Nacci

Born and raised in Okinawa, Nacci seems to stay close to her roots in her work as a songwriter and musician. With a languid pop sensibility, her songs are refreshing yet deliciously familiar, while remaining both subtly nuanced and decidedly heavy in their delivery.

She continues to work with many groundbreaking artists, such as DJ Quietstorm, Kim Ken and Joseph Nothing, bringing her beautifully breathy vocals and personal musical approach to a number of fruitful collaborations.

Some of her more recent collaborators will be on hand to lend their talents in this performance, helping to showcase her new work. Nacci will also be joined by visual artist Ben List from the Tokyo-based live installation group DaDaKingZ, who will provide a suitably mesmerizing backdrop to the musical proceedings.

Nacci

Ben List

Yusuke Kamijima / Yorune Yolearn

Step into the expansive sonic world of Yusuke Kamijima (aka Yorune Yolearn) and you'll find ethereal melodies, unspoken languages in hushed tones, and teetering layers of dense harmonies, all which seem to come in waves, disappearing into the outer reaches of the music in subtle, unfurling echoes. In short, he makes music you want to hear.

Yusuke has been gaining recognition through his work as a live musician and composer (which has been featured on Ryuichi Sakamoto's radio show), contributing to overseas compilations and providing soundtrack music for film.

This evening will be an opportunity to hear some of his most resounding works live and loud. Charming, majestic, and profoundly accomplished.

Yusuke Kamijima

Shintaro Aoki

Composer, pianist and electronic artist Shintaro Aoki wants you to feel good. As a musician, he makes some of the most blissful passages of scintillating electronica in recent memory, and as the owner of the Japanese label Mizukage Records, he puts out music that goes straight for your limbic system, guaranteed to massage you into a winning mood.

Since 2002, Shintaro Aoki has been making electronic music as aquashade, collaborating with a number of overseas artists, while also providing music for theater performances here in Japan. He also presides over the Saitama-based electronica event Denshi-Tenshin, which serves as a forum for new electronic artists.

With his volume of activity recently, we are overjoyed that he could take the time to join us for our Test Tone series. Our chance and yours to hear a special artist with a unique vision.

Shintaro Aoki

Shintaro Aoki on MySpace

Shantell Martin (live drawing)

This year, Shantell Martin is 27! For those of you familiar with cubic numbers, you already know that 27 is the largest number that is the sum of the digits of its cube. For those who aren't, this may seem unimportant, but it is just one more reason why 27 is the magic number, and of course why Shantell is just as magical!

If it sounds like we're out of words of praise for Shantell, we aren't. Shantell Martin is, in fact, magical. Also, since she brings marvelous imagery and new ideas every time she joins us, we feel obliged to keep writing something new.

For a sneak peek at her new work, check her lovely website below to enter a forest of interconnected worlds and outlandish auras, chock full of psychedelic wildlife frolicking on the fringes of reality. Shantell Martin is magical!

Shantell Martin

Chikanari Shukuka (sound / dance / feedback / performance)

Ask anyone who has seen her perform and chances are, they will remember Chikanari Shukuka in all of her jaw-dropping instensity. Working with microphone feedback, extended vocal techniques, clanging cymbals, multi-effectors, and erotic elements of modern dance, Shukuka's performances are at once sensual and dark, challenging and captivating.

Gaining attention internationally, she recently performed at Alternativa Festival in the Czech Republic and at 'The Japanese Experience', hosted by Theatre de Nimes in France. She has also been invited to perform at the 16th edition of Sibiu Internation Theatre Festival in Romania next spring.

While describing her method of expression as "improvised sound and dance creating melted space and time," she adds, "When I dance, I dance to my sound. What else to do?"

Shukuka Chikanari

Ome Zombie + Cleaning Lady (Australia) + ... aka Nikola Mounoud (Switzerland)

Ome Zombie is the tumultuous hell-child of mercurial saxophonist Akihiko Ando (Kuruu Crew) and shambolic drummer Emi Nobuko (Tsurubami). Traversing the unpaved musical landscape of hardcore, noise-rock, free jazz, and lo-fi psychedelia, Ome Zombie crashes into mountains of sludge, stumbles through swamps of viscous drone, and twists through valleys of beautifully tangled harmonies.

Every performance features the duo with a guest musician in tow, and this time around, Australian multi-tasker Stephen Richards aka Cleaning Lady will provide the necessary skronk and splatter as he alternates between saxophone and no-input mixing board. For the second half of the set, "..." (aka Nikola Mounoud, from Swiss extreme performance/noise duo Overload Collapse) will add a layer of industrial-sized mulch to the proceedings.

A rare chance to see three heavy units battle it out on (relatively) foreign soil.

Ome Zombie

Cleaning Lady

...

Eli (Kenji 'Noise' Nakamura + Kousuke Sone + Hiroshi Takahashi)

Taking the definition of free jazz to a whole new level, Eli will be sure to offend most music purists. But for those who like their jazz scattered with artillery fire, clusterbombs and landmines, this saxophone trio will quench the most tilted depths of your soul. Frontman and tireless promoter of the groundbreaking 'Black & Gold' event, Kenji 'Noise' Nakamura is well-known for his napalm-laced sax improvisations (and overall punk-ass attitude). With Kousuke Sone on bass and the grindcore drumming of Hiroshi Takahashi, Eli will both awaken and devastate your senses, leaving you excited (and maybe a bit frightened) about the future of free jazz.

Eli

Death-logic (Analogic + DEATHANOVA)

With a multi-faceted presentation mixing epileptic visuals with furious drumming, Death-logic might just live up to their name. A mad collaboration between audiovisual research unit Analogic (Takuya Sakamoto + Osamu Nakamura + Shin Oshiro) and Optrum's frenetic drummer Yoichiro Shin, the sensory experience might be likened to watching that Pikachu episode that sent a number of children into convulsive seizures.

Total visual overload matched with deft musicianship to deliver an experience that is difficult to capture in one sitting. Seconds anyone?

Analogic

DEATHANOVA

Yukitomo Hamasaki (matter)

We first found out about Yukitomo Hamasaki through Philippe Chatelain's Laptop Orchestra, an experiment in collective improvisation where a single sound source is manipulated by a group of laptop-wielding musicians. What we didn't know was that Hamasaki is in fact a musician in the truest sense. His own compositions reveal a deep appreciation of harmonic structure, layering sounds in textures that seem to leave the listener suspended in time. Interspersed with irregular clicks, pops and beeps, the minimal breaks in time reveal the careful attention to detail in the depth and dynamics of his music. Hamasaki also heads up the splendorific Tokyo-based label 'matter', which seems to act as an extension of his own rarified musical sensibilities.

matter

Instant Places (Canada)

Using a plethora of sources, Ian Birse and Laura Cavanaugh aka Instant Places create captivating works that reinterpret the sights, sounds and spaces of our environments. As a working unit, they investigate how we impose ourselves in our interactions with our surroundings. As artists, they have have a remarkable sense for finding the extraordinary in our everyday experiences, piecing together tapestries of sound and image that interrupt our sense of space. With a number of projects to their credit, including everything from large installation works to noise opera, it's difficult to predict what they have in store. They are going with the theme of 'Tokyo Rodeo' for this month's Test Tone, so it's fair to say that there might be a few accidents. Wear your snakeskin kimono if you've got one.

Instant Places

Legofriendly (Dusseldorf/Tokyo)

Electronica can get pretty dull. In an age of laptop-produced boredom, it's fortunate we have artists who take the time for quality control. A unit with its roots in Tokyo, Germany and England, Legofriendly seems to take the best aspects of all three. Disparate beats and quirky samples are carefully distilled in the frequency lab, then scientifically arranged for maximum cerebral massage. Playfully eccentric yet always accessible, the music strikes the perfect balance between harmonic subtlety and head-nodding rhythms. Tokyo-based ex-pats Stan Eberlein and Peter Slade first formed this unit in 2002, and this night will serve as a pre-release for their second album on the Intervall-audio imprint, Egg Beater. With a full working setup, this performance will be a truly live experience, and surely the best chance to hear their distinctive sound before the album release in June.

Legofriendly
Intervall-audio

Tripon

A dynamic visual group who have gained a reputation for the quality, originality and breadth of their work, we are overjoyed to have them back at Test Tone this month. Vokoi, Satoshi Horii and Daito Manabe are not only adept artists, but have truly embodied the spirit of creating unexpected instruments out of new technologies. You can be sure that they will bring a dose of this vision to cover the walls throughout the evening.

Tripon