Art Department

Back to Contents of Issue: February 2000


Japanese Poise

The music world's avante-garde don't come much more avante than Sachiko M, a musician who uses samplers almost exclusively. In Tokyo she has performed in a variety of groupings, and in a wide range of the city's numerous music venues -- not least of which at the city's creative technology heart, the NTT InterCommunication Center.

Whoever put the test signal in the sampler she uses provided the twist to her music. She frequently manipulates the pure sine-wave of the test signal. In the duo "Filament" (with Otomo Yoshihide), for example, these combined signals create a room-filling cushion of sound, the perception of which can alter according to your position in the room (or seemingly even the position of your head -- especially noticeable when they played at a church in London last summer). Think white noise without the impurities and with an inspired musician's touch -- and then think again.

While Tower Records stocks her CDs under "avante-garde," others may group it under the collective heading "Japanese Noise." But her collaborations also include the all female alt-pop band HOAHIO, who have a release planned on the American musician John Zorn's label, Tzadik.

For more details and purchase, sometimes from her own label AMOEBiC, see the Japanese Improvisors website, and watch for any future Internet collaborations following recent requests.

-from the Art Director

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