The Japanese call it San-ten ichi ichi. Translated literally, that’s three dot one one. It’s a little like America’s 9-11, a date so packed with emotion that those who lived it are bonded by the experience. March 11, 2011 was the day of The Great East Japan Earthquake, a 9.0-richter-scale undersea megathrust that produced a devastating tsunami.
Entire towns and cities were destroyed by the water surge. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was overwhelmed, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. When the water finally receded, the official death toll was reported at approximately 18,500. Other estimates put it over 20,000.
The coastal Iwate Prefecture was just one of the regions in the tsunami’s path. To put its force into perspective, all but three of Iwate’s ports were damaged. The local fishing industry estimated its losses at ¥371.5 billion. The full extent of its devastating force is immeasurable of course. News reports gave a sense of the tragedy’s enormity, even as they made clear that we could not conceive of what those on the ground were going through.
Iwate Prefecture is the birthplace of sound artist Yui Onodera. He says his new album 1982 – named for the year he was born – is a product of his “interest in sonic degradation and rebuilding … the raw and the processed.”
I’m quoting from the album’s notes: “I stayed in Iwate, where I was born, for a few days and created some sound materials using limited materials and old media. … Many old things that remained in my memory became rubble, dismantled, and new scenery was there.”
Onodera used an old tape recorder on his trip home. Where his past recordings have featured contemporary techniques like real-time audio and granular synthesis, he’s begun to develop an interest in more natural sound sources.
“I am fascinated by sounds that cannot be created with a computer,” he writes. The tape recorder provided “a unique acoustic texture created by deterioration and wear, including accidental wear.” The end result is “like a memory of my old days in Iwate.”
This is a theme that has come up repeatedly in my discussions with sound artists – the use of distressed audio (either natural or synthetic) and whether it represents a commentary on the place technology plays in our lives.
“I didn’t have a specific political agenda,” he says. “But it may be a manifestation of our latent desire to live in the modern world. In terms of the environment, there has definitely been a change in the relationship with technology.
“When personal computers started to become popular 25 years ago, we were hooked on new sounds we had never heard before. But now most music is precisely computer edited and we may have grown tired of the way that sounds. The music is error-free.”
Onodera’s new work showcases an affection for more organic source material. “The attitude of welcoming contingencies and happenings has been with me since the beginning of my career, but it is more pronounced now. … I gradually began to reconsider how I interact with technology.”
The shift was partially inspired by his work with the Tokyo-based art collective Nor that Onodera co-founded in 2017. The group includes scientists, musicians, architects, programmers, engineers, robotics engineers and designers. Part of the collective’s mandate is to explore “the universal laws (physics) that govern natural phenomena.”
Onodera says that on 1982, he is “aiming for a hybrid style of expression that appeals to all five senses. Not only sound, but also shapes, colours and images.”
The new material is less of a departure from previous recordings than all of this suggests. It’s a beautiful LP, displaying Onodera’s talent for spacious composition and rich detail. 1982 doesn’t represent a new chapter in his career so much as an expanding of his palette.
A comparison to 2022’s Too Ne showcases this clearly. They are as different as they are alike. While the older work sparkles with indistinguishable textures, the new one delights with a sense of our environment reinterpreted and fed back to us.
The album is due Aug. 23 on Room40.
The Moderns 
Leave a comment