NOBUKAZU TAKEMURA
Sign
Thrill Jockey
· Overheard in a local stereo shop: "Trust me, sir, your CD player isn’t actually broken. Nobukazu Takemura just makes it sound that way."
· The bonus second CD includes animation collaborations with Katsura Moshino, with whom Takemura also created Sony’s artificial intelligence dog AIBO – Moshino the designs, Takemura the sounds.
As a small child I always imagined that my toys came to life after I’d fallen asleep – throwing dance parties, looking through my stuff, and generally just making a mess that I’d get in trouble for in the morning. For Nobukazu Takemura, replace "toys" with "expensive recording equipment," and keep a close eye on your computer if he ever happens to drop by. ("Look! I’ve made your fax into a drum machine!")
For Sign, Takemura’s most cohesive aural odyssey yet, he’s seemingly locked a roomful of rambunctious machines into a studio with a microphone and recorded the results. Lodged between the peppy "Cogwheel" and its blood-brother "Meteor" – essentially a computer deleting itself but perfectly in time and with a snappy melody – lies Takemura’s most astonishing feat: the 35-minute "Souvenir in Chicago," featuring Bundy K. Brown, Douglas McCombs and John McEntire, blends a Tortoise-meets-Mouse-on-Mars chill-out with the sound of a CD skipping backwards.
I have no idea how Takemura creates the sounds he does, and in all honesty I don’t really want to know. Like the toys that jumped off of my dresser and tossed my undergarments around the room, I’d rather just believe it than see it.
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