Radio Yugawara: Sounds at Play

Radio Yugawara is the result of a spontaneous recording session in a Japanese kindergarten between the groups Passepartout Duo (Nicoletta Favari and Christopher Salvito) and Inoyama Land (Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita). While each group is renowned in their own right, (Inoyama Land has been together since the 80’s, active in Japan’s environmental scene and working with theater and sound installation, while Passepartout Duo has been on a near continuous world tour since 2015 and are known for performing with their own hand-made musical inventions) this shared meeting allowed the groups to combine their libraries of instruments and engage in a playful approach to music making. EastEast spoke with both groups together, as they considered their relationships to instruments, places, and dreams for future performances.

FIRST MEETING

Makoto Inoue：When the Passepartout Duo visited Japan in 2023 for a tour, they contacted us. After our first meeting, I went to see one of their performances. That was very interesting, I was surprised with their simple but beautiful equipment. I could not help but suggest that we improvise together before they leave Japan. Before we started improvising, we only made some game rules, such as restrictions on the instruments we could use with each other and the combination of performers.

Yasushi Yamashita: We did not have a conversation. I knew their tracks a little.

Passepartout Duo: We discovered Inoyama Land in 2019, and we immediately became big fans. The soundworld of every one of their tracks was so unique and so fascinating to us, we couldn’t really imagine how they were composed and performed. During the isolation of the pandemic times we started recording some covers of our favorite tracks from the Japanese environmental genreJapanese environmental genreKankyō Ongaku, or “environmental music,” is a Japanese genre of music that was established in the 1980s as a reaction to the rapid urbanization and economic development of the time., and then we reached out to them to see if there could be interest for a collaboration. In the spring of 2023 we organized a 17-date-long tour for the Duo around Japan, and we managed to squeeze in also this incredible encounter. We feel so incredibly lucky that Makoto and Yasushi really opened up the doors of Inoyama land’s studio and way of working, and we have learned a lot from it.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF “PLACE”

MI: The name Inoyama Land is a combination of the two members' family names, Inoue and Yamashita. Yamashita means the lower part of the mountain, where the abundant water flow gathers at the foot of the mountain. The name Inoue is the name given to those who protect and manage springs and wells. 

Looking back, there have been many water-related sites around the venues where we have performed live. Rivers, culverts, lakes, and beaches, etc. The town of Yugawara, where Radio Yugawara was recorded, is a land rich in water, sandwiched between two rivers, with a calm coastline to the east and a beautiful lake up in the mountains to the west with a view of Mt Fuji.

YY: Yugawara is a very relaxing place, with the sea, mountains, rivers and hot springs nearby. It is the kind of place where you can walk around and come up with ideas, melodies, images of sounds.

PD: Because we are traveling, we always find ourselves composing and recording in very different spaces. We have learned through the years that every one of these spaces pushes us to make music in a certain way, based on its acoustics, dimensions, and general use. You could as easily translate the discourse from “space” to “place”: everywhere we go, we feel consciously or unconsciously pushed in a certain direction, and that might cause an immediate adaptation from our side, or it might be something that we keep circling around until finally it kicks in, and it becomes a feeling, a rhythm, or anything else. 

RECORDING IN A KINDERGARTEN 

MI: The recording location is the hall of the private kindergarten where I am the headmaster. It is a place where children aged 3 to 6 run around energetically, dance, build houses out of large cardboard boxes, and have musical experience including concerts. The day of the recording was Sunday—there were no children there, so we played with sounds moving like children instead.

For the children, my kindergarten has a time for “enjoying musical expression” and “spontaneous musical awakening,” both led by a professional instructor. Instead of teaching music, I draw pictures and make objects out of familiar materials with them every day. I am always amazed by the children's expressions, especially combinations of colors and shapes. There is nothing I can teach, I learn a lot from them. These small children already have their imaginary canvas. It is boundless and just brilliant. I can feel their elation when they start drawing a single line. The aftermath continues to move in my mind, and it eventually turns into a melody.

YY: This is the space where Inoyama Land was born more than 40 years ago. It is important to us that nothing has changed over the years, neither us nor the space.

The aftermath continues to move in my mind, and it eventually turns into a melody.

PD: The sense of play is something that we often try to convey in the duo’s work; at the beginning of our duo, it sort of felt like a counter-reaction to the scene of contemporary classical music that we were coming from, trying to deliver the message that even if we work really hard, we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously because you know, we are still making music, we are not performing open-heart surgery. Play comes very intuitively also as a strategy for making music together—it’s a relational activity, and it’s true for the two of us and it’s been true for this specific collaboration in four. The kindergarten became the perfect playground for the four of us to get to know each other; because there was nothing special at stake, and there was not much preparation either, we felt like we might as well have fun. 

DREAMS FOR FUTURE PERFORMANCES 

MI: As places for live performance, for example, the ruins of huge buildings with large interior spaces would be interesting. Some of those structures are still under the fire of war, but we dream of one day being able to visit them, like birds crossing freely across borders.

YY: There are several dreams, but my hope is open-air recording.

PD: We have a couple of live events in the works for this collaboration, including a show in London in February 2025. We cannot wait to see how the live experience will mold the music, and to hear directly what people think about the music too—we couldn’t believe it, but Inoyama Land has actually never played outside of Japan in all of its history, so it’s going to be very unique to see how the different circumstances will influence all of us. The instrumentation will be adapted to the touring too, so there’s a lot that we can explore. 

ON RELATIONSHIPS WITH INSTRUMENTS 

MI: When I was a teenager, the first instrument I was strongly attracted to was the Mellotron, invented in the 1960s in the UK. As you know, the Mellotron's sound principle is not based on string vibration or electronic sound control, but on magnetic tape playback. All the keys in the organ-like arrangement are switches for the magnetic tape reproduction device. For example, long tones of string instruments, raising the pitch by semitones, are played back in tandem with the keys. I realized that any sound that could be recorded on magnetic tape, in other words all the sounds in the world, could also be freely controlled by these keyboard performances. In 1977 I modified a Mellotron myself and played with a collage of various self-sampled sounds. The sense of wonder I felt at that time has greatly influenced my subsequent music production and live performances.

YY: The use of various instruments leads us to freedom from self-regulation.

PD: As we are originally a percussionist and a pianist, we somehow have a different story: while the piano is a very univocal instrument, and it’s somehow the same everywhere, percussion represents a much more varied family and it comes with specific techniques and traditions in each country. We started to build our own instruments a bit by chance, and a bit by decision, as we needed a more portable setup that would allow us to play different types of gigs everywhere we go. But maybe it was also a way to finally have a common ground, to have instruments that don’t belong necessarily to either of us, and that we can make our own. Our building experience started from acoustic instruments using wood and metal, and continued with electronic circuits, occasionally meeting other disciplines such as textiles and ceramics. Sometimes we explore the same instrument in different ways, also using the format of sound installations. 

Some of those structures are still under the fire of war, but we dream of one day being able to visit them, like birds crossing freely across borders

INVENTING AND COLLECTING 

MI: The way I used the Mellotron, not as a substitute for existing instruments (violins, flutes, cellos etc.), but converted it into a self-sampling control machine, is a process I am still attempting with different instruments. In the 90s, I started to use digital synthesizers such as the Kurzweil K2000, which can manipulate self-sampled sound data at will, in place of the Mellotron, and as of 2024, the Roland Fantom has taken on this task (self-sampling control machine). 

Many of the digital synthesizers allow me to control various modulation combinations, and I also attempt to use them for generative music. 

45 years ago, when we called ourselves Pre Hikashu, Yasushi and I had a large collection of ethnic instruments from Asia and Africa. We used them in live performances along with a huge modular synthesizer and three Mellotrons. However, transporting and setting up the instruments were tremendously hard, and the performance form was terminated after about six months.

YY: If there are 100 different instruments lined up in the room, we play them from one end to the other, and if there is only one toy trumpet there, we play it all day long. Both are Inoyama Land.

You could say that I am a collector of inventions. I currently own a lot of instruments. I don't always want to collect things, but rather enjoy imaginary collections, which gives me a lot of ideas. We both have different and common views on instruments. This is very important.

PD: There is clearly a shared fascination between us and Inoyama Land for technological tools in music, and for shaping sounds in very personal ways. The two of us are definitely not collectors, but of course the more instruments we build, the more our output looks like a little collection. It’s likely that we have two slightly different approaches, for example we think that Inoyamaland’s approach is strongly influenced by their experience in experimental theater, but our overall goals are very similar, so we basically get there by parallel paths. 

If there are 100 different instruments lined up in the room, we play them from one end to the other, and if there is only one toy trumpet there, we play it all day long. Both are Inoyama Land.

MI: My synthesizer history begins with Roland's modular synthesizer SYSTEM-IOO. It had a built-in 16-step analogue sequencer, so I connected it to a Roland Jupitor-8 and controlled the Jupitor-8's VCF to generate the automatic ostinato of “Apple Star,” one of the early Inoyama Land songs. Synthesizers with such anomalous controls that deviated from the original instrumental performance expression have always been of interest to me.

My interest in children's instruments is because they have always been in my living environment, from my childhood to the present day. I love watching the look of surprise or delight appearing on three-year-old children’s faces when they tapped a little toy glockenspiel for the first time in life.

YY: In 1975 I got a Roland SH-1000 and an Ace Tone Top-5; in 1977 I got a Yamaha CS-50, which I gave away in 1982. For the next ten years I played only upright pianos. It was 1993 when I got a Yamaha Porta Sound MK-100, and a CASIO TONE BANK MT-750 followed in 1997,which I am still using. Incidentally, all the instruments I acquired were second-hand.

My collection of children's instruments is 10 hole harmonica and Melodica. With the 10 hole harmonica, I used to play Jethro Tull's “It’s Breaking Me Up” when I was in high school. I started playing Melodica only two years ago under the influence of Reggae music.  Sometimes I feel like playing the harmonica or clarinet. I also sometimes hear the sound of Stan Gets' tenor saxophone when playing it. It is a very interesting instrument.

PD: We brought to the session what we had in our bags, so that’s our DIY midi-controller that we map Ableton parameters to, and our Chromaplanes. We had spent a little time beforehand sampling some ideas and loading them in, something that we thought could fit in the soundscape that we imagined to be Inoyama Land. The Chromaplane instead has its own sound, because it is an analog synthesizer. We had been developing and touring with the instrument for the past three years, and it was still the very first prototype that we used in this recording session. This instrument is very easy for us to use when you are looking either for melodic lines or for ambient textures and drones. 

We have been working with KOMA Elektronik to make the instrument available as a product too, as we think it offers something really unique both in terms of analog sound and of interface design: the instrument works with emitted electromagnetic fields, and it really represents for us the perfect match between the expressivity of acoustic instruments and the vast possibilities of electronic sound. In a way, interacting with the field is the opposite of using a key: with a key, you basically have an on-off button, and engineers always try really hard to make it more sophisticated than that, in terms of velocity. But with the fields, you have that already just from the physical phenomenon itself. We have also expanded the instrument to what we hope to be the start of a small ecosystem around it, that includes a tuner, a website with a selection of tuning for inspiration, a Max for Live device that brings the Chromoplane into the digital world, and more is to come. 

THE COVER OF RADIO YUGAWARA 

PD: We had been looking for a suitable artwork for a while, trying to find something that still connects with the beautiful covers that Inoyamaland has had so far, starting from the very epic Danzindan-Pojidon. Together with Adam at Tonal Union we were focusing on the idea of the playground, but trying to avoid any infantilism. We reconnected with one of the truest inspirational figures of our duo, Isamu Noguchi; we knew that he had a whole philosophy about playgrounds, and almost by chance we found an article that featured the photographs of Johnny Le. We reached out to him, and found out about his personal connection with Japan, and with photographing the work at the Noguchi museum in Queens during the pandemic. This specific photograph shows maquettes of a playground with swings, a slide, and rings, that Noguchi was planning for the Ala Moana Park in Hawaii in 1940, and which was actually never realized. We thought this choice really brought the project full circle. 

Photos courtesy of Johnny Le