The Squid's Ear Magazine


Tsunoda, Toshiya: Landscape And Voice [VINYL] (Black Truffle)

A truly unique set of compositions juxtaposing lush field recording with disruptive vocal repetitions, vowel sounds from six different speakers, creating disorienting moments that lull the listener into complacency and then startles them with unexpected interference, as the composer explores how he can establish a subjective relationship with natural environments.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Toshiya Tsunoda-field recordings, voice

Tetuzi Akiyama-voice

Takuma Ikeda-voice

Chico Oka-voice

Minami Saeki-voice

Elico Suzuki-voice


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Pressed on 45RPM for maximum fidelity, sleeve designed by Lasse Marhaug with liner notes from the composer.

UPC: 4250101437120

Label: Black Truffle
Catalog ID: BT 089LP
Squidco Product Code: 31779

Format: LP
Condition: New
Released: 2022
Country: Austria
Packaging: LP

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"A radical new work (and rare vinyl release) from major Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda. Undoubtedly one of the most influential artists working with location recordings since the 1990s, Tsunoda's work possesses a rigorously searching quality that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Tsunoda is known to many listeners for the subtle atmospheric poetry of his early Extract from Field Recording Archive series, which focussed on vibrations recorded in various indoor and outdoor environments in his native Miura Peninsula, often inside pipes, bottles and other vessels. In more recent years, his work has explored the implications of his claim that field recording should be seen as 'depiction' rather than 'documentation'. He has explored disorienting editing and processing in his works with Taku Unami, and, perhaps most radically, represented Maguchi Bay as a kind of kinetic sculpture for shaking speakers by removing all but the inaudible low frequencies from a field recording (Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay).

One of the recurrent concerns of Tsunoda's recent work, as he explains in the crystalline liner notes accompanying this release, is 'exploring how I can establish a subjective relationship with an environment, rather than seeing it merely as an object to be recorded'. This has taken various forms, from documenting simultaneously an outdoor environment and the blood flowing through the listener/recorder's body (captured with a stethoscope) on The Temple Recordings, to representing his own experience of the landscape as made up of 'grains of space and time' by inserting looped fragments into field recordings in Grains of Spring.

On Landscape and Voice, this meeting between subject and object becomes an almost mystical union between the natural and the human. As with all of Tsunoda's work, a relatively simple concept leads to compelling, thought-provoking results. Landscape and Voice combines vowel sounds spoken by six voices with short, looped fragments of field recordings, their noise character suggesting consonants: voice and landscape thus join together in something like words. The record consists of three pieces, each using a different, richly evocative field recording, which periodically freezes, catching on a looped fragment to which is synchronised an abruptly looped spoken vowel sound. The lengths between these interruptions vary, as do the tempi of the loops. The interruption of these lushly immersive recordings of the world - bristling with bird song, rushing water, distant traffic, and clinking metal - only serves to intensify them, as if the depicted environment itself had been returned to the listener each time it abruptly reappears. At the same time, the constant interruption creates an uncannily frozen effect, as if the recorded environment were an object rather than a stretch of recorded time. When combined with the bare human presence of the vowel sounds, the result is both austere and magical.

Pressed on 45RPM for maximum fidelity, in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Lasse Marhaug with liner notes from the composer, Landscape and Voice is a radical proposition from one of the deepest thinkers in contemporary sound."-Black Truffle


Pressed on 45RPM for maximum fidelity, sleeve designed by Lasse Marhaug with liner notes from the composer.

Artist Biographies

"Toshiya Tsunoda (Kanagawa, 1964) is a sound creator known for works of field recording and collage. He studied oil painting at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he received his MFA. Aside from his work as a sound creator, he is also known for his wide-ranging activities as an installation artist and performer. By using small or contact microphones to produce his field recordings, Tsunoda's sound works capture the acoustic characteristics of spaces with dazzling clarity. These works show the ways in which particular vibrational phenomena shape the subjective experience of time and space. His exhibitions include "Soundings: A Contemporary Score" with Luke Fowler, MoMA, New York (2013), "Simple Interactions Sound Art from Japan," Museet For Samtids Kunst, Denmark (2011), Yokohama Triennale with Luke Fowler, Yokohama (2008) and "Half Life," Kilmartin Glen, Argyll, Scotland (2007). Tsunoda has also performed at Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2012) and Stuk Arts Centre, Leuven, Belgium (2010)."

-Toshiya Tsunoda Website (http://toshiya-tsunoda.blogspot.com/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Tetuzi Akiyama (Akiyama Tetsuji) (born 13 April 1964) is a Japanese guitarist, violinist, and instrument-maker. Akiyama formed the improvisation group Madhar in 1987, and the classical ensemble Hikyo String Quintet in 1994 (which also included Taku Sugimoto on cello). In 1995, Akiyama and Sugimoto formed a guitar duo, and played at venues in New York City, Chicago, and Detroit. During this time, Akiyama was also a member of Keiji Haino's Nijiumu outfit. Akiyama also formed Sutekina Tea Time (a duo with Takashi Matsuoka) and Mongoose (a trio with Taku Sugimoto and Utah Kawasaki).

In 1998 Akiyama began organising a monthly concert series, The Improvisation Meeting, with Toshimaru Nakamura. In December 2006 he began a regular duo with Hervé Boghossian (France), they toured in Europe (France, Portugal, Switzerland, England) several times in 2007 (in May, October & December) & also played in Tokyo during Hervé Boghossian Japanese tour in August/September 2008. In 2009 he worked with David Sylvian."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetuzi_Akiyama)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Minami Saeki was born in born in Nagasaki and is a film actress, singer, and dancer. She studied classical ballet, contemporary dance, classical singing and has has acted in films inlcuding "Village on the Village" (Yukihiro Kurokawa) and "Natsu no Musumetachi-Himegoto" (Teiichi Hori). Saeki is active as a singer and has performed with Taku Sugimoto, Junichiro Tanaka, Wakana Ikeda, Masafumi Ezaki, Takashi Masubuchi, Manfred Werder, Stefan Thut in the fields of both pop and experimental music."

-Pavilion (http://www.pavilion.org.uk/events/2018/closingevent/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Elico Suzuki (suzueri) is a Tokyo based Sound Artist. She plays circuitous and restless performances using pianos combined with self-made instruments. Her recent interests have centred on the exploration of the gaps and narrative aspects between the interaction of instruments and particular embodiment. She is the founder of the edible circuit makers, BreadBoard Baking.

-Elico Suzuki Website (http://suzueri.org/about/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



SIDE A



1. At The Port 12:16

2. Studies 3:54

SIDE B



1. In The Grass Field 9:03

Related Categories of Interest:


Electro-Acoustic
Electroacoustic Composition
Compositional Forms
Field Recordings
Unusual Vocal Forms
Solo Artist Recordings
New in Experimental & Electronic Music
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