Yoko K
(Aphrodizia)
Performance Notes for a Dialogue with Akemi Maegawa’s Invisible, Inc.
March 22, 2008

One of my new compositions, which is in response to Akemi Maegawa’s "Counter-Foot Money," incorporates the field recording of the sound from an ATM machine in Japan. I am using the sample of the automated "customer service" female voice saying "welcome, thanks for your business (in Japanese)" and various cash-dispensing sounds to construct the beat, while manipulating the sounds with "turntablist" effects and other processing.  So the cash-dispensing ATM voice “makes” the music, not the other way around.

Applying the "turntablist" effect on the voice, I allow the Japanese voice to become mere sound from scratching and reversing a sample like DJs spin records.  For the ears of non-Japanese speakers, however, it is all "in-comprehensive sounds of a foreign language" anyway, whether they are sonically manipulated or not. So the language reversals in the rhythm are a twist to show a funny "gap" between the cultures.

In addition, this Japanese ATM "customer service” female voice has a pitch that is almost an octave higher than the same kind of automated female voice in the US.  As a sound artist, one of the realizations I've had while adjusting to US culture is that I lower the pitch of my speaking voice when speaking in English.  Growing up in Japan, I was conditioned believe that it is a virtue for young Japanese women to speak in a higher pitch, which seems to be a reflection of being vulnerable, weak, or frail. Murakami plays with the "Little Boy" idea, so this is the "Little Girl."

The other work I will perform in my new series of pieces, entitled "Eden," is not a response to any specific work in Invisible, Inc., but more to the overall subject matter of culture and identity that Akemi is dealing with and my own personal relationship to "Japan."  My sense of self-identity while speaking and thinking in Japanese (my native language) is a product of external conditioning and environment about which I had no choice.  My sense of identity and self while speaking and thinking in English (my second language) is a manifestation of my choice, or at least the combination of an identity in American English and my own free will.  My longing for "home" is now for this fictional "Eden” that has never existed (my imagined “Japan”).  This "nostalgic futurism" (which is also the other aesthetic of my music) also feels very "American" to me.

"eden 1" reflects the writing of the Japanese novelist Ango Sakaguchi and his cynical perspective on the idea of "home village."  The field recordings of sounds from the Japanese countryside (frogs, birds) overlap with the synthetic sound imitating those sounds, blurring the boundary between reality and an imagined world.  "eden 2" reflects on post-colonialism and is a response to the way Japanese artists of my parents' generation dealt with the subject of post-War reality.  In the performance, I will be doing a "mash-up" with my other piece, "pho" (on the album), written as the original incidental music for the "PostSecret" screening project on the subject of confession and forgiveness.  I will also incorporate a field recording collage piece, "August," that I created last year as a Japanese interpretation of the Mexican tradition "Ofrenda" (Day of the Dead).

The third new piece, "deviant flower," reflects my recent inspiration from Yayoi Kusama.  Though, again, it may not respond directly to one of Akemi's works, I thought this is relevant to Akemi's subject matter, culture and identity.  I’ve been thinking about the notion of deviance and mental illness that Kusama’s works invoke, and this is a piece that sublimed those thoughts to the state of love.  I was watching "Kusama's Self-Obliteration" film, and thought about the kind of music I would write for it if I could.  I also recently watched the video piece "In My Language" by Amanda Baggs on the subject of autism, which, more than anything I’ve seen, articulates how my pre-music relationship had been with the rest of the world.  I think what I tried to do with this piece is the hybridity of inaccessible ideas with accessible means.

Technically, this composition includes the familiar dub groove (I have been hesitant with the idea of "appropriation," but after having played in a reggae band, I thought I have become entitled to incorporate it)--but layered with several different beat structures, each having different grooves.  I used to make a collage of beats while smoothing out all the different grooves into one, but in this piece I am keeping all the different grooves alive and intentionally un-quantized to each other.  I am inserting the bits and pieces of beats into the dub groove to create the sonic illusion that this is the dub beat as a whole. This is my own answer to the all-sound-the-same electronica beats, while appearing to conform to it.  This is also the first piece that I've begun to incorporate the turntablist technique into manipulating my own voice recordings.

I think the perfect response to Akemi's "Sunny Side Up" piece would be the last song on my album "Study Japanese"--you say tomaYto, I tomaAto.

--Yoko K
March, 2008
Washington, DC

About the Artist

Born and raised in Japan, Yoko K. began the study of classical piano at the age of 3, learned to play several music instruments, sang at jazz clubs, and began composing and producing electronic music. Her compositions have received numerous awards, including a 2007 Grand Prize award in the Artists Forum-Electronic Music Competition.  Yoko K. has performed in art galleries, events/happenings, music clubs and festivals across the US, and collaborated with many musicians, producers, and visual / performing artists around the world. She is also a keyboard player and a backing vocalist with Dust Galaxy, a solo project of Rob Garza from Thievery Corporation. Yoko K. lives and works in Washington DC. (See the artist's website: aphrodizia.net.)