t w e l v e ,  t h r e e

ura/NYK hall

 

I titled the performance as "おとづれ/oto-zure", Japanese word literarily means "visit", nowadays. The word originally is consisted of two parts "おと/音/oto" and "づれ/連れ/zure". The first one, "音/oto", means "sound", and the second one "連れ/zure" has meanings combined with "with, bring, company". In old haiku poem in 7th-8th century, you find several poems that sang someone's visitation related to "sound". In ancient days, people had done their rituals in darkness, written as "闇/yami". You find "音/oto" symbol in "門/mon", gate, symbol.

The visitation of spirits, gods, were called as "音/oto", the sound, and the ritual place inside of the gate were called "闇/yami", the darkness.
The studies revealed to me that the audio phenomena was not so much of the "音/oto", but the presence/appearance of some existence was the "音/oto". It made a lot of sense to me and resonated with something I have felt in improvisational performance for long time.

hall

All the sound element you hear on the CD is basically acoustic sound amplified or un-amplified, improvised by myself. It is solo performance. Some of the elements were captured and looped with 2 samplers, which I can overdub up to more than 15 minutes. That's the heart of my performance system.

mamoru voice

On the CD( and sample02), you hear the horn from ship passing the bay outside. Though it was absolutely by chance, the moment it rang, it was there as if it must be done that way.
In fact many of the audience told me after the performance that they could not tell if it was done by the artist on purpose or by something else. Surprisingly enough, the ship horn and the layers of sound had a sort of harmonical relation, too.

mamoru play In the middle of the performance, I set a short intermission with the sound loop still running.
I told people to breathe some fresh air or just take a look around the space. However in depth, I also wanted to mix my sound and theirs, sound that were made with their physical motions, to say it short their "being", their "音/oto". You can hear it on the CD pretty objectively. I hope it sounds more than just the noise of an intermission.

At the end, after I shut the loops down, kind of suddenly, I poured out a bottle of water into a small glass. I usually microphone the water sound, but this time I stood up went forth towards the audience and did it acoustically. You rather hear it as a silence on the CD.


nyk morita

I sat down again, a moment of pose, put all the electricity off, started to play the fretless guitar again, and then I knew the end has come.
As I reached its ending, ascending passage, the ship horn rang againノ
but far more distanced than the first ones.
No one saw that ship, but all of us heard it.
I am afraid to say it was "just" a chance.
I rather want to think that it was the "音/oto", the true "sound", the visitation of something.


(c) 2008 a few notes production