The Life of Moriyama

Daido Moriyama grew up in Ikeda, Osaka where he got his first training for graphic design before he decided to take photography lessons with Takeji Iwaniya, a legendary photographer of crafts and architecture.  In the year 1961, he moved to Tokyo where he became the assistant of another photographer named Eikoh Hosoe. He worked for the man for 3 years until when he got the interest on the trenchant social critiques created by Shomei Tomatsu. Daido Moriyama further obtained his inspiration from the confrontation photographs of William Klein. Andy Warhol is also among his inspirations, particularly when the former silkscreened several newspaper images. The writings of Jack Kerouac and Yukio Mishima were also among his motivations.

From Moriyama's Memories of a Dog

Work and Career

On most instances, Moriyama takes his photographs in the Shinjuku regions of Tokyo. His works are often seen in grainy, high contrast, black and white images. He is well-known for taking shots in odd angles. His works were largely influenced by Seiryu Inoue, William Klein, Shomei Tomatsu, Andy Warhol, Eikoh Hosoe, the dramatist Shūji Terayama, the writer Yukio Mishima, as well as Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

Moriyama became prominent during the mid-1960s with his grainy representation of the Japanese life. His personal approach to photography yields results with graininess, high contrast, and tilted vantages. These images depict the fragmentary nature of life.

All throughout his career, he won several recognitions. The year 1967 brought him his New Artist Award from the Japan Photo-Critics Association. He obtained the coveted Annual Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 1983. The year 2003 gave him his The 44th Mainichi Art Award and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh) in 2004.

His use of small automatic camera provides his photos with causal artistry. Moriyama’s works were featured in several collections, both private and public. Some of these are in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has his share of solo shows too at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland, The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, and The Folkwang, Essen, Germany.

The above text is lifted from the collaborative effort of Japanese Independent Music book+CD published by SONORE in 2001.To update this version, JAAPAN welcomes your suggestions. For comments, updates, and corrections, feel free to contact us.

The first Satanicpornocultshop album voluptuously titled ‘Nirvana or Lunch ?’ released on their own label NuNuLaxNulan in 1998, was followed by a series of participations in various compilations: Trip Trap, LD&K, Subject, etc. Art of confusion already prevailing in their work, their third opus ‘Baltimore 72’ (1999) was released before their second one ‘Belle Excentrique’ (2000). Since then, the gangrenous music of Satanicpornocultshop kept spreading over sick developped countries by using the saturated communication networks and mastering the art of satire and remixes.

Second act of Satanicpornocultshop story opens with the sudden and symbolic death of Alan Folkroe in 2001. As Ghammehuche could not be left alone with his steep schizophrenia and creative delirium, fellow members boarded the demonic vessel within a few months: Meu-Meu and his dubious performance style, *es the mixing master with nerves of steel, Vinylman turntable-ing with attitude and Ugh overusing electronics and puking MC skills. All together, they slownly moved Satanicpornocultshop from distorted and perverted collage territories to accumulation of sound layers pierced by one single beat, futuristic hiphop and eroticization of sounds, ‘erotronica’.

The holdall of Dada is conveniently used by music critics, but the main players still think that the more accurate word of ‘bricolage’ defined best their work. Satanicpornocultshop influences and productions are not limited to music and sounds, they are boiling over the borders of art, spilling over ideas and images with a unique and grandiose disrespect.

In the end of 2001, Satanicporncultshop are invited to perform at the peak time glory of the Batofar club in Paris, first collaboration is opened with the label Sonore with their participartion on the ‘Batofar Cherche Tokyo’ CD compilation. The first Tour de France is organized for Satanicpornocultshop, mesmerizing an incredulous audience with absurd performances. The next year 2002, their fourth and glossily produced album ‘Ugh Yoing’ is released on NuNuLaxNulan.

Lisa from the band La Bossa, hidden voice from Satanicpornocultshop, joined the gang officially in 2003 for the release of their fifth album ‘Anorexia Gas Balloon’ on Sonore. International listeners are getting aware of Satanicpornocultshop phenomenom, ‘Anorexia Gas Balloon’ get reviews and airplay in Japan, Europe, US and Canada. The very same year, their killing cover of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Candy Says’ appears onto the UK Wire magazine compilation Wire Tapper 10 and they participate to the ‘Music for Babies’ project from D*I*R*T*Y website in France.

A year long strenuous work is necessary to release their rich and complex ‘Zap Meemees’ 6th album on Sonore in 2005. Like a twin, a lighter, pop and instantaneous 7th album ‘Orochi Under the Straight Edge Leaves’ bloomed on the Polish Vivo label the same year. What other band could release a pop album on an indus/gothic Polish label? A Satanicpornocultshop tour de force!

They do their first European tour (Netherlands, Denmark, Czech Republic, Italy and France) in the end of 2005 with a climax on Prague’s Alternativa festival in front of 800 enthousiastic and frenetic people. At the end of this successful tour Meu-Meu split the band leaving Lisa, *es, Vinylman and Ugh with a sore note.

2006 is definitely opening the third act of Satanicpornocultshop. First they participate to the thematic Italian fashion magazine Uovo providing a track for their ‘Pink’ compilation. Then the album ‘Zap Meemees’ is nominated in the Research of the electronic music Qwartz Awards in France. Two new members join the band : MC Frosen Pine with his unique mimic rhyme style, and the magic organist Nakagawa aka Liftman.

(To be continued…)

© 2006 text : Franck Stofer, photo : Albane Laure

Download Satanicpornocultshop Music on: iTunes, Beatport, Juno Download

Satoru Wono was born in 1964 and currently lives in Tokyo. A great lover of Hollywood films in his youth, he was enamored with their soundtracks. When, at university, he discovered that they were to a great extent inspired by the music of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, he threw himself into studying classical composition. However, in the Eighties in Tokyo, there was a passion for new electronic music and the young Satoru, who was becoming more and more interested in samplers, digital sequencers and other computer devices, spent his nights in the city’s coolest clubs.

In 1987, he was awarded a composition prize by the Association for Contemporary Japanese Music and started his career as a composer. After several years working in experimental music, he brought our Sweet Science and El Niño, a fusion of electronic music and Latin pop. Alongside this, he continued his research into experimental and electro-acoustic music in Sauvage and Sonata for Sine Wave and White Noise. An associate professor of the Faculty of Plastic Arts at the University of Tama (Tokyo), he teaches music and film and is the author of several works on music and technology.

A composer, DJ, author and critic, producer and arranger… it is by trawling through the abundant diversity of works that he is able to compose or produce something that shows just what he is capable of. By wearing more than one set of headphones, Satoru retains an atypical approach and a personal reflection regarding his work.

Satoru likes to recycle and integrate into his own pieces sounds that are usually used in other forms of music. Although fashioned extremely precisely, his works are nevertheless terribly jubilatory. Essential to the Japanese avant-garde scene, he is also the musical director of Maywa Denki.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Download Satoru Wono on: iTunes, Beatport, Juno Download

Yudaya Jazz mixes and synchronises images and sounds on a set of turntables equipped to mix DVDs, also using a camera and microphone to capture performers in real time, as well as a few audiovisual effects for enhancement. This set-up means he has a palette of images and an infinite variety of sounds and textures at the tips of his fingers. The compositional work is always carried out on stage, live, with nothing repeated or prepared, because the exquisite instants Yudaya Jazz looks for can only be the product of the fragile and the momentary.

Dai Soma remembers being fascinated as a child by an old Kamishibai (paper theatre) storyteller, who improvised stories by showing a procession of his drawings to astonished spectators. Later, Dai Soma began making his own films and showing them in a cinema that he hired in Tokyo. Finding the repetition of the same projection extremely boring, he started to play with the sound effects of the films, upsetting spectators and the owner alike. He obstinately continued in this direction and sought out his audience in Tokyo clubs.

Dai Soma is a front-row spectator at his own audiovisual performances, always looking for the unexpected moment, the subtle variation that turns everything on its head. He is excited by the risk of manipulating images live, the random nature of the editing. In love with all types of audiovisual devices, audio cassettes, VHS, 45s, DVDs or MPEG files, Dai Soma is not however an obsessive collector. He’s not interested in conceptualising his art and cares little whether the results are pop or avant-garde. What counts is to bring about the aesthetic moment capable of surprising him himself.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

The video games consol Famicom (Family Computer Disk System) is known outside Asia as NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). It’s a sweet memory in the tender years of many young adults across the globe: the charm of a pixellised world of monophonic music. Today, this universe, which influences numerous artists, is known under the sobriquet “8-bit” in homage to the microprocessors of the first computers and video games consoles of the 1970s and 80s. This is the world that YMCK have set about extending. And who knows where they’ll end up with it?

Yokemura (musical programming), Nakamura (visual programming) and Midori (vocals and scenography) brought out their first CD-R in 2003. At the beginning, Yokemura wanted to produce original electronic music, but soon fed up of the techno/house fare in vogue at the time, he chose to take another direction altogether. He wanted to manipulate simple sounds and create a “picopico” style, clickety and poppy. He found the ideal raw materials for his music in the world of early 1980s video games. Yokemura was clever enough to avoid the clichés; his main influence is jazz in any case. As you can imagine, his approach has taken YMCK well beyond video game music.

Constraints stimulate creativity. Out of a limited visual and musical aesthetic, the YMCK imagination has run riot. Burningly balanced ternary rhythms support majestic surges of synth choruses. Midori adds a suave, vaporous voice and space voyage airhostess chic to the ensemble. The coherence and quality of the visuals developed by Nakamura indicate that the music is only the first stage in an ever-expanding YMCK world.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

The origins of the Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys date back to the end of the 1980s; 1986 to be precise. A strange formation (2 percussionists and a DJ) to say the least, they launched themselves onto the Tokyo club scene and were soon in the Oricon charts (information and statistics on the Japanese music industry). The adventure lasted 6 years. In 1993, they decided to take a break to give some time to their (numerous) other activities. 2008 is the year of the big comeback. Like an exotic phoenix rising from the flames, the Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys have resumed service. Energy and bonhomie intact, they are embracing the dance floors once again with their sparkling made-to-measure mambo.

Mambo? Damaso Perez Prado introduced mambo to Japan at the beginning of the 1950s, first on record, then on stage when he visited the archipelago for the first time in 1959 and performed several memorable concerts in Ginza and Asakusa. Mambo took Japan by storm, even the celebrated enka (Japanese popular music) singer, Hibari Misora, put her melodies to latin rhythms. The energy of the mambo was the perfect accompaniment to the atmosphere of post-war Japan, the Showa period, “the 30 glorious years”. A veritable process of hybridisation began, which lasted until the introduction of rock.

What remains is the memory of the energy and ecstatic atmosphere that reigned over the bars and dancehalls of the capital. And it’s this energy that the Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys want to access. There is no nostalgia though. The Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys are simply worried that the music of today has become too cold. So they’re getting out the congas and putting on their frilly shirts to go out on a new mission; warm the hearts.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

The foundations of Japanese independent and alternative music were born in the Eighties. Tatsuya Yoshida was already playing in the group YBO2 beside Masashi Kitamura and K.K. Null (Zeni Geva) when, in 1985, he formed a duo, Ruins, with just bass and drums. Four bass players came and went: Hideki Kawamoto, Kazuyoshi Kimoto, Ryuichi Masuda and Hisashi Sasaki. With the departure of his last bassist, Tatsuya Yoshida set out on a quest for a new pretender, but abandoned his mission, unable to find a candidate up to the job. The music Ruins were creating had become so complex that electronic machines were now Tatsuya Yoshida’s ideal partner.

Ruins then became Ruins Alone. Like syrup or strong alcohol, Ruins make music that makes you grimace. Ruins is a lab of the Tatsuya Yoshida stamp, a direct interface between his brain and his drumsticks. You could get 15 rock records out of one Ruins album, just by adding a bit of fizzy water. Each composition could be developed in many different directions. Tatsuya Yoshida plays in over 20 groups; he needs to, to sustain sufficient space for his overflowing creativity.

Tatsuya Yoshida has worked with some of the greatest improvisers on the planet, such as John Zorn, Fred Frith or Derek Bailey. Today, above and beyond the Ruins Alone project, Tatsuya Yoshida is the composer and drummer both in Korekyojinn, an instrumental trio that pushes polyrhythmic complexity to its ultimate limits, and the Koenji Hyakkei ensemble, a quasi-orchestral formation that bridges the gap between prog rock and contemporary music. In his time out from music, Monsieur Yoshida compulsively photographs stones. He travels the world in search of the mineral beauty of monumental statues and the millennial energy of rocks.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Project Oh! choreographer, Yuri Furuie, lives to be creative. Books of images, little ditties on the piano, choreography, no matter; it’s the creative act itself that’s important. With an almost social approach she says: “I have never believed that age or lack of experience are a handicap; nothing prevents anyone from creating anything.” Her choreographies often come from sensations or images. An example: “two cornered crabs that can’t escape”. Then the girls play around with what she has given them, invent poses, try out moves. The choreographic ideas distil themselves into gestures that are then selected, discarded, repeated and put together into routines.

Project Oh!Yama shy away from conceptualisation, as if the idea of attaching words to their work would automatically limit it, throw a net over the imagination. Yuri Furuie’s artistic intention is nevertheless unambiguous: “I simply aim to produce unexpected happenings on stage and give the public things to see that they don’t get to see in everyday life. I want to wake the sleepers!” No real critical dimension to the onstage clowning there then, or at least not consciously.

Project Oh!Yama’s choreographic impact is undeniable. The speed and precision of their bodies, the faultless orchestration of movement, their liveliness and spark. The stage is bare. They ornament it themselves; frank, straight up, uninhibited, unhampered. Their rapidity is astonishing, the juxtaposition of situations frontal, then absurd. To the point where you ask yourself if the Project Oh! girls might not, by some mysterious filiation, be the direct descendants of Dada.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

While a literature student, Picopico, almost by accident, started making little characters out of modelling clay. He then moved onto monsters with wigs that he showed at his first exhibition. He slid graually into this new activity rather than becoming obsessed all at once. The desire to make things he had never seen did eventually start to take him over however. Over the last 5 years, Picopico has consciously kept a sketchbook to record his “kaiju” each day, keeping his hand in and exercising his imagination.

Picopico’s monsters are earthlings, not extraterrestrials or fantasy figures. They each have their own characteristics or specificities. Take the monsters “Beckos” and “Neba” for example. Picopico says, “The name “Beckos” comes from a northern Japanese dialect and means “cow”. Beckos is a horned monster. He and I are very close. I like his colour, blue, and his shape, nothing special, rather standard actually. But he has a long tongue, like the gods in Papua New Guinea. “Nottokaiju Neba” stinks and sticks to you. That’s his particularity! That’s why he’s made of natto (fermented soya seeds)!”

Picopico’s “kaiju” aren’t nasty. They live beyond the manmade concepts of good and evil, justice and injustice. “A huge “kaiju” can crush furniture or people when he walks but he does it without realizing, just because he’s moving around,” Picopico explains. The monsters spark various reactions: fear among children and a cult for the strange among adults. But monsters amuse and intrigue everyone, don’t they. They have an incredible power just by dint of being!

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Mambonsai won the best new idea award at the Japan Hobby Association in 2001 and the number of adepts has been growing round the world ever since. As an activity, it lightens the weight of tradition in the art of bonsai. It appeals to all ages and only requires a good dose of humour. Invented in the fertile mind of Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys percussionist, Paradise Yamamoto, Mambonsai is a portmanteau word that reflects his passion for two diametrically opposed worlds: the mambo and bonsais. A Master of Mambonsai, Paradise Yamamoto makes regular TV appearances in Japan to share his enthusiasm in public.

Paradise Yamamoto is an unusual character. Born in 1962 in Sapporo in Hokkaido in the north of Japan, he began his career as a car designer but quickly developed skills in half a dozen other disciplines. A great Mambonsai master of course but also an expert in bath salts, a critic of “luxury” eat-as-much-as-you-can buffets, a connoisseur of gyoza (Chinese ravioli) and, proudest of all, the first Santa in Japan to be accredited by the World Santa Claus Congress, based in Greenland. An atypical career that Paradise Yamamoto cultivates with natural good humour and aesthetic tastes.

Several works have been published on the elfish art of Mambonsai. Photos of these pastoral scenes are a real delight. Hole in One is of a group of golfers absorbed in the game on a carpet of moss, Capturing Bin Laden ~ Just Round the Corner shows the capture of public enemy number 1 at the summit of a miniature rock and in 2020 A Space Odyssey a team of scientists clad in anti-bacterial suits analyse huge extraterrestrial mushrooms.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Influenced by the aesthetic of the bizarre favoured by mid-90s Japanese groups such as Unicorn and Kinniku Shoujo Tai, Oorutaichi began improvising layers of sound on cassette with a four-track back in 1999, bringing out a debut album entitled “?”. The later discovery of reggae dancehall was a revelation. He completely changed his method of composition and began programming. Since then, Oorutaichi has travelled his own road through an ethno-futurist electronic land, absorbing the musical elements he comes across on his way.

Oorutaichi is a solo project but Taichi Moriguchi works with others to explore different musical horizons.  Urichipangoon is a more progressive, melodic, four-piece folk pop project with Ytamo, Muneomi Senju (ex-drummer of the Boredoms) and Naoko Kamei.  Obakejaa is bonkers home studio improv with DJ Shabu Shabu.  Berebo, with guitarist Taku Hannoda, is slightly more experimental. Oorutaichi also produces sumptuous remixes and is developing his own indie craft label, Okimi Records, on which he generally brings out his own music.

With acknowledged but wide-ranging influences (The Residents, The Doors, T.Rex and Aphex Twin), Oorutaichi seems to be in key with the same sung colourful electronic universe as in vogue international artists Panda Bear, El Guincho and Lucky Dragons. Originally from Osaka, Oorutaichi’s music is already known outside Japan. His records, Yori YoYo and Drifting My Foklore that came out in 2003 and 2007 respectively, both gained international critical acclaim (Pitchfork, BBC Radio). He opened at the Juana Molina concert in the USA in 2009. Oorutaichi’s live gigs are well-known all over Japan and he is clearly becoming an artist of international stature.

© 2009 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Although she grew up to the sound of the koto played by her mother, far from accepting its presence and sound as evidence, Michiyo Yagi, during her formative years, considered this instrument to be an object that demanded a lot of work, a prisoner of a fossilized repertoire with slight harmonic potential compared to that of western classical music.

The eminent traditional apprenticeship that she followed did not really give her any opportunity to blossom in her own musical environment: living at her teacher’s home, in the company of her co-pupils, she performed the daily chores of cleaning, washing and cooking, viewed as equally important as the lessons themselves. During the rare public performances, still be their teacher’s side, the disciples had to pay him for the privilege of playing by his side. Rigid in the extreme, this teaching was, however, the first step towards an expanded conception of music, with her teacher Kazue Sawai being the true pioneer of a traditional Japanese music that was open to experimentation and modern compositions.

In 1989, she appeared as part of the Sawai group at the Bang On A Can Festival at New York, where she was struck by a work for percussion by John Cage that shattered her compartmentalized conceptions of "tradition" and "modernity". In 1991 during one year as guest teacher at the Wesleyan university (Connecticut), where Cage also taught, she helped create several pieces with, amongst others, John Zorn and Christian Wolff, and helped in the extraordinary prolixity of the young students, whose pared down creations (mixing Balinese dances and western music) had a profound effect on her and persuaded her to write her own works.

On her return from the United States, her personal approach to composition the rules of the game that she was discovering did not sit well with the immutable teaching of Sawai and Yagi chose the breakaway route to independence. Her style was initially characterized by an unusual strength, a expressivity with a power that was almost masculine. As a logical extension of her robust finger plectrum, she sometimes has recourse to small hammers and hooks to strike her instrument’s strings, insisting on their percussive potential. This is also how she discovered the polyphonic potential of the koto produced by phantom vibrations of the vibrating strings on the strings at rest, giving rise to subterranean motifs and melodies.

The aim of some of Yagi’s research is a new form of “Japaneseness”, a modernity that is free from the influence of the West and the accepted homage, but these great plans do not stop her taking pleasure in exploring repertories that are over 400 years old …

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Old Tosa created Maywa Denki in 1969. One of the multitude of small businesses that used their flexibility for the benefit of the major Japanese companies and that formed the basis of Japan’s growth and dynamism during the Sixties. Unfortunately, like many others, Maywa Denki suffered a downturn in fortunes and closed its doors in 1979. In 1993, Mr Tosa’s two rejects, Masamichi and Nobumichi, created the artistic group known as Maywa Denki.

Initially performing in the shopping malls of Tokyo, after a few appearances on television, Maywa Denki become an unmissable artistic machine. They use business words and images to disseminate their work. On the one hand, the uniform reassures the Japanese, but, on the other, the effect produced by a team of blue men wearing caps who struggle to present cranky creations is simply irresistible.

In 2001, there was an internal reorganization : big brother Masamichi, a little cranky, retired at the age of 35. Nobumichi Tosa, the hard-working and applied younger brother, was then, naturally and officially, appointed President of Maywa Denki. In fact, the concept was born out of Nobumichi Tosa’s end of study project. He created a series of instruments of absurd, fish-like design that he presented, wrapped up, to the July. Since then, he has kept his hand on the tiller and steers a course between creative work and public presentations: the Grand-Guignol aspect.

These objects are manufactured in single copies. Doomed to remain prototypes, their usage is very limited, almost nil. Nobumichi Tosa works with gold in his workshop, where he lauds the mechanical beauty of his creations that are the result of fusion between resin and aluminium. Some machines are sometimes reproduced in small production series, simplified and purified versions of the prototypes. A third level of objects is marketed commercially, signature Maywa Denki gadgets: electrical extensions in the shape of a fin, small plastic men who tap their head...

Maywa Denki’s work fall into one of three classifications : Naki, Tsukuba and Edelweiss. Although these series are distinct from each other, there are points of connection between them. Naki is the first series to be developed by Nobumichi Tosa on the theme of Who am I ? 26 objects in the shape of a fish focus on him and his relationship with the world. The Naki series comprises some of Maywa Denki’s emblematic instruments Denki with the Koi-beat, a portable rhythm box in the shape of a carp with incorporated electrical switches, or the famous Pachi-moku, a type of two-tone marimba worn on the back like two metallic wings and played by clicking one’s fingers.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Offstage, Maruosa is a calm, composed young man, concerned about food and body hygiene. What he aims to transmit is positive human energy. Maruosa says, “There are many people in Japan who listen to calm, airy, ambient music to console themselves when they feel bad but I think they’re making a mistake. They should be listening to music like mine to raise their spirits.” Electroshock therapy as the title of his album, Exercise and Hell, suggests, a paradoxical transmission of positivity that finds its source in loud, chaotic music.

Music didn’t really interest Maruosa at first. He preferred to lose himself in his favourite manga (Gegege no Kitaroby Shigeru Mizuki!). One day however he heard a piece by YMO and discovered that music isn’t always accompanied by words and can be purely instrumental. He continued to explore instrumental music until the day a friend showed him a piece of software that would allow him to make his own music. He started with pop (!) around 2001 and was invited to work with 2 Gameboy players. He accepted but, to give himself a new challenge, took up the mic, started yelling into it and was away! His music suddenly changed direction under the influence of this new all-powerful arm.

It was an explosive formula. In the space of a few years, Maruosa did a series of marathon tours around Japan and Europe, appearing at Sonar in Barcelona in June 2008 before setting off on a series of concerts in Oceania. Maruosa is a mover and a shaker. He has developed contacts through organising concerts in Tokyo and even manages his own label Rendarec, which broadcasts recordings and news from musician friends such as MIDIsai, aaaaa, Ove-Naxx, Bogulta, DJ Scotch Egg and Doddodo.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Download Maruosa on: iTunes, Juno Download

Public comedian, musician, cinema actor, critic and teacher at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Yuichi Kishino was born in Tokyo in 1963. His family raised him to enjoy and respect the theatre and the popular arts that were so specific to ancestral Japan.

Very active on the Japanese musical scene, he has played in several groups, including Watts Towers and Space Ponch, and directs his own label - Out One Disc – which has produced the CD Les Vacances de… La Veuve Moustachue.

For La Veuve Moustachue, Kishino dresses up as a transvestite on the stage, but, in real life, is neither gay nor a drag-queen. This is the style he has chosen to depict their scenes of predilection, such as the universal feelings of love and loss or the lack of communication in the world today.

During his appearances, he improvises cues whilst Yoko accompanies on the piano. Very quickly, this changes and gradually becomes part of the context of written songs, before regaining his freedom. These two areas cross-infect and it is soon hard to tell them apart : we do not know what has been composed and what has just been invented. It is this tension that gives the performance so much charm.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Kicell is two brothers: the big one, Takefumi Tsujimura (vocal, guitar), and the little one, Tomoharu Tsujimura (vocal, bass and musical saw). Takefumi is deep, an introvert. Tomoharu is more distracted yet delicate. Takefumi was already recording his songs on a four-track, doubling his own voice, when they started playing together in 1999. The brothers’ voices are very similar and this is what gives such a recognisable balance to their work. Takefumi’s passionate love stories become experimental pop in Tomoharu’s hands and the fusion/separation inherent in their arrangements is what gives Kicell its force.

Kicell have released 5 albums since October 2000, the date when they left their native Kyoto to head for Tokyo. All have sold over 20,000 copies. The last to date, “Magic Hour” (2008), has a tragic beauty and is out on Kakubarhythm (Sakerock, Illreme). It is an amazingly produced post-pop opus, a success. Emerson Kitamura (Jagatara, Mute Beat), the discrete third member, sometimes joins them both for recordings and on stage. Emerson adds a very light dub touch to the Kicell sound and the odd melodic line that really hits the spot.

Kicell were invited to play in New York in 2005 by the celebrated artist entrepreneur, Takashi Murakami but they are still mostly unknown outside Japan. They seem to lack a little confidence in themselves, as if their influences (Robert Wyatt, Sigur Rós and Young Marble Giants) might betray them abroad. Of course, we can all be blind to our own originality, but it’s time for Kicell to leave Japan and find new audiences. There can be no doubt that reaction to their quality and adventure will be positive. Could this be the beginning of a new Kicell chapter?

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

He got bitten young, watching the TV show “Dance Koshien”, Takeshi Kitano presenting a high school street dance competition. Kentaro!! was only 11 but made his decision. He trained endlessly in front of a video of Michael Jackson, imitating moves in front of the telly. At the beginning of the 1990s, hip-hop and breakbeat had only just been introduced into Japan. Kentaro!! found his way to the only studio in Tokyo giving classes in hip hop. Eager to learn, he also took house and lock dance classes; he was 13.

He quickly assimilated the different techniques. During his teens his tastes matured as he mined this American genre, getting to know more New York hip-hop: Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest. He also saw that he had to find his own style. Kentaro!! wasn’t an African American from the projects. He was Japanese and he had to learn how to use his own physique, his build.

Kentaro!! mixes hip-hop with a sort of Japanese spirituality. He adapts rap motifs and moves into the dance without ever losing sight of who he is. Very acute musically, with faultless technique, he projects his body into the mix. Electro, pop rock, hip-hop, he doesn’t simply use the beats as a canvas; his moves are extreme and penetrate the music like a needle on the record.

© 2008 text : Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo : Eric Bossick

On September 14 1968, Kan Mikami got on the train to Tokyo from his native province of Aomori. He was a poet and wanted to publish. In the meantime, he worked in newspaper distribution, sporting a Mohican. One day a bar owner, intrigued by his appearance, asked him if he could sing. Kan Mikami took up his guitar and soon had the whole bar crying. At that time he was part of the student demonstrations, joined the barricades and played in front of 30,000 people at the celebrated Nakatsukawa folk festival. Those were the good times. He signed with Columbia and then Victor, bringing out a dozen records. He had to tighten his belt at the end of the Seventies however, when the student rebels became salaried workers and the concerts dried up.

The Eighties signalled the beginning of a long period of musical introspection for Kan Mikami. He played exactly the same repertoire for 10 long years, once a month at the Mandala-2, a small club in the area of Kichijoji. He had no desire to move on and instead discovered the real essence of his playing. At the end of the Eighties, his American alter ego, John Zorn came to the club to hear him. Then came Yoshihide Otomo and later Keiji Haino and Motoharu Yoshizawa. They all encouraged him to take the plunge and record some new albums on the independent label PSF, slowly helping him re-emerge from the shadows.

Litterature had a big influence on Kan Mikami when he was growing up. Surrealism, the Beat Generation, Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir and Shuji Terayama were just some of these revelations. However Kan Mikami says, “With music, I discovered that before words, it’s sound that creates the world, outside language, beyond it. (…) Language is at the service of sound and not the other way round. It doesn’t matter any more whether or not my poems are understood.”

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Born in 1972, Shoko Uehara began singing at a very early age, by imitating the sounds from the television and writing her own songs about cats, at tea-time. Her parents persuaded her to study classical piano, which she did between the ages of 5 and 15. It was only by leaving the family home that she created the link between her musical training and her highly personal world, channeling her gift for improvisation into an abundance of compositions.

Only on rare occasions does life in Tokyo allow the luxury of a piano, so she bought a small and cheap harmonium with a breathless tone that she still uses today. For her first performances, appeared in pyjamas with a cow motif before, from 1997, making the logical step to a repertoire, the major theme of which is her dog, with Shoko wearing an enormous and all-encompassing wolf costume with long synthetic fur, turning herself into Jon (Inu) [The Dog].

Coming from the huge body of an animal whose hairy paws are always rickety, her childlike voice underlines the extreme finesses of the words, albeit delivered with a strange conviction. The recordings on radiocassette players contain all sorts of ambient crackles and noises that, at the start, were more or less identifiable and create an atmosphere that is both funny, frightening and nostalgic.

Jon (The Dog) gives concerts 4 times a month, on average, and has released 4 albums, most notably the one on the Tzadik label (John Zorn); when she is not playing in a raft of parallel projects, she runs a bar in the à Golden Gai (a district of Tokyo) or reads tarot to passers-by in the Shinjuku district.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

At the start of the Nineties, Himitsu Hakase worked in London beside fashion designers who were part of the gay scene (Leigh Bowery). He returned to Tokyo and, amongst other things, designed the graphics for the CD covers of Japanese artistes who were part of the ‘minimalist electronic’ movement (Yoshihide Otomo). Nowadays, when he is not creating a series of ready-to-wear Hawaiian shirts, Himitsu Hakase can be found in the Tokyo club, with his band The Emperors or in a duo, aided and abetted by Yuichi Kishino in the improbable Gira Gira nights.

As a child, he was fascinated by the variety shows trundled out by family television and discovered the Pink Color Trio. He devoured the retransmissions of the famous Wolfman Jack Show in the US army section on Japanese FM radio. He threw himself into the American standards of the Fifties and Sixties and the first signs of rock and roll. A little later, he discovered the Pre-War Japanese singers, such a Hachiirou Oka and Tarou Shoji and their "Natsumero" (nostalgic melodies), followed by the successes of the Twenties and Thirties (Shizuko Kasagi, Hachiiro Kasuga). Their style, voice and attitude took over his head and became a real obsession.

His mother took him to singing lessons for 5 or 6 years (Mozart), but his classmates exposed him to punk (Sex Pistols, The Damned), followed by psychedelic music and glam rock (Marc Bolan, T. Rex, Queen). He was fascinated by platform shoes, bell-bottom trousers and layered soles.

A tireless collector, a few years later, he came across a 45 by Matsudaira Naoki "Blue Roman" Band, the star of the Japanese popular song known as "Enka". It was a terrible shock : Himitsu Hakase suddenly realized at what point he is "Enkadamashi" and at what point his soul is resolutely Enka. His passion then was for "Mood Chorus", a branch of Enka that was slightly more modern and powerful in style. His collection contains over a thousand Mood Chorus 45s.

In 1997, Kazunao Nagata (Transonic) and Yuichi Kishino, time-honored producers and instigators of the Gira Gira nights, asked Himitsu Hakase to come and "mix" with them. He accepted this role as an alternative DJ, but found it more exciting to sing over these dated hits that he knew by heart. During the songs, Kishino could not help using humor to improvise suggestive and synchronized gestures. This impromptu e then invented a jubilatory performance, a Technicolor mime-drama with scintillating and over-the-top sonorities.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Hifana is an instrumental hip hop duo formed by KEIZOmachine! and Juicy. In his early twenties the former discovers hip hop music through a video showing New York DJ Clark Kent create a brand new track out of a turntable and two copies of the same record. He then absorbs into mastering turntables but soon grows tired of them after learning all there is to be learnt. Going back to the origins of his fascination with hip hop he becomes aware of a passion for rhythm dating from his childhood and thus starts learning percussions. Juicy's path is almost the exact opposite, having played percussions since a very early age and getting himself into turntables and rhythm machines only later.

They both start as members of Tribal Circus, a percussion unit supporting belly dance numbers. The band often perform during rave parties and develop some kind of a fun house aspect to its show, featuring skateboard tricks, juggling and didgeridoo (hand-made out of bamboo from the neighboring bush). From that time KEIZOmachine! and Juicy start using samplers (hip hop's iconic instrument Akai MPC 2000) to play sounds other than that of their limited collection of percussions, notably Indian tabla. After years of touring the duo faces the rest of the band's refusal to develop the show's absurd and slapstick feeling further on, and trusting that their MPC and turntable skills are enough to put on a show they go their own way and form Hifana.

Hifana comes from Okinawan dialect and means "southern wind", "southern flower". Limited by no other boundary than that of their imagination, they stuff their samplers with even more shamisen and South-East Asian instruments sounds. Unsatisfied with merely mimicrying American and European underground music, this aesthetic is for them the only way to produce a genuine Japanese batch of hip hop.

They first put out a scratch record, a 12" for DJs to use in between two songs or over another tune, filled with musical quotes (gamelan, yodel) and non-sensic skits recorded from movies and television. This record allows them to connect ties with Japanese MCs and producers, but their breakthrough only happens in 1998, rapidly gathering fame with unprecedented shows in hip hop history. Though making a heavy use of machines, KEIZOmachine! and Juicy never program their beats, hitting buttons live to recreate their tracks, not even losing the groove when casually switching seats in the middle of a song. They also play "real" percussions and turntables, adding cartoonish sound effects and lines all in perfect synch to animated films shown during the concert. The whole thing is at the same time extremely controlled and alive, powerful and funny.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

The Internet is indeed their first and main instrument, as Akaiwa and Sembo chose from the very beginning to make the Web both their art gallery (exonemo.com) and main creative tool, for its easy access and quick sharing qualities. The question of how the Internet and computers change our perception of the world naturally becomes the focus of Exonemo's interactive, fun, immediately comprehensible and strangely poetical works.

In addition to works displayed on the Internet, since 2000 the duo has also participated in more than 40 festivals and exhibitions worldwide. The installations created for those events also require the public's participation and play around the space in which they are presented. In "Shi Ka Ku No Mu Kou" ("on the other side of the square") a graphic tablet is left at the visitor's disposal in a room which lights turn out as soon as someone picks up the stylus. One must then draw in the dark and the results are showed on the walls of an adjacent room. Exonemo have also performed on stage improvising visual and sound pieces with circuit-bent toys. They have also organized circuit-bending workshops and improvisation jam sessions with children.

Far from the dryness of conceptual art, Exonemo focuses above all things on fun and communication, as proves the Japanese edition of the Dorkbot festival which the duo curates, getting together a heterogeneous bunch of musicians, artists and handymen, "anyone willing to show something funny with electricity".

Exonemo's work allows the public to take some sort of revenge at technologies that are increasingly complex and important in our daily life, demystifying it through destruction, error and mutation processes before eventually reappropriating it in a creative way. Akaiwa and Sembo never consider progress an end in itself, but as an ever changing tool retaining the power to break the conscience of both the artist and public, increasing it tenfold with a heavy dose of unexpected and creating a new beauty.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Yuko Nexus6 is living in Hikone, between Osaka and Nagoya. Part time lecturer at a couple of Art and Science universities around Nagoya, she spends most of her time writing articles for the Internet and creating music for her unique style of performance.

15 years ago, almost by accident, a sudden change happened in her career when she started making “music”, using a Macintosh placed at her disposal at her job. She amused herself by installing a simple music software program in order to personalize her computer - until the day she got fired when her employer found out about her non-productive manipulations!

Yuko is a “banpaku-kid”, a child of the Universal Exposition generation of Osaka 1970. This futurist display exhibited in Osaka remains inscribed in her memory as a witness to a future both technological and happy. Psychedelic fashion, exuberant architecture and electronic music offered a vision of the future that was both optimistic and comfortable. Today, these young people, now adults, question this technology that has penetrated the most intimate aspects of their life: where is the happiness, or the radiant joy emanating from the technological promise made 30 years ago?

Fortunate disjunctures always permit her to lightly approach such a-priori dense musical concepts as time-based composition and interactive music. During her concerts, she always keeps in mind the idea of the performance. Conscious of the unspectacular dryness of an artist in front of her computer, she is constantly inventing and adding little elements like grains of sand that derail her music towards something alive and astute.

Nowadays, she is a prolific and internationally recognized sound artist. Yuko Nexus6 has been the subject of numerous interviews and citations, most recently in David Toop’s historical survey of electronic music, “Haunted Weather”. In 2003 she received the Digital Music Honorary Mention in Europe’s prestigious Prix Ars Electronica competition with Journal de Tokyo her third solo album on Sonore.

In August 2005, Sonore releases her fifth solo and new album Nexus6 Song Book. Singing jazz, folk and traditional standards in Japanese, English and German, Yuko Nexus6 processes her voice using the most high-tech devices as well as the cheapest recording gadgets.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Download Yuko Nexus6 music on: iTunes, Beatport, Juno Download

Erina Koyama was out the blocks like lightening. In 2004, after sending a demo cassette to Ryuichi Sakamoto to take part in the auditions on his show Radio Sakamoto on J-Wave FM. On hearing the track ‘Dance with Tarantula’ Ryuichi Sakamoto fell for her music and gave her the impetus she needed to get her professional career going. After the EP Inly and the full length Vividrop which came out in 2007 on Rhythm Zone (the Avex group), her second album was released on Commmons, the label run by Ryuichi Sakamoto (also Avex).

Erina Koyama started wanting to be a singer at the age of 20. She was working in a jazz club and sang regularly with an R&B act. But she felt frustrated artistically and the experience didn’t go anywhere. She wanted to get her hands on the music as well and give herself a wider range of sounds to play with. That was when she discovered the creative potential of DTM (Desk Top Music). She threw herself into it and developed her skills over several years by a process of trial and error before mastering the tools of the trade and gaining full artistic satisfaction. Erina Koyama is a determined young woman.

She writes, composes and performs her own arrangements, taking charge of everything from recording to mixing. She is demanding and perfectionist and doesn’t simply reproduce her recordings on stage. Live, she works with an Irish harpist and a guitarist. She aims to produce vast original music with a powerful impact and light touch of Japanese spirituality. In one of her first songs ‘Hana Uta’ she talks about the temporary nature of the beauty of flower-shaped figures of sound, the simplicity of her own existence and the beauty of the sky.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Doravideo is the solo project of Yoshimitsu Ichiraku, born in 1959 in Yamaguchi prefecture, 1000 km away from Tokyo. As a child, Ichiraku secretly listens to The Doors and Led Zeppelin under the sheets of his bed, afraid that his parents might think he'd turned into some kind of Hell's Angels/ juvenile delinquent. In the early nineties Ichiraku plays music in, before starting to collaborate with many Japanese and Western artists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Haco, Pascal Comelade, Eugene Chadbourne, Gong, Kevin Ayers, Keiji Haino, Kazuhisa Uchihashi... In 1996 he joins the Choi Song Bae Trio from Korea, then becomes a regular member of Omoide Hatoba (along with Yamamoto Seiichi) and I.S.O. (with Yoshihide Otomo et Sachiko M.) and joins Acid Mothers Temple for their 2001 US and UK tour.

After that he tours the world as All Asian Traditional Pop Orchestra, a solo drum unit (!) which he later decides to upgrade with video. A helpless TV addict fascinated with electromagnetic waves produced by the quick change of channels he decides to add video to his performance "just to make things funnier". Programmer Takayuki Ito designs for him a software to match his needs : first "Paradrum", then "Doravideo" in 2004. This name derives from "Doraemon", a manga character from the 50s who's become a true icon of Japanese pop culture. In the same way Ichiraku loots video material without any regards to copyright laws his hijacking of such an icon comes as a refreshing and vibrant approach in a world of paranoia about sampling, downloading, bootlegging and so on.

Cat-robot Doraemon takes out of his belly pocket an infinite number of zany inventions such as the indoor skiing machine, a door that opens up to any desired place, or seed-grown takeout meals. And thus the "dora" tag in Doravideo betrays Ichiraku's taste for the absurd and the unpredictable, bricolage giving birth to countless surprises and infinite potentialities.

Video samples come from all over and are gathered without any obvious thread running through them industrial films showing salarymen visiting a factory and later getting drunk with ryokan hostesses, excerpts from Kubrick's "Shining", avant-garde music concerts, Japanese variety shows, broadcast of the Emperor on parade. The most delightful moments are perhaps those when the plundering gives birth to the most childish entertainment, like when hard rock band KISS are turned into jerky puppets dancing along to Japanese drums.

Deliberately emphasizing on the show's scabrous, down-market entertaining features, Ichiraku opposes critics considering Doravideo belongs not in clubs but in museums and art galleries, "if only he'd pick his material with better taste". His refusal to be associated with an elitist conception of art notably showed at Ars Electronica Festival 2005, when he did not bother going and receive the Honorary Mention he was awarded!

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Then she’ll freak out completely, no control over her emotions, singing, “Sip my juice if you’re thirsty / I’ll take you where there’s something to see…”. The rage she lets rip on stage is neither conscious nor thought out, just a desire to explode. Doddodo’s power is mysterious, almost shamanistic and channelled through old school hiphop. And if she is part of a school, it’s the punk and psychedelia of Osaka that lays first claim, the city raising her profile on a cyclical basis. You’d also have to mention Boredoms, as well as Pavement, but Doddodo is constantly evolving and builds on her influences in real time.

A close friend of Baiyon, Maruosa, DJ Mighty Mars, Oshiri PenPenz and Afrirampo who she comes together with occasionally (in the groups Fantaji Nakama and HanHan Neko Musume), Doddodo is a solo project born out of a fierce desire to “do” music that made itself felt around the beginning of the noughties. She writes her melodies on a keyboard before bringing in the samples, which work as kind of rhythmical axes, skilfully dug out of material on various bought or borrowed CDs. She only started singing much later, one evening in 2006, when she was cycling home and humming along to the tunes she’d been playing that day.

Although you can hear ethnic sounds in Doddodo’s music, there’s no particular conceptualisation behind this. Where she’s at is pure sensation. Doddodo does what she wants. As effective as a right hook, her music can wind an entire audience. She’s not weighed down by particular styles or hampered by references. She’s no showoff either. Doddodo’s music is direct, sometimes slightly absurd, hip-hop as if by accident and then a sort of furious spurt.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

At the beginning of 2005 Daisuke Endo was mixing in trendy Roppongi clubs and starting to gain a bit of a reputation for himself. In 2006 he brought out his first self-release on CD-R, attracting the attention of a slightly wider audience. In 2007, Kazunao Nagata, a producer with his ear particularly close to the ground, offered to release his first album, Tide of Stars on ExT Recordings. It was an immediate hit. 30,000 copies were sold in just a few months and even mainstream suppliers were placing large orders. The major, Avex, recognised the artist’s value straight up and offered him a contract accordingly. In the spring of 2008, De De Mouse made his “major” debut and brought out his second album Sunset Girls on Avex Trax, alongside the 8-bit trio YMCK.

His first loves were releases on English labels such as Rephlex or Planet Mu and the music that he mixed then was slightly harder than it is now. At the age of about 24 his influences became broader and Daisuke Endo rediscovered Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega and My Bloody Valentine. He then began bringing more melodic elements into his writing. His “live” arsenal grew and he started using keyboards as if to signal to audiences that he was no mere DJ but a composer in his own right.

His music might have gained in wisdom over time but De De Mouse hasn’t lost any of the aggressive transcendence he has always brought to the stage. He heckles the audience without any qualms, as if to pull you in deeper. The video projections that accompany his concerts are the result of collaborations with artists such as Tenshi Iwai (DASI), who also did the video for the stand-out track ‘East End Girl’. This recent visual development seems to suggest that there is a whole other world waiting for Daisuke Endo to explore.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Chimidoro means “bloody” and is a reference to a gang of bikers who appeared in Kinpachi Sensei, a Japanese high school TV series in the Seventies and Eighties. 3 young high school students, Nao Suzuki, Kusumoto and Miyama decided at the time that one day they would form their own gang called Chimidoro. The years went by and at university, Nao Suzuki got into Chicago and Detroit techno/house (Underground Resistance). He bought his first sampler and started to play around with electronic compositions.

Nao Suzuki played DJ Funk to his friends Kusumoto and Miyama and got them hooked in. Kusumoto’s cheek and Miyama’s chat went superbly with Nao’s electronic rhythms. They decided to get a band together rather than a bikers’ gang, but kept the name Chimidoro. They mimicked Ghetto House as closely as they could, but as they didn’t understand English, Kusumoto and Miyama looked for Japanese equivalents to the sounds of English words. Several concerts later, Ichinomiya (bass guitar) joined the group.

By the time they released their first album Minna no Uta on Tokyo Fun Party in 2007, the group had already existed for more than ten years. The members of Chimidoro have grown up and got jobs: they build buildings and IT networks, work on Internet search engines and do graphics for ads. Their reputation is growing but they aren’t getting carried away. The band is both a pretext for coming together among friends and an outlet for their everyday frustrations. Chimidoro don’t really take themselves seriously and don’t go all out for originality either. At the same time, there’s an unequalled freshness about their playful, knackering electronica that they know just how to put across on stage.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Chikanari Shukuka was born in the 60s of a tea ceremony teacher who certainly help her taste for solemnity. In the 90s she starts painting. Abstract and seemingly unhindered, her compositions are executed after having meticulously painted the background color. The painting is quick and focused, the result of a resoluteness that pervades in her present day dancing style.

The urge to dance came to her in a very brutal way. A personal drama in the late 90s left her defenseless and almost unable to move. Chikanari's body literally took over her conscience to free her from the spiraling breakdown and expressed an irrepressible need to move. She attended butoh legend Kazuo Ohno's workshop where concentration and reappropriation of her body let her step away from the shell-shock and resurface.

In 2003 she answers an advert on the internet from laptop artist Marqido who is then looking for a visual accompaniment to his first unit. Joined by singer Atsushi Kinoshita they focus exclusively on live performances and for one year experiment a fusion of sound and dance before splitting up. This experience nourished Chikanari's interest in sound and she then challenges herself to perform alone producing the music accompanying her dance herself.

In fact, when she performs today as Chikanari Shukuka Solo music is in no measure a mere accompaniment, it is inextricably bonded to the dance, and both are at the same time origin and outcome. Although the set-up is ever changing, she usually uses a hi-hat cymbal, little bells which are attached to her wrists, a mic, effector and rhythm machine. As natural as breathing, dance is in each of her movements, whether rolling the cymbal with the tip of her fingers, jumping across the stage or graciously disentangling the mic cable curled up around her legs. Despite the class she attended with Ohno's workshop her style is very much self-taught, fusing elements of flamenco, theatre or gymnastics. Despite these reference points the audience faces a show without any true precursor, overcome by an unexplainable inconvenience only amplified by the performance's discipline and resoluteness. Rather than a dance, it is more some kind of personal exorcism ceremony, a choreographed self-analysis session which basic elements are the body and sound.

Every performance (she does around 50 shows a year) is improvised, beat by jerky and rather simple movements that seem to bear an extraordinary but elusive meaning. She swings the mic in the air before hitting it on the cymbal, unleashing howls and hisses swirling in space like the arms of an octopus, before whispering with her ghostly voice, a siren's call addressed to no one. For what makes these performances so unique is the striking paradox between the complete charm under which the audience is immediately cast, and the sense that Chikanari Shukuka dances essentially for herself.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure