Naoto Taguchi, originally from Sapporo and currently living in Tokyo, is an audiovisual artist with a strong musical background (having played the piano since his early childhood) who is also interested in programming, photography, design in general and spinning records as a DJ. Locating himself inbetween a triangle of minimalist electronica, dubmatics and quirky experimental sounds his latest release on test tube entitled untitled 9 fragments ordinaries sound materials concentrates on the experimental side of his oeuvre.

The main concept consists of chopped sound snippets that were rearranged in a way they exhibit musical qualities despite a rather unmusical approach (A technique pioneered by Oval in the last century). The sound elements are not exactly repeated and therefore subtile changes prevail with each layer added and substracted as it is characteristic of a Minimalist music approach. Naoto Taguchi’s focus is keeping a snapshot of a moment just like on a photography that slowly reveals its details as the viewer gets lost in it. Untitled 9 Fragments Ordinaries Sound Materials uses the brightest colours for painting its soundscapes I’ve come across for a long time. It breathes the atmosphere of a sunny day at the coastline with sparkling reflections of waves in contre jour and seems to leave troubled thoughts and conflicts behind. This brightness finds its equivalent in patches of crystalline sounds slowly passing by like fibrious, wind torn cirrus clouds.

That these fragments are not charged with meaningful titles or philosophical instructions can be seen as a boon and the strong suggestive motifs enforcing intense associations made any kind of instructions superfluous anyway. The only thing I could see some room for improvement is of a technical nature: The tracks have apparently been limited a bit too much and as such most dynamic differences were levelled with a notable pumping effect on former sound spikes. Apart from this minor issue, Naoto Taguchi’s Untitled 9 Fragments Ordinaries Sound Materials is a truly wonderful release, probably one of my favourites of 2008, which demonstrates that even music rooted in tonality can exhibit most interesting structures if a skilled musician sets no limits to his imagination.

Update 27/12/08: Whilst the TestTube liner notes for today wrote about a late Christmas gift, the release was well in time for Leftob audio cast regulars, since I added the release to the playlist on December 24th – 3 days ahead of the official release date ;-)

It was about time for another Petcord release and really high time for the first release not by Giorgos or me (Petcord goes public, widening its scope – giving in to peer pressure ;-)). Steven Deacid from Cologne performs as Night Drone his Drifts 1-4 series. Apart from doing the cover artwork, I also contributed a reconstruction of Drift 2, which does not exactly sound like the rest of the tunes and is therefore easy to spot ;-).

Perhaps a few words about what can be expected:

Drifts 1-4 marks the beginning of a series of pieces that focus on deep saturated timbres and sustained tones blending into another. Sparsely arranged and yet successfully managing to escape monotony by constantly changing sound characteristics, an approach well known from Minimalist music. Drifts 1-4 prioritises the creation of a cinematic vision, a constant stream of floating association freely defined by the listener.

And more specifically:

[Drifts 1-4] takes analogue synth sounds characteristic of 90ies IDM electronica, but uses it within a Dark Ambient inspired context without any percussive elements. Because of this crossover, floating tones see constant modulation, addition and subtraction of overtones, as well as more distinct thematic progression. Due to sparse arrangements, Night Drone is capable of reaching clarity in blending tones and approaches sci-fi soundtrack quality, where others get lost in mushy reverberation and awkward sound clusters

source: Petcord liner notes

The release has a bit of a longer history, too: Originally planned for October, we had the idea of adding “demix” versions. One by me and another by Giorgos. Giorgos’ however was not able to complete the tune in time, so it was omitted. As a result of some discussions, the project name and the entire scope of the music changed and so did the cover artwork. But nothing that prevented the release from finally happening ;-)

Bogdan Dullsky, a Russian artist born in a remote part of Siberia near Lake Baikal and currently living in Moldova, is better known under his moniker Quest.Room.Project. His mixture of improvised abrasiveness and conscious construction has garnered some attention. Especially his releases on Entity and Test Tube were met with critical acclaim for their originality. On Freedom Reflex (One), the principal mixture still persists, however with a more transparent and distinct structure. Or, as Bogdan himself told me in his own words a couple of days ago:

The rhythmic structure is in everything, but in the course of “ascension”…
In the presence of close examination… This structure becomes thin,
aspiring to universal Anahata Nadam… Sounding of one pure tone (note)
means the whole composition at studying… A vertical and a horizontal of
sound space… A ratio of harmonics 1:2:3:4:5 etc… All it, at tone fall,
will look as rhythmic structure similar habitual…

Freedom Reflex (one) will soon be released on CD-R on setola di maiale and I really recommend looking into this release, because it seems to me a highlight in Bogdan’s oeuvre.

Here comes a new release by me on Petcord called Frontal Grid. Well, I wrote every now and then about my progress and how the finished release is supposed to sound like. For a change, I quite met my criteria and improved dynamics and the degree of abstraction. As a side effect, the music is more consistent concerning how it treats themes and spins their development further. But I unlike my previous plans, Frontal Grid again comprises of four movements which are more related to each other than those of Decay.

What will follow after Frontal Grid? More work, of course :-). There are some ideas I like to investigate more thoroughly, like ways of incorporating “natural instruments” into the computer generated mess I produce. I guess, this can only work like treating the source like any other. Not playing some voices by score, but instead reconstruct passages from unrelated snippets. Perhaps deliberately creating anomalies that could not be reproduced with a live player. The first movement of Frontal Grid is such an example, where I recycled several piano snippets.

We shall see…

The Petcord Netlabel team felt that there is a need for a platform that introduces the work and research of experimental netlabel artists to an audience that is not necessarily familiar with the netlabel scene. Perhaps even thinking that this kind of music can only be purchased in shops or illegally downloaded at shady locations of the Internet. So here it comes, Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, hippies and squares:

The Leftob Audio Cast with a 160kbit/s stream and room for 150 visitors.

In IDM and rhythm orientated music the Petcord team is not really interested and therefore specialises on beatless ambient sounds that reach out to electroacoustic, dark ambient and even noisy sound territories. But there is even more: The playlist not only shows the last 20 tunes, but also generates links to the original release page and – if available – to the artist him-/herself. This way, any interested listener just needs to go to the Leftob page to find the original release page for downloading. So, as a summary, this is a project both musicians and labels can benefit from, which is principally a good thing [tm].

Giorgos Stefanou’s Travelling in Space-Time has been released on Petcord: Described as an imaginary journey to a future form of civilisation, the hope for success appears to be of a rather limited nature. What is the driving factor behind this journey? One may conclude it could be related to the religious notion of salvation, the eventual reward after a troubled life, however does not seem to fit to the scenery and its lack of euphoria. Instead there is solitude and isolation, thrown into a rather hostile environment with a lifeless machinery as the only communication offer. A journey which seems to meet its (lack of) expectations like a disillusioned look into the mirror with no one or any circumstances to blame. On the other hand even a pointless occupation serves as an option to keep oneself busy, at least until an alternative option will occur on the horizon.

The intensity of its nihilism Travelling in Space-Time seems to imply turns it into an electro-acoustic masterpiece. By deliberately avoiding significant culmination points and creating a cavernous sound similar to Martin Hannett’s production of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures this approach appears as an effective means to an kafkaesque end. Form follows function follows spectromorphology, but does not follow mainstream conversations.

Composing is really strange: Each completion of a circle already spawns its follow-up. And so, after weeks of collecting and generating new audio sources, the work has begun once more. A larger track is currently in the making and may see its completion in the next days, depending on how much time I can spend with it. There is another shift in sound, perhaps an influence of Giorgos work, in that some elements that have not encountered in my music since Concrete Muser seem to reappear: Weird noise, sometimes like delusive voices or sonic splinters of a broken speaker bouncing from left to right in the stereo panorama, breaking the dominance of theme progression and variation. Perhaps it is more like an event than a planned happening and as such the music is harder to catch and more irritating. One has to see what course this will take and whether it will prevail in the other tracks too. At this time, I am not sure whether to compose another set of movements or single tracks without relationship to each other.

I know, a lot of time has passed since my last entry and that I used to write more frequently in former times, but I had been busy over the last days. Part of that was related to programming a backend of a website and preparing a new Petcord release by Giorgos Stefanou called Elati. As you may have guessed already, this music is not likely equipped with a mass appeal and catchy melodies, else it would not wind up with Petcord ;-). But fear not, my dearest friends, it is a very fine work that deserves to be called electo acoustic, maybe even electro acoustics, as the virtual room created by the stereo panorama play an important role in Elati, namely being just as a parameter as tone length, pitch, volume or tempo.

Even better, the release does not endorse contemporary tendencies of flattening dynamic ranges by means of heavy compression, so that a song can be played on any equipment and any environment (independent from the background noise level). Instead, low volume really means hardly discernable sounds, since a huge dynamic range was carefully preserved during the mastering. Something this kind of music really benefits from as culmination points really get noticable just by the immense gain of volume. The cover art’s history is not less interesting either. Originally I made a draft similar to previous Petcord covers, but somehow the result was not convincing. Giorgos then had another draft, but I found it too conventional, as it featured just the run-of-the-mill “photo with subject line” type of cover. However combining the best of both surprisingly resulted in a satisfying solution and only little adjustments were necessary as most things worked out of the box.

The link between Elati and the music is unkown to me, or perhaps undefined by default, as Giorgos Stefanou does not care about carrying a message that is so important that every listener has got to identify it in order to qualify as worthy audience. Perhaps similar to my conviction that music is all about the listener can think of and the creator in this process is entirely irrelevant. If stated otherwise the music has become supplemental to the ritual of stage adolation. There are people in desperate need of someone they can look up to and project any of their unfulfilled dreams into as well as there are inflated egos who constantly need someone to tell them how great they are, before they doubt it.

Music as vehicle for attention craving sociopaths can be easily identified by its lack of substance and identity. Curiously, the most peculiar and controverse star shamans publish the most trivial and anonymous type of music. Stereotypes that could apply to anything and anyone. It comes in bulk, it lacks personal identification and we are exposed to unsolicited presentations. It perfectly fits to the definiton of spam. Musical spam, junk music. I laugh about their efforts of their marketing departments to have them considered as geniusses. If someone actually is, it will show and no justifications, redefinitions or explanations are necessary.

Last.fm and their notion of “similar artists” somehow leaves a thing or two to be desired, so it seems:
Nodepet on last.fm
(The corpus delicti is the box to the left)

How on earth is my music similar to big bands, blues or some yodling bozo from the 40ies? I really feel sorry for those who unsuspiciously click “play similar artists” and will be amazed by this interesting selection (or not). Vice versa, someone not knowing my music and catching sight of the similar artists block will most likely turn away in disgust. Last.fm state this list would be compiled based on listening habit. Maybe those who listened to my music did happen to have a rather eclectic music taste, but I somehow doubt that. Other musicians do not seem to be affected by this feature, so it is not that this automation would not work at all.

An alternative conspiracy theory would be someone is willfully “polluting” the list by exploiting a “feature” (some call it sloppy programming). But where is the benefit? Featuring some obscure music? Or just seeing that my music never gets heard by an appropriate audience? Whatever, I have to look for a way to manually clean up the list, so similar artists actually means what it promises.

Last night my latest release on Petcord called Decay went live on air. Decay is one composition consisting of four movements, the last one with reoccuring themes of the previous ones put together to a contrastive final. What the liner notes did not mention, is how the titles came into being and not without a reason: People may be tempted to misinterpret these titles as authoritative instruction about what to think of when listening to the work. I personally feel strong aversions towards degrading music to a mere transport means for some kind of message and only add these explanations “for the records”.

My enemy insight
This title is a pun and refers to being one’s own worst enemy (as in “enemy inside”) and being aware of the problem (hence “insight”). It matches to the rapid swing between agressive feedback, friendly ninth chords and menacing drones, similar to a confused state of mind where moods change from one extreme to another within minutes. Of course this is a subjective and distorted perception as this enemy is part of oneself. An enemy that once escaped our control and now seems to live a life of its own despite its irrational nature.

Behind the mask
In order to become an accepted member of society one is required to wear a mask of conformity. Picking up what is deemed most popular and advantageous rather than following one’s unique gifts. Or judging attitudes by their degree of popular acceptance rather than necessity or validity. As most people are trained at an early age to play this game successfully they may not be aware of it and consider it as natural as eating and sleeping. Some people are afraid of silence and solitude, because that may force them to discover the void behind the mask.

Wall of fear
This is another pun referring to the phrase “wall of silence”. It is meant to go one step further by not just stating an inconvenience as a result of something embarrassing or someone unresponsive to inquiries, but the mere prospect of getting into such a situation. The wall is not just a defence someone else has built up, but could refer to limitations defined by one’s own fears. Some may only have a funny feeling inside their stomach and move on, whilst others will stagger and tumble into a psychotic state of apathy.

last possible lie
Judging from the previous definitions one may conclude that life is lie. Lie in itself is considered inacceptable in most civilisations, yet our plastic fantastic age does force us to posture as someone who we not really are. In reference to the overall character to the music, this “last possible lie” appears as a resolution at first. But as the relief is the result of an escape, the actual issue still persists. The moment someone comes to realise this may mark the beginning of the collapse. This could be anything from insanity to suicide.

As written before, please be advised that this is only an attempt at explaining the history of the titles, not the music itself. Whilst working on them there did not exist any kind of concept or “story board” the music tried to follow and the titles where the last thing I added as a description of the sound characteristics. Hence you can associate with the music all you want and it will be a personal and correct way of utilising it. The music itself does not contain any other message other than itself.