Japanese Noise Project

I sat down with musician, artist and friend Hisham Bharoocha a little over a month ago while he was in Tokyo for a few shows and fresh off a Boredoms performance in Australia. You may know Hisham through his solo music project, Soft Circle (myspace here), and you may know he's been a key creative partner of EYE- increasingly in recent years- with creative direction and co- production of the mammoth Boadrum perfomances in New York (7/7/2007) and Los Angeles (8/08/2008). I thought I'd ask Hisham for a few comments about his long relationship and experiences of working with EYE as well personal thoughts on the artist, some of which I'd like to consider appending to the rise of The Boredoms.

EYE and Hisham recently spoke together at the ICA in London where Soft Circle (with its new member, Benjamin Vida) performed. Check it out here:
http://www.ica.org.uk/26459/Talks/Boadrum-in-Conversation.html
and here:
http://www.ica.org.uk/26457/Music/Soft-Circle-EYE-Boredoms-Nedry-Baths.html

We're approaching another sit down with EYE Yamataka in the coming year and I'll be heading to Osaka for a few days for another couple of interviews with some artists and key figures (but don't want to mention them just yet!).

More later.

The Boredoms will stop by Tokyo for a now sold-out performance with the following collaborators. We're looking forward to being back in Tokyo, catching the show and talking closely with EYE and Hisham of Soft Circle. The line up is as follows: EYE, YOSHIMI, YOJIRO, Hisham Bharoocha (Soft Circle), Zach Hill (HELLA), Butchy Fuego (Pit Er Pat, NA FUEGO), Kid Millions (Oneida), Jeremy Hyman (Ponytail) and Shinji Masuko (DMBQ).

The Boredoms will also be playing this years Sense of Wonder Festival too.

Thanks to Jason Bergman for the photo of The Boredoms at Terminal 5.

Last Wednesday brought a visit to PSF Records where Hideo Ikeezumi has been running his PSF shop and label HQ for about 30 years. Set in an inconspicuous apartment in central-west Tokyo, the shop is packed full of releases from the Japanese psychedelic and avant-garde underground; some in limited quantities and unfortunately out of print for good. Amidst the digging and 360-head scans of the room, we were even lucky enough to find an originally packaged, Incapacitants cassette tape from their earlier days among other treasures. So as a somewhat historical vault full of stories, renowned passersby and seeing Ikeezumi as one of the essential historical figures in this story, we were more than happy to land the chance to have an interview.





While at PSF, we had a great conversation which extended from historical themes, personal anecdotes, future plans even to simple thumbs-up-thumbs-down or to-stock-or-not-to-stock ratings as we chatted through the years and perused the shelves of releases (top shelf being reserved for his favorites). I also picked up a back issue of G-Modern, the psychedelic, avant-garde, underground magazine which Ikeezumi edits, which features an over ten page interview with Keiji Haino. To add, I also came away with a live recording of Takayanagi Masayuki, New Direction / Call In Question which Ikeezumi straight pushed on me and told me I needed to hear.

Photos: Cameron Mckean, more on our flickr.

This Wednesday, we'll be heading out in full force to continue our chat with Atsuhiro Ito (Optrum) and Hiroshi Hasegawa in addition to capturing The Incapacitants' performance. Likely to be a rambunctuous evening full of (some first time) collaborations, performing live are:
Melt-Banana Lite
Kuruucrew + ASTRO
OFFSEASON (Atsuhiro Ito+HIKO+Kuropipe Stardust)
MARUOSA
Overload Collapse (Nicolas Fasnacht & Nikola Mounoud from Switzerland)
Evil Moisture (a.k.a Andy Bolus from Paris, France)
TOKAGE (Yann Grivet from Switzerland).

Opens at 17:00, starts at 17:30. All the above for 2800円 (advance) or 3300円 (plus drink) at the door.

The lack of posting could be a kind reflection of how hectic its been over here although, the film has pressed on and in the recent lull of posting we've actually been active at shows (Optrum, Hair Stylistics was properly exceptional) in addition to writing (Eye Yamataka interview in Dazed & Confused, Feb09), research and of course, editing footage into the darker (...and then brighter) hours of the day. Two weeks ago, one of our familiar faces, Hiroshi Hasegawa aka Astro collaborated with Batur Sonmez aka Analog Suicide from Istanbul Turkey at Shinjuku Urga. It was part of Lunatic Scope Volume 12, a line up which featured Bastard Noise, Defektro and Government Alpha.

Even though our cameraman couldn't make it at the last minute, we still followed through on Hasegawa's invitation. Afterwards, I had a nice albeit brief chat which we continued over email and so I'll post some words I translated from Hasegawa with some images to go along. We'll cut part 2 of our interview with Hasegawa-san in the near future and be sure to post a clip on our Youtube and Vimeo channels. In the meantime....



My attention was initially drawn to what seemed the latest addition to Hasegawa's fold up table- a mysterious retro-looking box and what appeared to be gold-coated paper. Hasegawa's set was centered around two metallic (about A4 size) sheets; shiny and paper thin. On where their role: "well, those metallic sheets, I had attached contact microphones which worked to pick up the friction and vibrations when I shook or slid the sheets against each other." In addition to the pedal set up below his table, Hasegawa was in true analog-form running the smaller contact microphones through a high voltage, all-tube analog annihilator; essentially the 'box' on the table which all eyes seemed to gravitate towards at one moment or another (I have a weblink if anyone wants to know). "Since my performance is based around my [analog, ed] synthesizer and effector set up, I'm somewhat limited to what extent I can move my body so these sheets gave me some more freedom not only in terms of sound but also movement."



We briefly went on to discuss collaborations and how the evening went with both Sonmez and Reiko A. While Astro was enthralled with the sheets (and the occasional reattaching of the contact mics), he commented, "of course, I think its important to not only hear, but also to be conscious of your collaborator's sounds- its very much like a regular sign that is read." Meanwhile, Reiko A's dance performance, punctuated with fixed stares, corpse-like poses on the floor as well as firmly locked ones via angular jukes, was familiar of the Butoh aesthetic in broader strokes. "Yeah, I've been playing together with Reiko for quite some time and so we I can really read her signalspretty well. From that gathered sense of communication, I've come to more fully realize the importance of her signs and movements. I can observe the movements Reiko makes, and while they are natural reactions, from my sounds, and she's expressing in a physical way, its like a language that gives me a more composite idea of what is happening during the performance."


All photos courtesy N. Yamamoto-Masson, 2009