★Edition Omega Point
Environmental Music for Dining Room of Athletes' Village in Tokyo
From participation in the early Fluxus to giving an introduction of Futurism, Kuniharu Akiyama (1929-1996), a renowned music critic, was involved in a vast range of activities. Particularly in the 1960s, he recorded a lot of music on tape for himself. To our surprise, the music compiled on this CD was actually discovered from a series of ambient music pieces played in the Athletes’ Village at the Tokyo Olympics! During this period, Akiyama was fascinated by the sound of Sanukite stone from Sanuk…
Duo Recital (art edition)
*Special art edition* In 1961, soon after Toshi Ichiyanagi returned from the USA, two concerts were performed at the Sogetsu Art Center; "Toshi Ichiyanagi Concert" [1], at which some member of 'Group Ongaku' joined, a s well as "Toshi Ichiyanagi and Kenji Kobayashi Duo Recital", which recording is used for this album. It was a major opportunity for its audience to experience the works of Toshi Ichiyanagi and the avant-garde philosophy directly in front of their eyes. Six months later, John Cage …
Duo Recital
In 1961, soon after Toshi Ichiyanagi returned from the USA, two concerts were performed at the Soget su Art Center; "Toshi Ichiyanagi Concert" [1], at which some member of 'Group Ongaku' joined, a s well as "Toshi Ichiyanagi and Kenji Kobayashi Duo Recital", which recording is used for this album. It was a major opportunity for its audience to experience the works of Toshi Ichiyanagi and the avant-garde philosophy directly in front of their eyes. Six months later, John Cage made his first visit …
Shikisokuzekuu-Kuusokuzeshiki
The details of Shikisokuzekuu-Kuusokuzeshiki (1964) are unknown except that it was created at the NHK electronic music studio. According to Toshi Ichiyanagi, there were various discussions about the title, but it would seem to have been eventually broadcasted on the radio with the title Kuu after a producer renamed it. Here, the original title is used, following Ichiyanagi's initial intention. This work has no relation to the short experimental film Shikisokuzekuu (1974), produced by filmmaker T…
Extended Voices
Omega Point had obtained the original tape recording of "Extended Voices" composed by Toshi Ichiyanagi (first released by Odyssey/Columbia in 1967 on the compilation of the same name, alongside other pieces for voice & electronics by Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Robert Ashley and Alvin Lucier). The piece consists of electronic sounds and modulated voices which are included on this album in two new 2014 realizations, in collaboration with Takashi Matsudaira, a baritone singer…
Obscure Tape Music Of Japan Vol. 12: Miniatures Of Concrete Works
Edition Omega Point presents work by legendary Japanese composer Joji Yuasa -- one of most important composers in Japan after World War II. "Nadja, Twincling in Stars" (1963) is the incidental music, by NHK Radio, based on "Nadja" by Andre Breton who made "Declaration of Sur-Realisme." The actual chart of constellations was played by three players (violin, piano and vibraphone) which was used as the music score. Birdsong, electronics, and sound generated from inside the piano using music c…
A i sha
Needless to say, Akio Suzuki is one of the representative sound artists in Japan. Many of his previous releases are sometimes interpreted as the work of a hermit or wizard creating beautiful sounds with his self-made musical instrument called "Analapos," glass harmonica (De Koolmees), and stone flute, but the title of Suzuki's first sound piece, aidan ni Mono wo Nageru (Throwing Things at the Stairs) at Nagoya Station in 1963, reflects his perspective on the noises in his work. This LP consists …
Live
Atsuhiro Ito, visual artist and sound performer, has held live show many times. This CD is consist of his two performances selected from them in Tokyo. Track 1 is at Hara Museum in 2009. Ito used his hand made 'fluorescent lamp' instrument OPTRON and some junk objects that they were exhibited as installation. Track 2 is at Harajuku Vacant in 2010. This performance was acted with a female actor and tech-noise unit Miclo Diet. Ito's junk noise by OPTRON and industrial rhythm of Miclo Diet were mix…
Obscure Tape Music of Japan, Vol. 19: Kumo no Ito (The Spider's Thread)
"Kumo no Ito" (trans. "The Spider's Thread): "In 1977 I started the project of a musical piece for a female narrator and 4-channel electronic sounds using the text of the well-known Akutagawa novel. I worked with a hand-made analog synthesizer which had been installed two years before in my home studio in Tokyo. Needless to say, the editing was done without digital machines. I worked with the recorded tapes together with scissors and splicing tape. It was the resonance-adding apparatus tha…
Echoes
*2022 stock* "'Emerald Tablet' was recorded at the NHK electronic-music studio in 1978. It is made up of only the sonic ingredients of a tubular bell, cymbals, and 'kin,' a largish-sized bell used for Buddhist memorial services in Japan. The attack of the sound of each instrument was eliminated, and the work was taped through repeated overdubbing. This produced a variety of beautiful harmonics that otherwise could not be produced from a single instrument's sound, and the interference of harmonic…
Hommage to Home Electronics
"I have been interested in junk materials and have made sound works since several years ago. Before then, I listened to experimental music as a fan, but the border between music and non-music became meaningless from encounters with Fluxus, sound-art, media-art and others. Since then, I love the texture of sound itself. I collected abandoned analog televisions when the transmitting system of broadcast signals was changed to digital format in 2011. They are one of my favorite instruments at presen…
Funakakushi (1963)
**2022 stock "Funakakushi" [1]: This electronic work was composed for the opening ceremony of the hotel "Funakakushi-en" in Kagawa prefecture in 1963. It was realized as a sound installation and used many speakers inside a built-in stone sculpture. They were designed by sculptor Mitsu-aki Sora (b. 1933) and were arranged here and there in the main garden of the hotel. The sound was made from a modified Japanese traditional instrument, biwa, as well as from a sea wave sound [2]. The engineer Juno…
Solo Performance
2013 release. Edition Omega Point presents solo performance pieces by Japanese sound and visual performance artist Kenichi Kanazawa. "Oto no Kakera" ("Fragments of Sound") was based on his participation in an exhibition called Sound Garden in 1987. He cut thick steel plates like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, concerned with the thematic relationships of iron, figures, and sounds. He attacked the pieces with sticks, and then played with their sounds. Various pitches, tones and resonances of sou…
Fragments of Sound, Figure of Music
2013 Release. Kenichi Kanazawa held the exhibition "Oto no Kakera" ("Fragments of Sound') and "Workshop" at the Kawagoe City Museum between 2006 and 2010. At the fifth and final exhibition, he did a workshop and performance with Hiroyuki Ura and Shinjiro Yamaguchi. This performance consisted of some fragments, with Yamaguchi adding his own details. According to his explanation, he tried to capture an invisible figure of music through composition using simple rules and styles. Housed in a …
Music for Piano 1959-1961. Obscure Tape Music of Japan vol. 11
The Music for Piano series was written under John Cage's influence in his New York years. This CD is the premiere complete recording without simultaneous playing. The series was played and recorded by pianist Takuji Kawai at KEN in Tokyo in October 27, 2012. "Music for Piano No. 1-No. 7" was composed between 1959 and 1961. All the works were written using graphic notations (No. 1, No. 2, No. 5 and No. 6) and instructions (No. 3, No. 4 and No. 6). "This period of my compositions such as 'Music fo…
Assemblage
This is the eighth volume in Edition Omega Point's Experimental Music Of Japan series. Japanese composer and synthesizer artist Kazuo Uehara was born in Osaka in 1949. He studied composition in Tokyo and in New York and is a Professor of Music at the Osaka University of Arts, teaching composition, experimental music and also multi-media performance. His music has been performed in France, Germany, the U.S., and other countries and he has also performed his interactive live music and multi-media …
John Cage Shock Vol. 2
Volume 2 in EM Records' John Cage Shock series lifts off with a fiery example of David Tudor's piano virtuosity, his mastery of dynamics well-evident in a performance of Klavierstücke X (1961) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The titular shock of this series is delivered even more forcefully with the next piece, John Cage's 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists and a String Player (1961), which was first performed the year before in Darmstadt by Tudor and Kenji Kobayashi, a combination of two of Cage's solo piece…
John Cage Shock Vol. 3
The final CD of the John Cage Shock series features John Cage's 0'00" (1962), also referred to as 4'33" No. 2, performed by the composer, with daily activities such as writing and drinking coffee amplified by contact microphones into sonic abstraction, following the score's directions: "with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action." Next is Composition II for 2 Pianos (1960/1961) by Michael von Biel, lovely and sparse, performed by David Tudor and Toshi Ichiyanagi. …
John Cage Shock Vol. 1
In October 1962, John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock," as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases -- three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordin…
Early Works
Edition Omega Point presents a collection of early work from Japanese experimental composer Kazuo Uehara. "'Seoul 1982' was composed using recorded sounds as raw material to reassemble the 'historical' soundscape of Korea's capital city, Seoul, in the early 1980s. During this time, despite the political chaos and the tension in the city under the Korean military government, I felt the lively energy in people's lives. The raw material comprised a wide range of different sounds, including th…