reading vol.2
Muneomi Senju interview
Tatsuhiko Asano “Spacewatch”
Back in those days, I was living at my grandparents’ house in Shinkawa, while running a label called “Dub Restaurant Communications”. It was more a hangout than a label, so all the goings-on which was done with my colleague Aikawa-kun whom I saw almost everyday, came out of impulse, like trying to visualize our own delusions. We released the first album “Dub Restaurant: Menu Vol.1” in 1994. To much of our delight, demos from the various gifted and connoisseurs from all around the country started to arrive soon after, as they had clearly responded to our personal impulsive war cry. Internet was not as far spread yet, so most of our communication was done by mail and fax. Musical exchange was done on cassette tapes. Around this time, the fact that I experienced the joy of encountering each one of these personal work (=personal delusions), left a huge traumatic mark on my life. But the largest one would have to be from encountering the music of Tatsuhiko Asano and the lot. Theirs were a music seeking for some place “anywhere, but here”.
The first contact I received was probably from Taro Kawashima. The label “Dub Restaurant Communications” was started under the strong influence of such music (called listening techno or intelligent techno), a complex and strange techno born in UK at the time, such as Black Dog Production and Carl Craig, Stefan Robbers, “A.R.T.”, “Irdial” and General Production”. And the person who had sent us the demos that equaled the quality of those work overseas, was Taro Kawashima who now works in a unit called Funnychair. With the introduction of Kawashima-san, we listened to the sounds of Yasuyuki Suzuki, Atsushi Fukui and Tatsuhiko Asano. Their sound formed the nucleus of the label’s second release “Menu Vol.2”.
Then, it was probably 1995 when I invited Tatsuhiko Asano for a solo project. It took a whole year for our offer to materialize into his debut 7 inch single “Bonjour/Lemonade”. And so it happens that 12 years had passed. It took the whole twelve animal years to make a full circle. Since I wasn’t sure of my memory, I looked around for clues. And I found a letter, or should I say, a carefree note on a white sheet of B4 paper, that I had received from Asano-san at the time. It read “since it is the end of the year, you must be so busy…,” I believe it was from a correspondence at the end of 1995. After the curt note regarding the design details for the cover of his debut single, in gentle handwriting with a Japanese calligraphy pen filling the whole sheet in a meticulous but relaxed way, it ended by saying “I’m worried that the painting is a bit too intimate with my own universe”. Enclosed were the paintings; “a mysterious elephant like creature showering water” and “a man fumbling on a highway running across paradise, with a puddle”. The enthusiasm I felt as I listened to the sound already given to me, in my six tatami-sized downtown abode whilst the ceiling lamp swayed, along with those two emotional landscapes which was meant to adorn the front and back cover of the album, had physically left a mark on me throughout the years. The man in the latter painting is still embedded in my psyche as the very image of Asano-san, that as I listened to “Highway and Byways” in this album, it appeared out of nowhere in some back alley in a foreign country that I had already conjured up. It was like a nether creature.
The first song I listened to, had a long and indeed an exotic title “I’ve Found A Central Mountain Of The World” that I thought was so “Asano”. It was a song from Atsushi Fukui’s unit Fulkram from 1994. The strange dreamy feeling, like what you would call “exotic sounds” or “psychedelic rock” is in, not only the first single I just mentioned, but also scattered in the Asano-san’s music to follow. That “anywhere, but here” feeling is a continuous sensation which can be felt in the soundtrack “In the Wake of Dosin,the GIANT” (Media Factory), in the album “Genny Haniver” released by Geist UK in 2001, and even in contributing projects such as Pacific231 and Daisy World. For sure. But be it an alternative dimension or a paradise, they can exist in the range of a few kilometers of our lives. Asano-san is one of those rare musicians who can show people how it can be perceived in a sensory way. Thank you very much for always providing us with your good music.
moodman ‘08.07
The first contact I received was probably from Taro Kawashima. The label “Dub Restaurant Communications” was started under the strong influence of such music (called listening techno or intelligent techno), a complex and strange techno born in UK at the time, such as Black Dog Production and Carl Craig, Stefan Robbers, “A.R.T.”, “Irdial” and General Production”. And the person who had sent us the demos that equaled the quality of those work overseas, was Taro Kawashima who now works in a unit called Funnychair. With the introduction of Kawashima-san, we listened to the sounds of Yasuyuki Suzuki, Atsushi Fukui and Tatsuhiko Asano. Their sound formed the nucleus of the label’s second release “Menu Vol.2”.
Then, it was probably 1995 when I invited Tatsuhiko Asano for a solo project. It took a whole year for our offer to materialize into his debut 7 inch single “Bonjour/Lemonade”. And so it happens that 12 years had passed. It took the whole twelve animal years to make a full circle. Since I wasn’t sure of my memory, I looked around for clues. And I found a letter, or should I say, a carefree note on a white sheet of B4 paper, that I had received from Asano-san at the time. It read “since it is the end of the year, you must be so busy…,” I believe it was from a correspondence at the end of 1995. After the curt note regarding the design details for the cover of his debut single, in gentle handwriting with a Japanese calligraphy pen filling the whole sheet in a meticulous but relaxed way, it ended by saying “I’m worried that the painting is a bit too intimate with my own universe”. Enclosed were the paintings; “a mysterious elephant like creature showering water” and “a man fumbling on a highway running across paradise, with a puddle”. The enthusiasm I felt as I listened to the sound already given to me, in my six tatami-sized downtown abode whilst the ceiling lamp swayed, along with those two emotional landscapes which was meant to adorn the front and back cover of the album, had physically left a mark on me throughout the years. The man in the latter painting is still embedded in my psyche as the very image of Asano-san, that as I listened to “Highway and Byways” in this album, it appeared out of nowhere in some back alley in a foreign country that I had already conjured up. It was like a nether creature.
The first song I listened to, had a long and indeed an exotic title “I’ve Found A Central Mountain Of The World” that I thought was so “Asano”. It was a song from Atsushi Fukui’s unit Fulkram from 1994. The strange dreamy feeling, like what you would call “exotic sounds” or “psychedelic rock” is in, not only the first single I just mentioned, but also scattered in the Asano-san’s music to follow. That “anywhere, but here” feeling is a continuous sensation which can be felt in the soundtrack “In the Wake of Dosin,the GIANT” (Media Factory), in the album “Genny Haniver” released by Geist UK in 2001, and even in contributing projects such as Pacific231 and Daisy World. For sure. But be it an alternative dimension or a paradise, they can exist in the range of a few kilometers of our lives. Asano-san is one of those rare musicians who can show people how it can be perceived in a sensory way. Thank you very much for always providing us with your good music.
moodman ‘08.07