Video: Hiroshi Hasegawa at Earthdom, October 16 2008

Monday, November 17, 2008


Hiroshi Hasegawa aka Astro (Live, Tokyo October 16, 2008) from JapaneseNoiseProject on Vimeo.

Hiroshi Hasegawa, performing under the name Astro, invited us down to Earthdom in Shin Okubo to catch one of his solo sets. With a simple table propping up his audio lab: an analog synthesizer set in half of a suitcase in addition to a small mixer and some effects pedals. Almost in a ritual-like fashion, Hasegawa started his performance by lighting incense cradled in a small dish. Hasegawa’s set was rather linear and structural with introductions of sounds, drones and pulsing waves that entered so appropriately, one could assume they were time, or planned. At slower tempos, improvisation can get a bit blurry however it was clearly in real time. Enthralled, enthused and focused throughout, when the incense burned out, the set ended.

We had a great, long talk after the set with Hasegawa about the origins and motivations for his music. Hasegawa continued by filling us in on what was going on around the time when he was growing up and experimenting with his first synthesizer (which he borrowed from Mikawa of The Incapacitants).

We’ll archive that for now, but we’ll show a little performance here.

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