Anechoic Chamber episode 11: Kazuya Ishigami - a podcast by Thomas Bey William Bailey

Our guest for this episode is Kazuya Ishigami, an electro-acoustic composer and musician who has been active for decades in the extremely fertile Kansai region of Japan. This is the region that has brought us such paragons of musical eclecticism as the Boredoms and pioneers of unadulterated noise such as Hijokaidan and Masonna. However, in addition to these very widely cited examples of sonic intensity and underground attitude, there are creators like Ishigami who incorporate a much greater degree of nuance and subtlety, which is grounded in a clearly Japanese philosophy towards biological phenomena. That is to say, much like the late Kyoto experimenter Akifumi Nakajima, aka Aube, Ishigami approaches technology as something that cannot be completely separated from the natural world, and of course this results in a very organic sound that disrupts expectations of how “electronic” music should sound.

In the spirit of the original Japanese independent record labels like Skating Pears and Vanity, Ishigami has also curated his own NEUS-318 label to minimize aesthetic compromises, and to locally release the works of artists from nations as geographically distant as Argentina and Lithuania. The label’s name is an acronym standing for “noise, electronics, and unknown sounds,” which itself is a good synopsis of Ishigami’s musical interests and his balance of noise music’s confrontational aspects with something more ephemeral and less clearly defined. Ishigami has worked as a concert organizer in both traditional venues and locations like the Zenkouji Buddhist temple, as being a collaborator with visual and performance artists, and of course being a reliable and friendly participant in the “uchiage,” the after-concert communal meals which often end up being an extension of the concerts themselves.Artist links:
https://kazuyaishigami.bandcamp.comhttp://www.neus318.com
https://neus318.bandcamp.comPaypal donations for Anechoic Chamber: tbwb@protonmail.com
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