"O" - Chatori Shimizu
Album: O
Composer: Chatori Shimizu
Distributed by Elektramusic
Album Tracks:
1. Bonsai Modulation
2. Mimi Spelunking
3. Shinkaigyo
Program Notes:
Bonsai Modlation
Diverse sound can be heard from trees and plants. Sound can be heard when the wind rustles the leaves, when the twigs mingle with each other, when humans rub their hands against treebarks, and when branches fall. They also produce high frequency waves, much higher than our hearing capacities (20 ~ 20,000 Hz). All sound materials used in the music of Bonsai Modulation were recorded, sampled and edited from different specimens of trees. Frequencies higher than 20,000 Hz were brought down to our hearing range with a computer. Bonsai Modulation was used as the audio track in the sound installation "Somewhere Close" in 2015, exhibited at Pioneer Works, New York.
Mimi Spelunking
Mimi Spelunking was written in Dresden, Germany, and was finalized in Visby, Sweden, throughout 2018 to 2019. From my formative years, I have been paranoid about water entering my ears. Learning that water can enter the ear through any exposure to water, I always wished that I could shrink myself to a size of a grain of rice and enter into my ear canals with a bucket to drain the water. During the initial stages of the composition process for this work, I revisited my imagination of entering, or spelunking into my own ears. Each section was carefully composed to accurately portray the spelunking experience with aural expressions. The music was performed by Naoyuki Manabe and Chihiro Tai, and mixed and mastered by Yusuke Narita.
“Mimi” is a Japanese word for “ears”.
Shinkaigyo
Shinkaigyo, which is translated into "deep sea fish", was written in fascination of the Mariana Trench in west Pacific Ocean; the deepest area of all seas in the world. I was always intrigued by the deep sea, which is still largely untouched and deeply mysterious to mankind. This work has been used in "Nihonkai" (2014), installation by Ayaka Miyauchi, as well as its excerpts used as soundtrack in a short Korean film "Artists are Always Hungry" (2014). In the same year, it has been selected in 60x60 Wave Farm Mix International Open Call, and was broadcasted on Wave Farm 90.7FM, distributed as a Wave Farm Dispatch Series download, and featured in a series of live listening events. In 2019, Shinkaigyo was introduced by Ars Electronica FORUM WALLIS 2019 as "Highly Commended".