Earlabs: Early Japanese musique concrete

[imomus]

From: X. Y. Zedd (xyzedd@yahoo.com )
Subject: Family resemblances
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: alt.fan.momus
Date: 2004-04-21 09:26:48 PST

'Recently I've spelunked far enough into the World Wide Web to discover the
Dutch EARLabs (www.earlabs.org ), a sort of little orphaned cousin to the
ubiquitous ubu.com. Beyond all the usual glitchy micromusic, there are some surprising mp3 archives of early electronic and experimental music which I thought I'd never hear or would never even hear about. Mimaroglu, Artaud, and the original old-fashioned Futurists are well-represented--but my favorites so far are the selections of the very first Japanese musique concrete, live in concert in 1956, no less. Toshiro Mayuzumi's "Works for musique concrete X. Y. Z" (no relation), especially, gives one the impression that here is the great-granduncle of Oskar's "spooky kabuki," with its whispers of Japanese theater and haunting echoes of ancient Asian instruments.

Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete X (5 mins 20, 7.3MB)
Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete Y (4 mins 38, 6.4MB)
Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete Z (3 mins 53, 5.3MB)
More...

Now that "Oskar... Naked" has finally been released, it might be more interesting than ever to mentally conflate these two suites in one's mind. Also of likely interest, though I haven't listened to it yet, is Yoshio Hasegawa's horspiel, "The World in a Jar." [Momus notes: It's great, very melodramatic. More conventional than Mayuzumi, though.]

Dominiki and those others lucky enough to have "Summerisle" by now--I am so envious! Those of us in the hinterlands look to the skies and wait.



But I do finally, finally have "Travels with a Donkey," which I find ineffably charming, a mix of that mystery known to Varese's "Poem Electronique" and that innocence of early spring. It should be more widely available.'

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks; those are links well worth following down their winding ways... apparently I'm not the only one who enjoys these recherche bibelots of electronic sound. What you say about the dichotomy of the Franco and Teutonic approaches is accurate--something that I see Momus not too dissimilarly dealing with in his own music, with his form/content "dilemma." It's no wonder he's attracted to the Japanese, who seem to have often found a nice balance in their concepts of life and art.

This reminds me of my favorite Japanese movie, "Kwaidan," directed by Kobiyashi, with an electroacoustic soundtrack by Takemitsu. I've only seen it once, but both the amazing beauty of its visual and narrative composition has stayed with me for years--and I really wish I had the soundtrack, because it's a perfect complement to the action on screen. I like Takemitsu a great deal, though he got perhaps more conventional with age--and even without a soundtrack album to refer to, I'd be willing to venture that it's his best work.

(This is even more off-the-subject, but I've been watching "Yellow Submarine" again for the first time since childhood. There are some amazing sound effects between the Beatles and George Martin soundtracks, and I wonder if they're courtesy of the BBC Radiophonics workshop. Sigh--and the psychedelic visuals are everything my childhood should have been.)

Alas, I am still too ignorant about most things, especially early electronic music... I'd love to hear what might have been going on in the not-so-well-funded studios of Tallinn or Quito circa 1950...