There are still many things left for us to do in 2008,
We hope to see you all again someday soon
Happy New Year !

~selected highlights of 2007~

Jan 2007
"We Are All Cotton-Hearted" compilation
mu-nest (Malaysia)
includes "in sundown light"
art direction by Kitchen.

March 29-31 2007
Theatreworks presents "Drift Net"
@72-13 (Singapore)
(Choy Ka Fai + Daito Manabe + Takayuki Fujimoto + Rizman Putra + aspidistrafly)

Participated as music/visual performers

~includes~
the river, myself, the sky
sui
Moonlight Shadow

April 20, 2007
"If you believe compilation volume one" compilation
9.12 Records (Canada)
includes "red toe nails"

May 25, 2007
The Asylum presents
"Piana Live in Concert"
@The Substation Guinness Theatre (Singapore)
w/ Piana, aspidistrafly, sonicbrat

~setlist~
candlescape / Moonlight Shadow
red toe nails
in sundown light
On the Summer Solstice

June 23, 2007
Soundscape Records presents
"Caroline Live in KL"
@KLPAC (Kuala Lumpur)
w/ Caroline, aspidistrafly, dian bang

~setlist~
candlescape / Moonlight Shadow
red toe nails
in sundown light
On the Summer Solstice
Stranger, Here is where we live

Aug 20, 2007
"in sundown light" web interactive
art direction by Kitchen.
music by aspidistrafly

Sept 28, 2007
"String Theory" compilation
Dreamland Recordings (Australia)
includes "sea glass"
song image by rika m.

Nov 4, 2007
KualaukTable presents
"Kuala Mute Geek Volume 10"
@Loop-Line (Tokyo)
w/ aspidistrafly, naph, opitope

~setlist~
台所
Stranger, Here is where we live
Suburbia
red toe nails
sui / improvised set
candlescape / Moonlight Shadow

Nov 4, 2007
Improvised Set
@Loop-Line (Tokyo)
w/ (l-r) Chihei Hatakeyama (Kranky), Ohara Toru (Nature Bliss), Tomoyoshi Date (Flyrec), Ricks Ang (Kitchen.)

Nov 8, 2007
Recording session with Chihei Hatakeyama
@Nature Bliss Studio (Tokyo)

9th Nov

04:35 P.M

15°C

Goodbye Tokyo...

See you next spring

Tonight is to be our last night in Tokyo. We met up with Hideho Takemasa and Chihei Hatakeyama at the Nakano-Sakaue station along the Marunouchi subway line. Just before reaching this line, april and i had a first hand experience of the jostling and manic at the Shinjuku station during rush hours. It looks like everyone didnt mind to be pushed into the train...the force, i thought was going to break the guitar i was carrying on my back.

The neighbourhood of Nakano Sakaue is in contrast with Shinjuku (just 2 stops away). We walked through private residences and weaved through tiny alleys which resembles a maze to me. It reminds me of Malcom street in Singapore albeit a more congested one. Eventually, after a long walk (Japanese loves walking) we reached a small Tadao Ando like 2-3 story commercial building. We took out our shoes and proceed down a stairway to the basement where the Nature Bliss office is situated.

On this evening, we get to see what it is like in the office that is home of Nao Sugimoto's 3 record labels, Nature Bliss, Plop and Spekk. Collectively, the office is called Nature Bliss, a creative company providing audio post production, sound and graphics design, distribution, artist management etc. Before the formation of Nature Bliss and this office was also shared with two other Japanese independent record labels, Cubic Music (which was run by Keiichi Sugimoto and Tetsuro Yasunaga) and Flyrec. Despite moving out of the office, I could still sense the strong community support they all have for one another. This should provide a working example of independant labels and the artists revolving around it by giving support to one another...whether in areas like design, event organisation, production and even down to CD duplication... this is how an independent scene is created and most importantly sustained. This could be the determining factor that puts the Tokyo minimal electronics scene on the global map.

Ohara-san, the studio manager, then showed us to a small recording studio just next to the stairway. This is a studio where alot of the artists from the related labels have used. It is equipped with a G5 Power Mac running Logic Pro 7, Fostex Monitors, MOTU 1296, Nord Lead 2, Sequential Phophet 600 and minimoog synthesizers. I also spotted a pretty spiffy Avalon U5 pre-amp. (edit: Hideho added that almost half of these equipments belongs to Ohara-san) Although the studio was quite small, it could somehow fit the 3 of us (Chihei, April and me) and we arranged our equipments for the recording of our collaboration.

Chihei had the same equipments as he had for his live last Sunday, one apple G4 powerbook and a newer Macbook Pro running Max/MSP and Recktor respectively, a boss space echo twin pedal and a boss looper pedal. He had brought with him many pre-recorded samples with him while i improvised live mainly with my guitars. Regretfully, i wished i had brought along my entire repertoire of sounds to Tokyo however this invitation for a session came unexpected but i am glad Chihei did so. April on the other hand would contribute improvised vocal arrangements for this session.

Our first session ended in about 40 minutes and Chihei gleefully expressed that the recordings reminded him of "Singapore at night". Much to our surprise as Chihei doesnt speak alot of English, he could also pronounce our band name "aspidistrafly" effortlessly. We have also noticed that Japanese has somewhat no problem with getting our names right as well as making sure our names are perpetually in small caps.

During the break, we were then presented with 7 copies of Spekk's releases as a gift from Nao. An extremely generous offer...thank you Nao-san ! We had ice cold bitter coffee and Chihei revealed to me that he likes Windy & Carl and Sylvian Chauveau and his experience touring in America with the likes of Greg Davis. While Hideho, who has patiently waited for us to finish the session, showed April an article he had written about Singapore for the Afterhours magazine. I too had read the article before and many agreed that his protrayal of Singapore is highly accurate and commendable.

Then we would go back into the recording studio and eventually we have 80 mins worth of music ready to be manipulated, processed, edited after this session. Hopefully someday, it would be fitting for release. Nonetheless it has been always a pleasure playing with Chihei, as i like his approach in creating warm but quiet melodies with his pallette of pre-processed guitar sounds.

We ended the day with a mini celebratory dinner at a small restaurant and the meal turned out to be like an episode of Fear Factor, all in the fun of tasting weird cuisine from Japan. We ate Cow's heart, cheeks, stomach. I am not much of a fan of the innards but yet again, the sashimi was delicious and fresh. The cow's stomach tasted good in the miso sauce.

Nature Bliss:
http://www.naturebliss.jp/

Spekk:
http://www.spekk.net

P*dis:
http://www.inpartmaint.com/pdis/

On this lovely Wednesday evening, I met up with two fast emerging young artists from Japan namely haruka nakamura & Akira Kosemura for a talk about music. Our friend, Ichiro Nagasawa came along to provide his excellent translation (thank you ichiro !) and we would spend 3 hours in a fruitful conversation / interview for Akira's Schole Magazine (Akira recorded the whole process on his Edirol portable recorder). Ichiro, being a Singaporean trapped in a Japanese body, ordered nasi goreng (a malay dish) !

While we have always highly regarded haruka's works, he has only officially emerged into the music scene with the release of "Afterglow" which is a collaborative effort with Akira. A musician with undeniable talent, haruka has spent most of his time honing his musicianship eversince moving to Tokyo when he was about 16, engaging himself in various bands and a stint as a Jazz musician in clubs. His other project, Nica, combines sakamoto-esque piano jibes, bossa nova, jazz, minimal electronics mixed into contemporary musicial forms.

To my surprise, haruka nakamura recorded everything on an MTR (multi-track recorder) and doesnt use any computers for his musical production. This is considered quite a feat as in this day and age, recording using computers or DAWs for that matter is more or less a norm. Yet again, this supports my claim that Japanese artists are usually frugal but at the same time, they maximise the use of whatever equipments they have efficiently. Come end of the year, haruka states his intention to move up a notch and purchase a Macbook Pro to hopefully do much more for yet another one of his incarnations called h./, an experimental ambient project. We also talked about our impending collaboration, working on a track each for our respective albums. haruka has also specifically invited April to sing in one of his tracks. I am very looking forward to it. Expect a haruka nakamura solo album out from Schole label around April 2008.

Akira Kosemura, like haruka nakamura, emerged at the same time. Currently pursuing a degree majoring in Sociology, for his age (only 22), he has showed immense potential both as an artist as well as label manager for Schole. After appearing in countless compilations worldwide, he has invited the likes of RF, Familiar Trees, Lullatone to appear in the well-received Schole compilation. Immediatly after that, Lawrence English from Room40 handpicked Akira as the first release for his avant-pop label Someone Good, which he co-manages with his wife Rebecca.

Schole has in alot of ways charmed me with their sense for beautiful aesthetics and photography. The Schole magazine which was also produced by his crew which consist of designers Shin and Yuma Saito also has a nice section introducing various parks in Tokyo.

All of us acknowledged that we met today because of myspace. This was how we discovered one another. While it is slowly getting tiring to maintain myspace there was no doubt that it brought us together and the small community we have created there has brought us many opportunities and joy. haurka ended the night by giving us a precious polaroid taken with his sx-70 camera.

Schole:
http://www.scholecultures.net

haruka nakamura:
http://myspace.com/harukanakamura

Akira Kosemura:
http://myspace.com/kose0606

涼しい風...
青空...
華麗な木...

soundtrack:
Graf - haruka nakamura

There happened to be a milk kiosk situated at this platform. The milk came in a glass bottle and tasted very fresh. Do milk in glass bottles always taste this good ?

As readers of this blog may recall Piana from our experience working with her in Singapore last May. Coincidently, Piana and us had seperate shows on the same day last Sunday but to our delight, we were able to meet again, along with Junji Kubo (A&R of noble records) in Tokyo. Having just spend 3 days previously in Singapore means we didnt get enough time and i am glad that we resumed our conversation at a nice little Japanese restaurent along the outskirts of Shibuya. This get-together allowed us to catch up since the last meeting in May.

Piana as many here in Singapore know by now, has sinced gained worldwide acclaim for her 3rd album "eternal castle", an effort which was regarded to be a more "pop" featuring sessions with a live band. I highly recommend listeners to regard this as the last offering in a chronology of 3 tracing back to her genre-defying micropop debut "Snow Bird" released on Cubic Music and her progress to establish herself as a creditable songwriter and producer for "Ephemeral" released on Taylor Deupree's Happy sub-label. In the day, Piana is also working as a producer and is currently producing a young female artist for a major label.

This time, all of us was in a much relaxed mood, minus all the hectic and stress from preparing the show back in Singapore, this meeting we had today developed into one of the best we had in Tokyo. Junji was so kind to present us with gifts from his label and the both of them even came to our hotel to pick us up. Thank you! One of the CDs Junji had given us is Kashiwa Daisuke's debut in Japan. Incidentally, the cover was designed by Koji Nishida (RAKU-GAKI) a web developer based in Tokyo. It is a surprise that Piana mentioned he is aware of our own web developement works for our company, Kitchen. too. Hopefully some day we too get to cross paths with him. I was equally surprised too that Piana has worked with Atsuhiro Ito before. Ito has previously travelled to Singapore to participate in Hadaka K in September, organised by our friend Yuen Chee Wai.

Interestingly, we engaged ourselves in a conversation about Japanese pop music. One of the things that draws us to Piana's music is her pop sensibility and the answers was revealed when she told us she loves Spitz, an almost lengendary Japanese pop band that April and myself love too. Junji then added that Spitz was one of the first major acts in Japan to have album covers that didnt contain images of themselves. Personally not so keen of their latest offerings circa 2001-2007, their early works remains to be song of our youths. All of us agreed that the sadness in their music and whimsical lyrics about childhood and love brought out an aspect of Japanese music that is often missing in music produced elsewhere in the world.

That wasnt just the only coincidence as soon, April and Piana found out they both like the same Ghibli film "Whisper of the heart". Inspired by the film, Piana is currently living in Tama City where the film was based in. We wish to hear Piana's rendition of "Country Road" from the movie (which she sang in her Macau performance as an encore) some day. Piana is also born on the same day as April's father and brother...a revelation that had the both of them jumping off their seats. It looks like Piana has a keen interest in horoscope and all 3 of us belongs to the Aries constellation.

Kubo-san on the other hand has developed into a very respectable figure in the independent Japanese music scene. He also manages the likes of Gutevolk, kazumasa hashimoto, Yasushi Yoshida etc. What impressed me is his vast knowledge of the Japanese music scene (both majors and indies) as well as his focus of continuity and developement for the artist under his belt. It is of no doubt that 2006-2007 is a very good year for noble records and further in the next 2 years, listners will get to see the fruitation of his efforts with the releases of the artist's respective 2nd offerings under the label.

The dinner somehow ended up costing a whooping 17,000 yen. Kubo-san explained that the treat is sponsered by Okura-san, the big boss of MIDI creative which owns noble records. Thank you Okura-san.

"i miss Singapore" Piana proclaimed. I am quite sure that fans in Singapore will get to see her & the noble crew again, with a little more planning and good timing, this could become a reality soon.

noble records:
http://www.noble-label.net

Piana:
http://www11.plala.or.jp/piana/

Ippu-do is the name of a Japanese cult 80's band i like...
It is also the name of the restaurant that serves one of the best tonkotsu in Tokyo ! Thank you Ichiro and Yuko, once again...bak chor mee is on us.

We performed on Sunday evening at Loop-Line, a small underground cafe situatuated at Sendagaya. This would be our debut show in Tokyo. We arrived at 4pm to set up our equipments only to realised that we have forgotten to bring our DVI-convertors for the visuals. Our friend Hideho Takemasa kindly offered to help buy one while we do our soundcheck. Thank you so much Hideho ! Other than that, the soundcheck went smoothly and we were soon greeted by the members of Opitope.

Opitope is an electronic duo consisting of of Chihei Hatakeyama (guitar, laptop and effects) and Tomoyoshi Date (laptop and effects). Readers of this blog may know that I have been listening to their album "Hau" which is one of the Spekk label finest CDs. The duo wears very dinstinct hats (no pun intended) in the day as a Jazz label staff (Chihei) and a doctor (Date). We had a rather funny interview with them which could be available on their Kualauk label soon. This very event was organised by the duo as part of the Kualauk setup. This show was entitled "Kuala Mute Geeks" and it is the 10th in the long running series which has also seen the likes of Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, Christophe Charles participating in the earlier runs.

After the interview, we were introduced to the other performer of the night, Ohara Toru aka Naph. Ohara works as a staff for Nature Bliss and is one half of RdL with mondii. I had previously heard his works on the "Small Melodies" compilation on Spekk and was surprised to know that for an artist known for his complex approaches using Max/MSP, he only brought with him an acoustic guitar and a female session musician named Shinobu to play trumpet and vibes for tonight's live.

Ohara started the night with a quirky, simple and endearing peformance. He explained before the start of the set to the audience that he was trying to play utilising "Ma" as sound effect instead of using processors. It is difficult to fully translate the idea of Ma but to put things short, Ma is the space in between everything...a transitional space. Japanese aesthetics of simplicity and restrain never fails to intrigue me.

Opitope was next and it was intoxicating stuff. Many field recordings (birds, seas, chimes) were used, punctuated by delightful processed sounds provided by Chihei's pre-recorded guitar samples. Chihei was using two powerbooks in his setup and started off with a rough palette of samples he had created before the performance. The laptops were never synchronized and the sounds were occassionally fed into a couple of Boss effector pedals. Date on the other hand has a PC laptop and both would improvise until the sounds congeal into something quite unique. One key point about Opitope/Chihei Hatakeyama's music is that it contains no synthesizer sounds. Much like our own creations as aspidistrafly, each sound is created on the guitars or other acoustic instruments and then processed until it yields out a texture that sounds good to our ears. I soon realised that the Japanese audience was listening thoughtfully....usually with their eyes closed or with their fingers cupping their chin...with smoke from their cigarettes in the air (yes, smoking is allowed indoors in Tokyo). I enjoyed the whole atmosphere a great deal.

photo by haruka nakamura

photo by Hideho Takemasa

I met Nao Sugimoto from Nature Bliss and he asked before our set if we are nervous. To be honest, we were not. I couldnt explain why but maybe I feel the audience were very thoughtful in the way they listen to Naph and Opitope's set before us that it puts us at ease. We certainly prefer the audience to listen attentively and scrutunise every details of our music. We played all the tracks from "The Ghost of Things" and some new tracks for the 2nd half of the performance. I am glad to say our set was very well-received and arguebly our best set for the year thus far.

photo by Hideho Takemasa

After a short break, Chihei, Tomoyoshi, Ohara and myself performed an improvised set. Fortunately, April taped the entire performance on her camcorder as this is one of the best session i have ever been involved in for some time. The set evolved into one long 30 mins improv with each artist displaying respectable understanding, restrain and sensitivity for one another. There was alot of precision and careful selectiveness rather than chaos. Hopefully i will be able to upload some clips on this site. After the show, i was told by the organisers that the show was a success and yielded a good crowd for a venue like Loop-Line. As Hideho pointed out, it went better than expected. I am very glad that everyone enjoyed being a part of this.

Thank you Hideho, Chihei, Tomoyoshi, Ohara, Shinobu, Ichiro, Sakamoto-family, Chib, Yui, Haru, Akira, Izumi, Yuko and the new friends we have made for this memorable evening !

Opitope :
http://www.spekk.net/artists/opitope.html

Kualauk Label:
http://www.kualauk.net

Loop-Line:
http://www.loop-line.jp

L-R : April, Ricks, Hideho Takemasa, Yui Onodera, Madoka Kono, Chihei Hatekeyama, Yukiko Chiba aka Chib

Tonight's gathering was the first time we met Hideho Takemasa. Hideho dropped by Flux Us in 2006 and at that time i was no longer helping out at the CD store due to hectic schedules. By some chance, we managed to communicate again online...after a few email exchanges, i began to realised we share alot of common ground. So tonight I was happy to see him, along with some of his musician friends. We met at this Okinawa restaurent at Ikebukuro, the Okinawa Beer especially...tasted like Lime Juice.

Hideho is no stranger to the music scene, either Singapore or Japan. He has been an organiser, writer, translator for many mediums such as P*dis, Spekk, Afterhours etc. He has brought along Chihei Hatekeyama whose solo album "Minima Moralia" was released by US based label, Kranky. He would be performing with us tomorrow in his improvisional outfit Opitope. I am pretty aware of Chihei's works particurly his area of interest revolves around the guitars-laptop setup. We are also glad to meet Yukiko Chiba aka Chib as i remembered hearing her album released by Fatcat label back in 2004. Working largely with field recordings, Chib would mix or process them using a sampler or on the PC. Yui Onodera as i found out, employs heavily processed guitar and piano sounds to create his ambient drone works while Madoka Kono works with cassette tape players...or no input tape players to be exact.

Collectively, i could see clearly the basic traits and approaches that these artists shared. Each artist has a distinct singular individual voice, very much rejecting the easy paths of electronic music making (i.e presets, software instruments etc). These musicians belongs to a group that creates their own paths, using devices with each fitting their own personality or "voice" without following any generic conventions. I have also discovered how these artist works very efficiently with a small set of tools or equipments. Somehow the artist that i know from Japan seems to know what is their own voice and remains very focus in mastering their singular craft.

We all agreed that this is all by a process but personally I feel inspired whenever i work with artists with a willingness or basic attitude to forge their own paths. Tomorrow i shall be working with some of these artist. Looking forward.

Chihei Hatakeyama
http://www.chihei.org

Chib
http://chib.info/

Yui Onodera
http://www.critical-path.info/

If it wasn't for our broken FM2 (tough luck!), we probably wouldn't have found these wonderful vintage camera shops situated at Shinjuku, Nakano, Setagaya...

Thank You Ichiro
Bak Kut Teh is on us when you come to Singapore
Can LAH !

Best Sukiyaki in Town.
Cheapest Beer.
Thank you Ichiro & Yuko for the "coffeeshop" experience !

:: Logic Pro 8 upgrade...like the new single window view !
:: making music box samples

important lessons in the creative process...

simplicity :
a guitar + laptop + Logic

input :
the more unique the input, the more individual a sound

recommended listening :
Opitope - Hau (Spekk)
Minamo/Tape - Birds of a feather (Headz)