Tokyo 1969 by Toshi Ichiyanagi

Hats off to Yoko Ono who was absolutely stunning at the Oakland Fox Theater earlier this week, performing with Deerhoof, Cornelius, along with other special guests (Pikachu of Afrirampo, who, IMO is cooler than Satomi of dh, and Harper Simon - aka son of Paul Simon, and a guy named Jarod who "plays 1800 instruments" according to Sean Lennon).

Not to be gossipy or anything, but equally as mind-bending is an electronic music piece by her ex-husband (no, not John, the other one--Toshi).

Tokyo 1969 is an amazing piece that captures the energy and neurosis of that year, using field recordings, voices from radio, enka, and wailing rock guitar. Post-Cage, pre-Otomo, it's somewhere between Charles Ives (with a tape recorder), Jimi Hendrix and Taj Mahal Travellers. No wonder the coolest woman in 1969 was married to him. Hear a sample of it here. At 15:30 minutes and 30 seconds long, it's pretty long for an electroacoustic piece, but hardly boring. According to the liner notes in the album, Oto no Hajime wo motomete 4 Shigeru Sato Work, the piece uses chance operations inspired by John Cage (who was briefly Ichiyanagi's teacher in nyc). These operations are used in two basic ways: 1) by manipulating and connecting the machines in the NHK radio electronic music studio in random ways. 2) Asking students to manipulate these arbitrarily connected machines in any way they wish. But without sound. Huh? Not quite sure what that means. In any case, the piece is quite awe-inspiring. Far preceding the onkyo movement, Ichiyanagi conceived his work as a piece of kankyo ongaku, which translates to "environmental music." Importantly, the chance operations, though inspired by Cage take it the concept to the next level. What I mean by that is that the operation that Cage dreamed up seems to have finally caught up with the appropriate medium. The raw material of Tokyo 1969 ask to be treated in terms of chance operations - what's the use of trying to order found sounds in some logical way? To serve its function as "environmental music" chance operations provided the piece with the perfect method to achieve its purpose.

And a small bonus for all you Virilio fans, there's this video of Shinjuku since 1969... in 10 seconds. Speed or intensity?