ESSAY by Machida, about Amorphone and Europe tour :
Improvised Music from Japan IMJ-301, 2002

Check It Out, It's the Amorphone

Amorphone-Glittering Resonance
This past winter, I conducted the 2002 Winter Tour, a combination performance and visual art exhibition tour in Yugoslavia, Germany, the Netherlands and Tokyo. The visual art consisted of my Photobatik work using only phoptpaper, my focal method for the past several years. The live electronics performance centered around the Amorphone and Max/MSP. The Amorphone is a self-tuned steel pan that I constructed from an oil drum over a six-month period. Its name combines "amorphous" and "phone." My set was shaped with the intention of realizing a live performance that would expand the expressive quality of my audio CD series, Hypernatural. In the complex overtones emitted by metal, I found a representation of the light and shadow in the East Asian culture of rice cultivation and sun worship. This has interested me ever since, and I have often used the sounds of gongs and bells in my work as references to light. I finally arrived at the Amorphone. The steel pan is a round instrument with a likeness to the radiation of light, and its origin and manufacture as well as the characteristic sound it produces are quite unique. But in fact, it was not made through this theoretical process; it is the result of intuitive work. In Max/MSP, I assign to the MSP real-time sampling engine the role of generating a traditional Indian Tambura-like drone.

Sonic Riches, with an Ear to Listen and a Place to Resound
The Cologne label softl music, established by Tom Steinle (tomlab) and Andrés Krause, released my second CD. The two of them have extremely good ears, and are wonderful people as well. They and aufabwegen's Till Kniola coordinated concerts in Germany at Cuba (Muenster) and Schneidrei (Cologne), and in Holland at Extrapool (Nijmegen). Extrapool, established in 1990, also houses the printing plant Kunst (where softl CD jackets are printed) - which boasts a highly unique, specialized printing technology - as well as lodging facilities, event spaces and art shops, within its two-building compound, operated by an extraordinary staff of 13 people. Frans De Waard of Staalplaat is involved in the sonic events, and a great many artists have pursured and performed their own unique sounds under this roof. This and similar facilities bring together artist and listener, nurturing the instincts of those pursuring new experiments, in a kind of trinity. The relationship between concept and work are often discussed when scrutinizing an artist's work, but in fact, what contributes greatly to the realization of works are these connections between people - and without organizations like Extrapool, such cultural thriving is not possible. (Thank you, all!)

The Objective Sound - Unhurried, Like the Danube
Another place in Europe where I was welcomed was Izba, in the second-largest city in Yugoslavia, Novi Sad, on the Danube. Izba is managed by Mileta and Svetozar Postic, also talented artists. The space combines gallery, bookstore and cafe. On this trip, I had a joint exhibition with conceptual artist Yasuko Toyoshima. Live performances and workshops were held with aid from the city, in both Novi Sad and Belgrade. Well-known Japanese artists thre are Ground Zero and Pizzicato Five.... The unusual sound and shape of the Amorphone fascinated many, and, perhaps because the music had something of the feel of a Balkan brass band, I had a chance to enjoy many conversations with interested people. All this was quite fulfilling. Unlike the monotonous sound from the PowerBook, the sound of the Amorphone contains many strange overtones when heard live. Like the early steel pans, it is unpolished and rough. Sonic works dependent on PA systems are increasingly uniform in texture, but the music that I seek with the Amorphone is diffuse and uncrystallized. I seek something that would erode the barrier of logic and theory with true intuitiveness.