Toshiya Tsunoda ­ Kapotte Muziek by
CDEP - Korm Plastics KP 3014

This is in many ways a break with tradition. Normally Toshiya Tsunoda writes detailed descriptions of what he does per piece, but in this case it is just said he reworks an old cassette by Kapotte Muziek, called '4 stukken'. This is the second break: up until now musicians involved in this series used live recordings, but Tsunoda is the first to use a studio recording by Kapotte Muziek. Like the cassette there are four parts, corresponding with the original release and they are reworked in the best Tsunoda tradition, involving field recordings and strange and unusual on-site recordings.

The sound work of Japanese artist Toshiya Tsunoda represents a radical rethinking of the concept of field recordings. Rather than being documental or naturalistic, his pieces appear as unique music compositions concerned with the relation between space and cognition, rendering the vibration of objects audible, revealing the hidden beauty in each sonic detail. With the meticulously scientific approach of a cataloguist, Tsunoda captures the depth of the landscape, the vital breathing of things.

Toshiya Tsunoda is a Yokohama, Japan based artist who studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music. Since 1994, he has been operating the WrK label, which he co-founded with Minoru Sato. He has released work on Staalplaat (NL), Selektion (DE) and Hapna (SW). His work has been shown at the ICC, Tokyo, and the Kawasaki city museum, among others.

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reviews

TOSHIYA TSUNODA - KAPOTTE MUZIEK BY (CD by Korm Plastics)
The wet, static rain, combining digital and other field recordings attempts to reconstruct "Vier Stukken" by Kapotte Muziek (Frans De Waard). Toshiya Tsunoda (Sirr, Intransitive, Lucky Kitchen) brings together some deep conceptualism to this work. Recorded in Nagaura Bay, Japan, Tsunoda captures the primal frequency of the shoreline, the anchor's chains, the stillness of the water's calm with a random gull, general marine industry. Though, if you step outside of the known sound you hear distinctive metals, percussion via churning bubbles and a drone that could be either the well worn tracks with a distant, passing steam locomotive or an elongated cry for help. You know that sound when you have reached the bottom of a favorite drink? Sucking endlessly through a straw you attempt to savor the very last drop, all expectations high that the serving will last forever. This exaggerated anticipation is built tenfold here with a series of velocity shifts, and some added chirps and slight melodies implanted in the background. This is the eleventh in an ongoing series that matches composers with the back catalogue of work by KM which also includes renditions by Stephan Mathieu, Raboud Mens and others. In conclusion, Tsunoda brings us back to the coast, with big (jetliner passing overhead) and lil' birdcalls. The combination of nature and industrial stillness (and chaotic frenzy) is a complex, difficult listen. Its tension mirroring the way of the twenty-first century world. (TJN)
TJ Norris in Vital Weekly 423

TOSHIYA TSUNODA - KAPOTTE MUZIEK BY TOSHIYA TSUNODA
Korm Plastics KP 3014 CD
Japanese field recording specialist Toshiya Tsunoda is the latest composer to receive an invitation to rework the sounds of Kapotte Muziek, one of the many ongoing projects for the ever prolific Frans de Waard. Through Kapotte Muziek, De Waard has presented a dynamic form of electroacoustic techniques in recycling sounds from discarded objects, second hand music and other forms of cultural detritus. This, the Kapotte Muziek By... series is a logical extension of De Waard's own recycling programme, in handing over his own recordings to selected composers for them to reinterpret. By all appearances, Tsunoda took the Kapotte Muziek cassette Vier Stukken to Nagaura Bay in Yokosuko City, Japan and played back the Kapotte Muziek sounds within that environment. Yet Tsunoda's strategies in the placement of the microphone within a bottle or the cassette player against a resonating metal plate thoroughly irradiate both the environmental sounds and the Kapotte Muziek tracks to arrive at a blustery abstraction of crackle, hiss and vibration.
(Jim Haynes in The Wire 245, July 2004)

Kapotte Muziek by TOSHIYA TSUNODA (KP 3014) ist die 11. Folge dieser von Frans de Waard initiierten Reihe. Der Japaner hat dafür Material überarbeitet, das 1992 auf der KP-Kassette Vier Stukken erschienen ist. Wie immer das vorher geklungen haben mag, jetzt hört man ein rieselndes Knirschen, das durch die lappende Brandung am Nagaura-Strand bei Yokosuka City, aufgenommen am 24.12.2003, überlagert wird. Wenn man den Böttger-Effekt abzieht, könnte der japanische Environmentalakustiker, der mir durch sein ful-Duo mit seinem WrK-Labelpartner Minoru Sato auf Selektion bekannt geworden ist, aber auch in seiner Badewanne mit Gummientchen geplätschert haben. Drei weitere Versionen variieren diesen Ansatz einer akustischen Doppelbelichtung oder Übermalung. Auffällig ist der strenge No-Nonsense-Minimalismus, der Fieldrecordings von Wasser, von Vögeln, mit rauhem Gedröhn, das sich wie eine stehende Welle darüber legt, bruitistisch entidyllisiert. Mir ist bis heute nicht klar, ob die so genannte Noise Culture im Lärm einen Aggressor umarmt und dadurch halbwegs neutralisiert, so dass man aufmerksam seiner unerhörten Schönheit lauscht, ob sie erste und zweite Natur zu versöhnen oder lediglich den romantischen Kalbsblick auf die 'Natur' zu düpieren versucht. Wahrscheinlich versperre ich mir aber mit meinen unsinnlichen Warums gerade den Zugang zu dem, was einfach 'ist'.
(Bad Alchemy #44)

Plus ascétique, le monde musical de Toshiya Tsunoda est une célébration des mircosons. Crépitements, drones infra, fantômes de manipulations concrètes et fuite de gaz réfrigérant constituent le matérial nécessaire à l'élaboration carbonée de sa musique. Excitant l'imagination saus d'autre rappel précis qa'aux sources utilisées, sa participation aux réinterprétations de Kapotte Muziek (série Kapotte Muziek by, sur Korm Plastics/Naninani) confirme un talent discret mais essentiel, où chimie et poésie se mêlent, articulant les sons les plus infimes.
(Fear Drop #11)

TOSHIYA TSUNODA
Kapotte Muziek by... CD (Korm Plastics, The Netherlands, 2004)
Eleventh in the series, and the first that uses a Kapotte Muziek studio recording, as opposed to a live one, as the source. The recording in question, Vier Stukken, is not (I've just checked) one of the Kapotte Muziek cassettes I have, and so I can't compare this reworking with the raw material. It'd be an interesting comparison to make though, because what's here sounds pretty unpolished and raw itself and would appear to incorporate additional field recordings as well. In fact, I'd say the lion's share on this relies on new on-site stuff, with very little from Vier Stukken at all, but I can't really say for sure since, unusually, Tsunoda doesn't describe how he achieves his results. I'll just have to blindly guess that the brief recurring plinky pattern buried beneath the bottle pneumatics and cawing and tweeting on the third track is about as much as is owed to the tape this is 'based on'. My ears could be deceiving me, of course, but both there and elsewhere - the grimly slopping washroom scene partially obscured by a rustling sound screen, or the seagulls, saltwater, and strong mechanically-driven hissing - a lot of the material seems obviously organic and first hand. I'm happy enough with that though, because no matter how tenuously connected to the Kapotte Muziek release (and it could merely be the fact that this too has four tracks), the compositions presented are never less than intriguing. (MO)
(Adverse Effect Volume 3, number 2)
 

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