Artist : Tetuzi Akiyama & Toshimaru Nakamura
Title : Semi-Impressionism
Genre : Ambient
Year : 2009
Date : 12/2009
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 03
Label : Spekk
Source : CDDA
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : 59:04 min
Size : 79,1 MB
Tracklist:
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01.Semi-Impressionism 01 18:29
02.Semi-Impressionism 02 15:58
03.Semi-Impressionism 03 24:37
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59:04 min
While me and Tetuzi were playing in a
city called Novisad, a local journalist
came up to us. He seemed pretty drunk
and we wanted to keep distance from him
but the guy insisted "Let me speak one
more word". At first with a tweaking
voice and then loudly he claims "Zen
Noise". He probably meant "the Zen"
noise but we were wondering what his
point was at first. After few days, me
and Tetuzi were on the land of Sweden.
One morning, in a hotel lobby, we found
a review of our performance on some
newspaper. They noted our duo "Zen
Impressionism". Comparing (if that is
possible in the first place..) to the
Zen knowledge of the average Japanese,
mine is poor so I felt a little guilty
being rewarded with such a magnificent
word. At the same time, I felt the word
"Zen" is being used so convenient and
easily.. To tell the truth, we are used
to playing abroad so I would say this
isn't the first time being expressed in
that manner. When I was young, I felt
sometimes irritated being said in this
way. But now, I would just think "oh,
just like always" or "haven't been
struck like this for a long time" and
these comments wouldn't really hurt or
itch myself at all. But then again, and
somehow this time, we got excited with a
morning coffee discussing "we must not
let this go, we have to drop a message
to this". So our action was to release a
CD entitled "Zen Impressionist". How
brave! Anyway, so it means this CD
existed before the quality of the sound.
We decided to express the "Zen" letter
in calligraphy so we asked a
calligrapher to draw the letter. Our
hope was to have it drawn in a dynamic
stroke to express the excellence of the
word. And if it was written by a
calligraphy brush, we also thought it
would give foreigners an impression that
they might have seen the word somewhere.
When looking at the result of the
drawing, we found out that the left part
of the "Zen" letter was slightly
different and instead formed the word
"Semi (=cicadas)". Cicadas are noisy
insects in the summertime. It turned out
that the sample letter we provided to
the calligrapher was miswritten. I guess
the calligrapher also shook his head
wondering why we had him write just the
word "Semi".
Episode by Toshimaru Nakamura
I was taking a walk in a park, a huge
area that was once a castle built by a
warrior in the Muromachi era, and later
became a place of retirement for the
first Edo Shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa. The
sound of cicadas was so intense that it
made my ears itch. I was curious and
wanted to see some of these insects, so
I looked up into the branches of one of
the large trees, though I could not see
a single cicada. I tried searching in
another tree, yet still could not find
one. Meanwhile, I had been somewhat
blinded by the glare of the morning sky
and my neck had begun to ache, and so I
gave up. I started to walk again,
thinking that there was something I had
missed, or simply did not understand.
Cicadas were crying or screaming, or
whatever, at the top of their voices,
yet it seemed as though they did not
want to be seen. If they needed to hide
themselves from their enemies, they had
better of stay quiet. It made no sense
to me. Wanted to be heard but not seen?
Oh à hey yes, I see à I get it.
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