Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Kouhei Matsunaga in Tokyo


Kouhei Matsunaga has been making music for quite a while, in fact his first album was on the then mighty Mille Plateaux in 1998. But it took about another decade for us to discover him, with PC coming across the excellent NHK release on Raster-Noton, 'Unununium'. NHK is a project with Toshio Munehiro, but by himself Kouhei produces as NHK yx. I saw Kouhei play a liveset in Tokyo earlier this year and was very impressed. He provides an interesting take on things - it is essentially techno from the perspective of experimental/abstract music. Given this it is not so surprising that he has collaborated with Mika Vainio and Sean Booth, two other artists who have a somewhat similar aesthetic (even if they sound quite different). And when 1/2 of Autechre says about Kouhei, 'he's an important figure at the moment', for me that is a pretty good indication this is someone you should be paying close attention to. To get a better idea of his sounds, I'd recommend checking these recordings of NHK yx:

NHK yx @ electronic explorations

NHK yx @ rare frequency

And for those in Tokyo, Kouhei is playing this Thursday 4th November at SuperDeluxe. I'm definitely going to be there and considering it is an early show (7pm start) and only costs 1000 yen, no excuses not to come! And for everyone else, keep an eye out for releases he has in coming months on Skam by himself and with Sensational. We are also going to be doing a ssg mix with him, so that is something to look forward to. In the meantime, check these recordings and hopefully see some of you on Thursday. For info, check his homepage, blog, twitter, and these pages have more about his NHK yx project and his collaboration with Sensational.


NHKyx aka Kouhei Matsunaga

98年、10代でドイツのMille Plateauxからの1stアルバム「Upside Down」以降、
現在までImportant Records、Raster-Noton、WordSound、Skam Recordsなど主要
な電子音楽レーベルからリリースを続ける。その数は現在までに約40タイトルに
のぼり、その中でMika Vainio(Pan Sonic)Sean Booth(Autechre)、
Sensetional(Jungle Brothers)、Merzbow、Conrad Schnitzler等とコラボレー
トを行ってきた。
エクスペリメンタルを軸に、テクノ、ヒップホップ、アブストラクトなど多岐に
渡る活動、早熟とも言える10代 からのキャリアで得られた強度は他のミュージ
シャンに例をみない。
ソロ名義として、Koyxen, NHKyx等、ユニットとしてNHK等の名義で活動する。
現在、大阪・ベルリン在住。

Forthcoming:  2010年 11月末 Sensational meets Koyxen (SKAM Records/UK)
        2011年  1月末 NHKyx (SKAM Records/UK)

HomePage / Blog / Twitter / Booking

4 comments:

  1. interesting never heard of this guy, but he has got a release in Lithuania!
    http://www.discogs.com/Kouhei-Matsunaga-Complicated-High-Still-Now/release/525179

    will definately check him out, thanks!
    some recommendations on where can i find that vainio techno from him?

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  2. Thanks for the heads up with those. Grabbing the sets and subscribing to the podcasts. Both look like nice podcasts.

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  3. @ rokas: if you are talking about the collaboration with vainio & booth, it came out on vinyl and CD. presumably digital too... should be easy to find. some interesting stuff there.

    @ nicholas: the electronic explorations podcast is top notch. very forward thinking. plenty of great stuff there.

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  4. i meant that you have mentioned 'techno' and i wanted to get some direction on which releases i cand that

    ReplyDelete

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