The Japanese Band Making ‘electromagnetic Punk With Obsolete Devices
Tokyo, September 5 (EFE). - Japanese art collection Electronicos Fantasticos. Use old devices like fans, old TV screens and lamps to make music.
Techno and rock beats in a concert hall led by musician E Wada, with self-contained equipment such as cathode-ray screens attached to guitar necks and air conditioners connected to microphones.
At a recent concert at Tokyo's Kanda Myojin Hall, the avant-garde group also played traditional Japanese imperial court music known as gagaku.
In the orchestra laboratory
Wada has always been interested in turning instruments into musical instruments, and in his first project, using magnetic cassettes and tapes, he realized that "any instrument, as long as it can receive electromagnetic waves, can become a machine."
He began working with a "community" of like-minded professional and amateur musicians, engineers, and designers, and in 2015, a vintage artists' and instruments' orchestra was formed in the Sumida suburb of Tokyo.
"At first we had to find a way to play because it didn't exist, and we worked step by step to turn the instruments into instruments and create our music," Wada tells Efe.
Groups of 70 to 80 artists participate in four Japanese cities: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hitachi and Nagoya. The group has further developed its vision with online workshops aimed at harnessing international talent to create a "global lab orchestra".
Participants exchange ideas and technical expertise, learn how to build their own equipment and participate in improvement sessions.
Wada added that the scope of the "adventure" is broad and includes schoolchildren and pensioners, adding that the project "wants to make ethnic music with electromagnetic sounds, as if we are a tribe".
Garbage on stage
As Vada explains, at the heart of Nikos, as the band is also known, "electrical devices that would otherwise be lost begin a new life as musical instruments."
Older devices are "hacked" with circuits, scanners, photoreceptors, and modulators that convert signals into sound with pedals and amplifiers.
Devices that have been turned into gadgets include table lamps, vacuum cleaners, fans, cameras, and transistor radios.
Wada describes the band's style as "electromagnetic punk", as the machines "come from an era when electromagnetic technology was abundant".
The devices Nikos used were mostly manufactured by local brands such as Toshiba, Sony or Panasonic until the 1990s, when Japan's post-war economy was booming and the country was considered a global manufacturing center for consumer electronics.
The team is made up of engineers who work for Japanese companies, designing new tools by day and "turning old tools into monsters" by night, laughs Wada.
The electronics are great. In August, they take the Fuji Rock stage at one of the biggest music festivals in Japan and regularly participate in the Ars Electronica festival in Linz (Austria), one of the most eclectic and pioneering events in Europe.
Wada hopes that one day the group will play at the Barcelona Gold Festival, and they plan to organize a parade of street musicians with their instrument, where "old instruments will suddenly appear in the living space." EFE:
AHG / CH / JT