▼Application guideline (Japanese)

MURASAKI (guest artist)

SOON KIM, one of the few musicians who studied under Ornette Coleman and conprehended the theory and practice of Coleman’s Harmolodics, which is said to be the biggest mystery of music history in the 20th century, has just formed this band that comprises saxophone, noh instrument otsuzumi and double bass. His collaboration with Nobuyoshi Ino, a state-of-the-art jazz basist who has played with a number of musicians including Masayuki Takayanagi, Elvin Jones and Masahiko Togashi, “the king of modern bass” Kiyoto Fujiwara and a group of otsuzumi players led by Shonosuke Okura, one of Japan’s intangible cultural treasures, creates absolutely new harmolodic groove that defies Japanese traditional music, Western modern music and even Japanese–Western / traditional–modern fusion.

Masafumi Yamamoto

Based in Osaka, he calls himself a “laboring artist.”

Plum

Born Chie Ozeki in 1981. 156cm. Began singing at clubs in Gifu, where she is based, as Plum when she was around 18 years old. Along with solo activities she has played with a hip-hop group, formed a piano + vocal unit and sung at a snack bar where oldies bands would play, and recently focuses on solo songs with the piano. Currently also a member of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Among her recent releases are Fountain days by pd (2011), No. by plum (2012) and Kokyu (Breath) by Chie Ozeki (2013).

Yosuke Nomura

Has played with diverse musicians including Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Tatsuhiko Asano, Tadashi Kumihara and Toshiji Mikawa and organized various events. Won the Jun Sakurai Award in Chiyoda Arts Festival 2013. Sent the tracks that he had recorded and accumulated alone to New Sound Sanctuary and was selected.

Miho Maruyama

Born in Tokyo in 1991. Started her activities while studying media arts and programming as a student. Creates sounds interweaving loose beats with noise.

Merzbow (guest artist)

A vegan straightedge noise project by Masami Akita. Getting involved in the noise/industrial scene in the early 80s, he started to release recordings mainly from overseas labels. In the 90s, influenced by the grindcore movement, he released albums from the death metal label Relapse. In the 2000s, in support of Mego’s “punk computer music,” he employed a laptop for live performances. Since around 2003, he has been practicing vegan diet advocating animal rights and creating works against whale fishery, dolphin fishry and furs. Recently he focuses on sound creation with analog equipments.

Tatsuya Nakamura (guest artist)

Born in Toyama in 1965. Played the drums in a number of bands including The Genbaku Onanies and The Stalin, and formed BLANKEY JET CITY in 1990 with Kenichi Asai and Toshiyuki Terui. After the band broke up, he released five albums of his own project LOSALIOS and involved himself in a lot of sessions with Japanese and international artists from jazz, avant-garde and other diverse backgrounds. His current activities, in addition to LOSALIOS, include a range of projects such as FRICTION, TWINTAIL and SPEEDER-X. He has also been active as an actor and appeared in such films and TV drama as BULLET BALLET, Nada So So, The Blood of Rebirth and Ryoma-den.

Taro Yoshihara

Born in Tokyo in 1968. BA in composition at Showa University of Music and MA at the University of Yamanashi. Studied composition under Tatsuji Toyozumi and Yoshibumi Fujiwara and electronic music under Kazuko Narita. Participated in the electronic music atelier of INA-GRM (Institut National Audiovisuel — Groupe de Recherches Musicals) in 2001. Since 2002, he has gradually grown involved in 24-channel digital multi-track three-dimensional sound pieces. His works and activities have been featured by Japanese and French festivals, televisions and radios. He worked on a large-scale acousmonium with 53 channels and 70 speakers in FUJI Acousmatic Music Festival 2014, and has been involved in the development of original omnidirectorial loudspeakers (ION SPACE, SOKEN inc), tweeter enclosure (Kai no Takumi Odagiri) and a system for controlling acoustic space (NILE, TAMON Co., Inc.). Currently a member of Japanese Society for Electronic Music, executive committee member of acsm116, advisor for Gallery Nakamura, representative of SPACE VISION, member of SPEAKERS ORCHESTRA, artistic director of FUJI Acousmatic Music Festival, and instructor at the Faculty of Education and Human Sciences and Center for Education Research of the University of Yamanashi.

NOEL-KIT

Creates quiet and gorgeous tracks making full use of old-school synthesizers and samplers as well as MAX/MSP programming. As the half of electronic improvisation duo DUB-Russell, he has appeared in events including SonarSound Tokyo and remixed Jeff Mills’ track. Also works as the mechanic of a mysterious and soothing vocaloid girl Funwari-chan and as Tengu Magazine. As a solo artist, he has released In Praise of Shadows (Bunkai-Kei records) that was inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki and the techniques of ink painting as well as Steamfunk and TOKYO NOISE (Bandcamp).

Jim O’Rourke

Born 1969 in Chicago. O’Rourke encountered the music of Derek Bailey as youngster. Eyes opened to the power of improvisational guitar, he released several of his own highly experimental works. While associating with the Chicago experimental and improv scene, his work with Takehisa Kosugi, music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as well as Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt, Christian Wolff and others built bridges between contemporary and popular music. O’Rourke’s release of landmark albums Bad Timing (1997) and Eureka (1999) garnered much attention. From 1999 to 2005 he was a member of Sonic Youth, playing as well as recording and mixing the band. In 2004 he won a Grammy Award for his production of Wilco’s album. He currently lives in Tokyo, and some of his many production and collaboration credits in Japan include Quruli, Kahimi Karie, Eiko Ishibashi, Akira Sakata, Yoshihide Otomo, Seiichi Yamamoto, Boredoms and others. He has also released his own interpretation of Toru Takemitsu’s work and film soundtracks, and even directs films himself. His newest solo album The Visitor has exibited extreme intensity and subtlety of his work as an one-man band.

Chihei Hatakeyama

Released his first solo album in 2006 from Kranky (US), and since then has released a number of works that involve beautiful ambient drones employing both digital and analog equipments from labels around the world. In 2011 he toured ten locations in five European countries and played with to rococo rot and Tim Hecker. In addition to his solo works, an electro-acoustic duo Opitope with Tomoyoshi Date released albums from SPEKK, and Luis Nanook with vocalist Tsutomu Satachi released two albums that mix electronic and traditionally folk sounds. Works also as a mastering and recording engineer, producing a lot of pieces, and organizes an ambient music label White Paddy Mountain.

Yoshio Machida

Musician, steelpan player / fine artist. Comprehensively studied art, music and visual arts under Kuniharu Akiyama at Tama Art University. His performance ranges from jazz to electoronica involving steelpan, gamelan and electronics. Also active as Ohanami, a duo with Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. Internationally took part in music festivals such as ISEA2004, SonarSound Tokyo and MaerzMusik, and created music for Van Cleef & Arpels’ exhibition. Organizer of a music label Amorfon, he also discovers and produces Japanese and international unique artists. In spring 2014, he released an album involving only an analog synthesizer in the 1970s SYNTHI AKS from Baskaru (France).

Takuro Shibayama

Born in Tokyo in 1971. MA in music at Tokyo College of Music Graduate School and Ph.D. in the fine arts at the Graduate School of Fine Arts (Intermedia Art), Tokyo University of the Arts. Having kept a certain distance from the movements of Western contemporary music since he was a student, he sticks to monotonous and qualitative approaches that resist development of temporal structure. Selected in the 62nd Music Competition of Japan and in the Akiyoshidai International Composition Award in 1994 as well as in the 34th Concours International de Bourges in 2007 and ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) in 2012 and 2014. He has created a number of installations in collaboration with fine artist Hisako Inoue, which has continued for fifteen years. Currently, together with engineering, psychology and cognitive science scholars, he is studying issues around a system that generates itself, i.e., how human inference and emotion with expectation forms a new system that generates the future and a social order. An associate professor at Tokyo Denki University and part-time instructor at Osaka University of Arts, Tokoha University, International Christian University and Joshibi University of Art and Design.

CoH

An alias of a Russian musician based in Stockholm Ivan Pavlov, under which he has been releasing materials since 1998. Since the late 1990s, he has established reputation in the context of conputer-based music led by such European labels as raster-noton, Mego and Eskaton. In addition to solo activities, he has released collaborative works with Coil, Cyclobe and Cosey Fanni Tutti in the recent decade. He launched a Utopian and futuristic art project SOISONG together with Peter Christopherson in 2007, and it continued until 2012. He released a new album TO BEAT from Editions Mego in May 2014.

Christophe Charles

Born in France in 1964. Graduated from Tsukuba University (Ph.D., 1996) and Paris INALCO (Ph.D., 1997). Associate professor since 2000 and professor since 2011 at Musashino Art University. A board member of Institute of Environmental Art and Design. Specializing in media art, through theoretical and historical studies on contemporary art, he has been creating installations and presenting concerts indoor and outdoor, exploring balance between elements as well as their autonomy and interference. Among his works and activities are CD series undirected and permanent sound installations at Osaka Sumai Joho Center (supervised by Katsuhiro Yamaguchi) and Narita International Airport Central Atrium. He has collaborated with Katsuhito Yamaguchi, Keigo Yamamoto, Sho Kazakura, Henning Christiansen, Takuro Osaka, Chie Mukai, Tetsuo Furudate, Yoshimichi Takei, oval, Yoshihiro Hanno, Numb, Fukuro Ishikawa, JOU, Akihito Kubota, Keiichiro Shibuya and others.

Carl Stone

Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music, and has been hailed by the Village Voice as “the king of sampling” and “one of the best composers living in (the USA) today.” He has used computers in live performance since 1986. Stone was born in Los Angeles and now divides his time between San Francisco and Japan. He studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. His works have been performed in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the Near East, and he has collaborate with a wide range of Japanese artists including Yoshihide Otomo, Yuji Takahashi, Yasuaki Shimizu, Yumiko Tanaka, Keiichiro Shibuya, Toshimaru Nakamura, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Makiko Sakurai, Aki Onda and Aki Takahashi. In addition to his schedule of performance, composition and touring, he is on the faculty of the Department of Media Engineering at Chukyo University in Japan.