Arts
In this podcast we are happy to share some of the great music that we've been sent/given during the year... - starting with a remix by our friend Koichi Yuasa/japanetehq of a Japan Sound Portrait track made with Takeshi Nishimoto at last year's nowJapan Festival. - followed by a track called City (Lm version) by GOOD LUCK HEIWA, from their album Lm released at the end of 2017. http://goodluckheiwa.jp/lm/ GOOD LUCK HEIWA are Takuji Nomura on Keyboards and Daichi Ito on Drums and Whistling, and they are also part of Haruomi Hosono's touring band - we were grateful to receive their CD as everyone was saying their goodbyes following their concert at The Old Market in Brighton earlier in the year. - next is the track Doujiri by Ken Sugai. https://sugaiken.bandcamp.com/track/doujiri The image accompanying this podcast is of Ken-san, and is a fantastic modern re-creation of an important religious statue of the itinerant monk Kuya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%ABya Where in the original image/statue there are six small statues of the Buddhist deity Amida coming from Kuya's mouth, representing the power of devotionally chanting the syllables 'na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu', Ken-san has replaced these figures with diodes, perhaps playfully suggesting the revelatory potency of experimental electronic music. - this is followed by a track called Otomi, by Chihiro Ono. This was drawn to our attention by Neil Luck as part of a release called New Vocal Solutions on his label squib-box https://squib-box.bandcamp.com/album/new-vocal-solutions-sampler a compilation of experimental music artists working with Vocaloid technology (most famous for powering digital avatar popstar Hatsune Miku). This track hinges around a field recording of the fermentation process of ko-ji - a natural fungus used in the process of making Sake, Miso and Soy sauce. - and finally we have some selections from a new collection of tracks we have received from TA2MI, https://ta2mi.bandcamp.com/ made in collaboration with ZUMBO. We are also delighted to announce that TA2MI will be visiting the UK for a series of performances/events in late February/early March 2019, so please watch this space for further announcements...