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sachiko m: sampler amnesia "I never had any musical education, and I never had any thought of being a musician," remarks Japanese samplist Sachiko M, more as a matter of fact than as an Eno-like non-musician boast. She is the common denominator in a deluge of recent, fascinating releases out of Japan, including a solo sinewave CD and three albums with turntablist Otomo Yoshihide. Otomo recalls that he first meeting Sachiko (the M stands for Matsubara) when she was working in the sound effects department of a theatre. Spinning, chopping and editing on a reel-to-reel tape machine, she was whipping up a sandstorm of sounds like a backstage DJ, without any sense that she was making music. Struck by the way her collage techniques resembled his own, Otomo invited her to join his group, Ground Zero. Her role in its tumultuous avant rock was to trigger samples from a keyboard. "I never improvised with Ground Zero, I was so busy with all the samples," she says. "My job was to keep the samples coming with the right timing." At the group's earsplitting final performance at the 1997 LMC festival in London, the skirling Korean oboe motif which dominated much of the hour-long epic Consume Red was Sachiko's responsibility. A year later Sachiko was back in town, bounding around the stage at East London's Spitz with the singer Haco. In an acoustic set that could hardly be further removed from the apocalypse of Consume Red, the two women chanted lullabies and pop mantras to the accompaniment of toys and homemade percussion. Four of the current batch of albums to feature Sachiko are released by the Amoebic label, which she founded in 1997. The most playful is the Hoahio trio with Haco (ex-After Dinner) and koto improviser Michiyo Yagi (from Koto Vortex). The name Hoahio is an Italian friend's attempt to remember the word 'ohayo', which is Japanese for 'good morning'. Sachiko and Haco bounce lo-tech accidents off each other, and write anthemic pop chants like "Happy Mail"--once heard, often whistled. The whole album has the light, throwaway feel of Japanese avant-girls having fun, uncommitted to any one idiom. "I'd like to keep this going," says Sachiko, "but Haco lives in Kobe, so we don't make music so often. This spring we will play again after an interval of a year, and I think Hoahio will make a new style." In May, Amoebic will reissue Steve Beresford's 1978 solo album The Bath Of Surprise. "The trumpet blast in the bath changes the course of avant-garde history," trumpets the label's catalogue. "Later artists such as Stock, Hausen & Walkman and Otomo Yoshihide were greatly influenced by this dandy pioneer." Sachiko sees a kindred spirit in Beresford. "Hoahio just play seriously and freely, and I think Beresford does too." she states. "For me this is 'free improvisation'. I don't like free improvisation to be used as the name of a fixed style." Another Amoebic release, the mostly live Four Focuses, features Otomo and the Canadian turntablist Martin Tétreault combining in varied duets with Sachiko's sampler and Yasuhiro Otani's computer. And now Sachiko has followed up her sold out solo cassette release Music For Headphone, with a solo CD, Sine Wave Solo. This showcases her austere and minimalist side, an album so stripped down it makes Pan Sonic sound like a skiffle group. Akin to Fred Frith's tabletop investigations into what exactly an electric guitar consists of, in terms of wood and metal, Sachiko examines the precise identity of the sampler once it has had its memory scrubbed clean of all samples. Digital sinewaves pierce, purr, pulse and pan in a fetishistic homage to the machine that dominates end of the century music like no other. The sleeve explains she's playing "100 per cent free memory sampler". No surprise, then, that she has little to add about a music that gazes so intently into the void. "These are my favourite type of sounds," she will say. "I'm always playing with my favourite sounds." Sound, rather than the instrument, is paramount for Sachiko. On the duo CD, Un, released by the Meme label, her empty sampler sings alongside guitarist Toshimaru Nakamura, who uses only feedback from the mixing board. She still works with Otomo, in the trio I.S.O., who recorded an album last June for Ed Baxter's Alcohol label, inside the Octagonal Room at the new LMC Sound studio. Sachiko plays a sampler with no samples, Otomo uses a turntable and CD player with no records, and the 'subliminal drummer' Ichiraku Yoshimitsu certainly doesn't play drums. Pitching up somewhere between percussion and electronics, his kit consisted mainly of a microphone and a bowl of water. "I think with these musicians, focuses are on hearing the sound, not physically playing musical instruments," Sachiko concludes. "Sometimes the instrument is an obstruction. They just want to listen more to the sound." clive bell, the wire, april 1999 | |
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