Artists
(click artist name for high resolution image)
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Akira Kosemura is a composer who lives in Tokyo. He also manages his newly formed label “schole.” He learned piano as a child and started composing regularly in 2005.
He began his career with a debut EP on an American label in 2006. His tracks were highly regarded on many compilations released in Germany, Belgium, France, Canada, and Australia. At the same time, Akira established his own label “schole” and started to manage the label, issue free magazines, produce artists, and provide music pieces to the media.
In 2007, Akira released his 1st full album on an Australian avant pop label which is managed by Lawrence English, one of the most important experimental artists and music critics. On the album “It’s On Everything,” Akira showed the new shape of his daily music by putting the field recordings, electronics, and acoustic instruments together while he was composing his minimal tunes mainly with piano. His first album is making sales in both domestic and international markets and has been reviewed exceptionally as “world legacy.”
Recently, Akira Kosemura displayed his tune “TERMINAL” at the Airport Symphony of Queensland Music Festival 2007 in Australia, cosponsored by Brisbane International Airport and the Australian label ROOM40.
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Anonymeye is the nom de plume of Andrew Tuttle from Brisbane, Australia. His reconfigures various organic and mechanic musics within a sonic framework akin to an abstract musical Esperanto. Utilising electronic and acoustic instrumentation including acoustic guitar, signal processing, synthesisers, and effects units, Anonymeye straddles and blurs boundaries be- tween improvisation and composition, experimentation and song-form, rural landscapes and urban constructions and melody and dissonance. Since 2004, Anonymeye has released three albums, a half-dozen or so short-form and split releases, and appeared on a score of various artist compilations.
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Born in 1983, Aus is the talented Yasuhiko Fukuzono from Tokyo, Japan.
Yasuhiko Fukuzono is an experimental video score, ambient breaks and sound artist from Tokyo, Japan. His third LP, “Sonorapid”, mixes floating ambient electronics and gentle female vocals with glitch rhythms.
He started his journey in the world of music at the age of 4, when his family sent him to attend piano classes. Years later, naturally, he began to compose simple electronic music using a keyboard when he was 13 years old. It was in this four years of toying with a keyboard and a tape recorder, that opened up a whole new dimension in his world of music making.
At the age of 23, this prolific young musician, who is also a graduate majoring in educational psychology, already has 4 gorgeous albums under his belt − two limited released by the Belgium label U-Cover, one released by music related in N.Y. and the latest by Preco from Japan. He loves to re-discover and re-invent the nature of the sounds around him, over and over again. “It gives birth to new nature by changing the nature” quoted by this quirky composer.
Acquiring his inspirations from all over the places - images that his mind captured from movies, words that he stumbled upon, pieces of music that drop out from TV and radio, nomadic dreams, long lost memories and indescribable inner feelings - Fukuzono writes music that illustrate the detailed movements of life. and quite often, he illustrates, with his subtle music skills, in films too.
Since 1998, he has been composing music for the films and short movies made by Takafumi Tsuchiya, who is also the visual support for aus’s performances and the co-producer for some of aus’s works. So far, he has crafted some of his most beautiful compositions for the 6 films and short movies shot by Takafumi Tsuchiya.
“It’s Tomorrow Already” is one such example.Find this short film at dotmov festival 2006 and famousfor15mb.com. aus will also be making a soundtrack for swedish video artist Irispiers next year.
With his 5th album scheduled to be released in 2007, Yasuhiko Fukuzono a.k.a. aus’s exquisite journey of delicate and imaginative sounds, continues…
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Keiichi Sugimoto is an international artist and composer from Japan. He plays in several sound projects such as FilFla, FourColor, Minamo and Fonica. His compositions have been released from record labels throughout the world such as 12K (US), apestaartje (US), TOM LAB (Germany), and HEADZ (Japan). As FourColor, his album “Water Mirror” was chosen among the best electronica albums in the THE WIRE magazine (UK).He has also toured extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia, the United States, and Canada. He has provided numerous tracks to films, visuals, plays, exhibitions, television, web commercials, and company videos.
In 2004, FourColor provided the music for director Jun Miyazaki’s “FRONTIER”, appearing at the Cannes film festival. In addition, the film won the “Young Viewpoint” award during the director’s week. In 2006 at the France Aix-en-Provence film festival, Keiichi Sugimoto won the original soundtrack prize, for his soundtrack of “Whirr”, a film by German director Timo Katz. By 2007, these achievements had lead Sugimoto to be registered to the French film composers association (U.C.M.F). In addition to his artist activities, in 1999 he established Cubic Music, a record label to release music and to organize events. Some of the artists he has released include World’s End Girlfriend, Kyo Ichinose, piana, and No.9. He has also been active in inviting foreign labels and artists to perform in Japan, as well as organizing tours for international labels such as 12K, Hapna and TOM LAB.
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The delicate lap-pop project Lullatone came together shortly after Shawn James Seymour moved from his hometown of Louisville, KY, to Nagoya, Japan, with his girlfriend and bandmate, Yoshimi Tomida. The two initially met in an intercultural communications class at the Bellarmine University. At one point during class, the teacher asked the exchange students what they had trouble adjusting to in America. Tomida replied that she was having trouble adjusting to American food, so after class Seymour offered to take her to a local Asian market. They ended up having a picnic, and Seymour moved to Nagoya with her about a year later, where they moved into a tiny apartment. It was there that he was inspired to start writing what he called “tiny songs.” Seymour, who didn’t sleep much at that time, would stay up late composing and recording lullabies for Tomida, making use of whatever he could get his hands on: xylophones, keyboards, music boxes, sine tones, harps, toy drums, ukuleles, cymbals, shakers, wood blocks, pillows, whispers, heartbeats, bubbles, and, as Seymour put it, “a lot of daydreams.” The result was a set of warm, meandering lullabies that came together on Lullatone’s 2003 release Computer Recital. Another album, entitled My Petit Melodies, was released soon after that on the Japanese label Childisc. Little Songs About Raindrops, the band’s third album, was released in 2005. The new release used a wider array of instrumentation than the previous recordings, featuring Tomida’s breathy, childlike vocals and a rich tapestry of organic sounds. 2006’s Plays Pajama Pop Pour Vous found Seymour and Tomida continuing their exploration of shimmering, organic tones. 2007’s Bedtime Beat followed in the same tradition of cute nighty-night whimsy.
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Miko (Rie Mitsutake) is a Japanese female singer/songwriter and multi-instrmentalist from the outskirts of Tokyo. She creates melodic and experimental music by playing various kinds of instruments, singing, and sampling many sounds. Miko’s music career has started when she took piano lessons at age of 5. Then she started making music when she joined an indie-pop band in high-school where she played guitars and vocals. Then, around 2000, she began recording songs in her bedroom using her 8 track MTR. She has released her debut album Parade from Japanese label PLOP in 2008. After 2 years since her debut album, Miko’s long awaited 2nd album called “Chandelier” was released from an Australian label Someone Good. In addition to her solo work, she is working on collabolation with various musicians.
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Nika is known for her chameleon-like ability to transform her voice, while Saya has a melancholic and straightforward singing style. Both have distinct voices that can be identified immediately, but when they sing in unison, they create melodies that are truly sublime. There is a childlike innocence to this album, and offers a peak into the unique world of how they make music.
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Born Cornel Wilczek and based in Melbourne, Australia, he made his full-length album debut in 2002 with Forgetabout, an electro-acoustic effort on Surgery Records. Second album Painting Monsters on Clouds (2004) was also released on Surgery Records. Around this time, Wilczek worked with Australian indie pop stars Architecture in Helsinki on their critically acclaimed second album, In Case We Die (2005), and Mush Records band Clue to Kalo on their second album, One Way, It’s Every Way (2005). The third Qua album, Q&A, was unveiled in 2008. Originally released on the Love + Mercy label, Q&A features contributions from a couple of notable drummers, James Cecil of Architecture in Helsinki and Laurence Pike of Savath + Savalas. Wilczek also collaborated with Pike on the Silver Red EP (2008), an improvised live recording on Someone Good Records. In 2009 Qua joined the roster of Mush Records, which re-released not only Q&A but also Forgetabout and Painting Monsters on Clouds. The label also released the Goodmorning Sun/Circles remix EP, which includes a pair of songs from Q&A along with a bunch of remixes.
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Summers In Mariana is the sophomore LP by Perth based avant-songstress Stina. Written over the period of two years in her home, the record was born out of a desire to create an up- wardly optimistic and iridescent collection of instrumental passages – songs that reflected the glimmer of summer’s light. But not all things go as planned – if they did, we’d all be just a little bit bored.
As Stina toiled away at the record, the instruments and their surroundings began to shape the songs more than expected. A 1920s harmonium, which previously served the Salvation Army on the road, was a key instrument used in the early stages of writing and its slightly detuned melodies came to infect many other musical elements. Before long the idea of A-440 tuning was a mere memory and the imagined summery sounds took on a slightly more indoor sen- timent.
It wasn’t long before Stina realized that the music she was creating wasn’t mere summer- inspired pop, it had a sense of place far more homely – as if each room in which she was re- cording was shaping the songs’ character. The light of summer, filtered through her curtains and reflected off her wall paper was imprinting itself on her music.
Summers In Mariana is in many ways a new form of contemporary chamber music. The songs were created in different rooms of Stina’s house and now she is opening her house to you, inviting you inside to imagine your own setting in which these songs might exist. This is music of the home, for the home. Melodic light sweetly filtered through parted curtains, the shadows on the floor telling little stories of time spent indoors.
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