion work from Yas-Kaz and some guitar slashes courtesy of Arto Lindsay.

There’s news that Light in the Attic will be reissuing an incredible amount of Japanese music over the next few years and while I’m sure that Sakamoto’s work will receive some long overdue reassessment in the west (almost none of his groundbreaking 80’s work is available for streaming, which is just ridiculous), I wonder if an album as far-out as Esperanto will be high on the priority list. That said, recently graphic designer and album illustrator Robert Beatty enthused about Sakamoto’s work and this album in particular, which prompted a reply from Visible Cloaks’ Spencer Doran:

esperanto fun fact: all the tracks are actually 15 minutes long. they recorded it before was finished and didn’t know how long each dance section needed to be edited to so they intentionally overshot the length of each piece. the tapes still exist!

Here’s hoping that full 15-minute immersions into pieces like “A Rain Song” and “A Carved Stone” might re-emerge one day. Until then, enjoy for a limited time this visionary work from the master.

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