|
IA.releases The music on this Web site is brought to
you by Intervall-audio and the respective artists. Some tracks are free
for download under Creative Commons Licenses and offered to you for your
pure listening pleasure and entertainment. [IA.006] Legofriendly: Waiting for the Moment <Digital> 
A dystopian vision of Tokyo in 2046 after the Tau Cetians invaded and colonized Japan, turning it into a low-cost manufacturing zone. The music explores our notions of what it is to be 'free' when that freedom is really captive to the whims and lunch plans of the ruling board of directors. Waiting for the Moment by Legofriendly challenges our preconceptions of 'melody', 'rhythm' and 'harmony' and deconstructs the artificial, socially constructed ideas of 'the self', 'culture' and 'the zeitgeist' in under 3:40. When the storm's a comin', you better be ready with your digital copy of Waiting for the Moment to keep you warm and dry inside your hard disk.--> [Top]
|01| iSpy |02| Queer |03| Africa 70 |04| Malun |05| Cyclo |06| Liggo
(Release: 4 November 2014)
View Artwork
(1.3 MB) [IA.005] Nobara: Trail
EP <Free MP3> 
The tracks on Trail EP by Colombian-born
Japanese musician, Nobara
Hayakawa, are a bundle of select experimental shoegaze electronica
sketches recorded for different projects using computers, acoustic instruments
and voice — together they project a journey back in time into what
every person on earth can feel as speaking of something deeply honest
and real (including irony). "Like old friends, my old selves singing about
the lives I've lived", is how Nobara herself epitomizes the album.
And indeed, taken together, the tracks sound like a chapter closing, like
briefly looking back and remembering old and dear (and maybe less dear)
things — things that make one wonder for a second, and then briefly
smile, before one puts them away to get moving on... The first track, 'Trail' is "about the love/hate
pendular movements that one experiences under the effects of a caprice".
'Hoover Love' features a vacuum cleaner and is part of a project series
for domestic machines and voices. 'Alas' (wings) "was made on a Sunday
evening, in a state of deep sadness." The next track, 'Desalejar',
has got no words at all, since the song is about trust. (Incidentally,
desalejar is the Spanish word for Martin Heidegger's
ent-fernung.) The longest track, 'Fuzzy Lady', is an improvisation
for washing machine, drum machine, piano and voices. And the final track,
'Homelessness', came "after reading too much Paul Auster and crying
too much for the same ghost." Nobara
Hayakawa is a Colombian-born Japanese singer and musician. She studied
visual arts at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and currently
works as a lecturer at two universities in Bogotá. -->
[Top] [IA.005] Nobara:
Trail EP (19'10") Preview samples: EP
booklet (3.2 MB) Front
cover only (230 KB) (Release: 24 March 2009) [IA.004] Legofriendly: Egg
Beater <CD & Digital Download> 
If Mouse on Mars got totally funked-up, were joined
by sound surgeons Autechre, and together somehow captured the pop spirit
of I am Robot and Proud, you might end up with something like Egg
Beater, the second album by Tokyo-based electronic music duo Legofriendly. Egg Beater is Legofriendly's second album after Form. The six tracks retain the essential feel from all earlier released tracks, yet also depart from them in densely layered sounds, percussive textures and unexpected angular melodies. Egg Beater is thus at once more determined and playful, yet also a bit mischievous: music to be enjoyed on different levels with each listen! 'Doub', the opener, boasts rip-roaring locomotion
set against the chaotic sound of the city. The next track, 'Fidget' is
straight-ahead in comparison, yet egged-on boom-cha with a cantering melody,
whereas the sonic mania of 'Emergency' resolves into complete mechanical
breakdown. Next up is 'Beatnikker', which is ideally enjoyed while waiting
for a subway train. 'Flotsam' probably best captures the highly modern,
urbanite feel of the entire album and the final cut, 'Straktizm', is a
slight, almost gravity-defying tilt-back and chill-out tune with an open
ending that leaves only the sound of buzzing Tokyo. The artwork gives us hints of lines on a floor,
an empty background and disembodied legs — a snapshot of motion
and stillness that might suffice to characterize the music. Music to dance
or listen to — should we call it pop, electronica, instrumental
electronic music? The artwork remains silent on these questions, but whether
Egg Beater is really dance music of any kind is doubtful. However, the
tracks do trace a progression from hectic to calm, with alternating states
of 'motion in stillness' and 'stillness in motion' discernible in between. Egg Beater by Legofriendly
is dense urban electronic music composed of unambiguously artificial sounds
and ambiguous rhythms — frenetic at times, but never too far 'out
there'. --> [Top]
|01| Doub View Artwork
(71 KB) (Release: 7 June 2008)
A crispy, pumping juggernaut fest to get your body into
shape. [IA.003] Kumiko Okamura: MDDA <Free
MP3> 
Broken Composer —
Kumiko Okamura, a current resident of the megalopolis of Tokyo but
born in the snowy regions of Niigata prefecture, is a self-proclaimed
'broken composer' and 'accident life player'. Her MDDA album,
a collection of improvised first-takes recorded onto four-track tape,
is full of elegy, poetry and violence — a dream-world that does
not serve to prevent, but rather to invite, shock. Sound Country — Similar to
the narrative in novels by Japanese writer and Nobel Laureate, Kawabata
Yasunari, the 'sound country' on MDDA is constantly on the verge of disintegration.
This landscape is raw and unrefined, full of sound debris, random use
of instruments, frantic arrangements, excessive hum, hiss & tape saturation,
almost as if the tracks meant nothing at all. Aesthetization of Shock —
Unlike in Kawabata's novels, however, shock on MDDA is not lurking behind
the sounds, things and occurrences of an elegiac everyday life. Rather,
sound is treated as found objects, objects which in the poetic act become
vulnerable themselves. Sound thus turns into a symbol of both the immediacy
of shock and the reunion with one's inner nature — because the painful
experience of disintegration may just as well be liberating. Lo-Fi? Oh no, not again! —
MDDA is far from opening up new ways in tape music. Instead, the overt
disinterestedness in recording technology serves to describe the transience
of being, and a gentle sadness at its passing.
Kumiko Okamura's tracks make us aware of the fullness of life. And
they do so informed by a strong musical instinct. MDDA is more than 1980s
underground tape avant-garde music and its re-emergence in recent pop
electronica. Liberation — MDDA is a therapeutic,
eclectic and liberating mix of musical influences. One hears K.H. Stockhausen
making contact, Yoko Ono singing from inside a closet, Pierre Schaeffer
manipulating reels, alongside borrowings from Cologne techno, Group Ongaku,
Brian Eno's Music for Airports, and many other vanguard musics
— all mashed together into a subconscious image of a sound country
that is hard for us to travel if we lack a willingness to be vulnerable
and insist that music has to be soothing. Sound Debris — The recordings
on MDDA, engineered by the artist herself, have undergone almost no post-production
in order to preserve the original expression and charm of the performances.
--> [Top] [IA.003] Kumiko Okamura:
MDDA (29'38") Preview samples: Artwork
(260 KB) (Release: 15 July 2007)
[IA.002] Sora: Live at Metro <Free
MP3> 
Sora
is the alias of Kyoto-based electronic musician Takeshi Kurosawa. The
Japanese word sora (空) means 'sky', 'the blue' or 'the heavens'.
But the Japanese character also means 'empty', and the tracks on Live
at Metro indeed evoke the peacefully relaxing atmosphere and emptiness
of mind that an entire day, from sunrise to sunset, of a summer holiday
spent at the beach brings. We see the first rays of the morning sun flicker
through the trees. The air, shimmering and blurred by the heat, gently
touches the skin as we walk to the beach. We lie down in the sand's tender
warmth and take a nap full of dreams and faint memories, before swimming
submersed in the joyful play of bubbles in a glistening sea. By late afternoon,
we no longer hear but actually feel the breeze coming in from the sea.
And the evening rejoices in the promise of sitting around a beach fire
until the last melody disappears into the dark open night over the sea. Live at Metro is a richly textured, playfully arranged,
crisply analogue-sounding electronica opus that testifies to the fine
taste of early Plop releases and defined the image and future direction
of the label back in 2003. Live at Metro also demonstrates the exceptional
talent of a young Japanese artist who, in 2006, played the Plop label
showcase at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona as well as Sonar Sound Tokyo. Originally recorded in 2003, Live at Metro features
remixes from Sora's
first full-length album re.sort (Plop 2003), as well as hitherto
unreleased material. The tracks are skilfully interwoven to form a continuous
sound event and therefore are provided in one full-length gapless file
for download. With Live at Metro Sora
gives us a deeply satisfying 32 minutes of audio exploration that stays
with us because it echoes a half-remembered state of bliss, perfect peace
and innermost contentment. --> [Top] [IA.002] Sora:
Live at Metro [IA.002] Sora:
Live at Metro (32'06") Preview samples at 128kbps: Artwork
(113 KB) (Release: 1 March 2007)
[IA.001] Legofriendly: Form EP (2006) <Free
MP3> 
Far from 'traditional' dance-oriented electronic
music, the six tracks on Form EP (2006) smoothly merge intricately
funky rhythms with melodically focussed tunes — from the playfully
eccentric 'Jump & Run' and the evocative, slightly pensive 'Autopilot',
to the almost prototypical electronica track, 'Milc'. While 'Know-how'
is more minimal, bubbling with heavily warped sounds, Form EP also features
'Slipstream', a track that perhaps best exemplifies
Legofriendly's music of this period. Based on live and laptop jamming sessions for a
live concert in Tokyo, Form had defined the musical directions of
Legofriendly shortly after its formation in 2002. The original limited
release CD-R (2003) has been long out of stock, and since there has been
quite some demand for it, Form is now made available again as a partly
re-recorded and entirely re-mastered, free downloadable netlabel release.
With a playing time of almost 34 minutes, Form EP (2006) embodies quirky
but determinedly accessible electronic music with some highly catchy tunes,
many rhythmic bends & funky edges. -->
[Top] [IA.001] Legofriendly:
Form EP (2006) (33'35") Individual tracks at 192kbps: Artwork
(367 KB) (Release: 1 October 2006) NOTE: The music on this Web site is copyrighted material. It is brought to you by Intervall-audio in collaboration with the respective artists and is free for download under creative commons licenses. You may listen to the music as often as you like and wherever you go, and you are free to share, distribute, display and perform it (Noncommercial-No Derivative) whenever you like. However, the sound recordings may not be sampled and the work may not be used for commercial purposes without the licensor's permission. If you want to perform the music in any other than the form specified above (i.e., use it for commercial purposes or in derivative form), you must get a written permission from the artist(s). You can contact Intervall-audio via the suggest form in the main navigation bar and we will be happy to put you in touch. Thank you! |
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