Atama 頭 by Stefan Thut / Taku Sugimoto

Tokyo based Taku Sugimoto and Solothurn based Stefan Thut are old friends. They collaborated many times in concerts and recording sessions in Japan and Europe.

At the end of Stefan's 2019 Korea/Japan Tour, he and Taku made a recording nearby Tama River. They set up two mics very far from each other (more than 15m). After that recording Stefan entitled the piece "At Tama" which changed into "Atama" as a contraction. Atama means “head” in Japanese. It is real that because they couldn’t hear very well what the other one did, it only happened in their heads. Then one month later, during Taku’s Europe tour they did the piece again, at Stefan’s place in Solothurn: Taku on the first floor, Stefan on the second floor.

But the duo happens in the recordings, in audience’s head. After Solothurn’s session, Stefan mixed these two recordings together. The mixed version is available only as a digital version, and the Tokyo and Solothurn recordings are present each as one side on the cassette.

Tracklist

1.	Atama Tokyo - Solothurn	40:36

Credits

released June 22, 2020

Stefan Thut: cello, recording
Taku Sugimoto: guitar

Recorded in Tokyo on October 7 2019 and in Solothurn on November 4 2019

"Only after listening to the recording I realized that the environmental sound gets a new function here: we needed the sound around us in order to not hear ourselves. It is not really about making the environment audible any more. It is much more something about the two of us being placed into this situation."
(ST)

"It is, again, actually new listening experience for me. Two mikes share some environmental aspects of the space, but not our activities. Your activities are captured by only one mike and my activities are by the other. Nevertheless, though only a few times, I hear the sounds of two instruments as if they are blended, which I think occurs in my brain."
(TS)

Designed by Liu Lu

License

CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.