Fossil Cocoon - The Music of K. Yoshimatsu
Navel-Gazers #60 is an interview with K. (Koshiro) Yoshimatsu who is going to talk to us about the Fossil Cocoon collection. Released on Phantom Limb, the label which last year brought us Ellen Zweig’s excellent Fiction Of The Physical (subject of Navel-Gazers #50), this is another selection of early 1980s era DIY curiosities which have been dusted off and salvaged from obscurity. It’s music which on a superficial, purely stylistic level strikes one as maybe not all that experimental and yet the closer we listen, and the more we examine the cultural, historical and technological context surrounding its production and distribution, the more profoundly experimental it seems. The selections on ‘Fossil Cocoon’ are handpicked from a discography of around 40 cassettes, all released within a 5-year timespan which must have been an utterly ferocious period of creativity for Mr. Yoshimatsu. There’s a sort of heroism to this stuff I’ve seldom witnessed in contemporary music - we can really hear him grapple with the early home recording technology as he conveys the melodies of his imagination to tape. I don’t mind mentioning that in a first for Navel-Gazers, this interview was mediated by the label (Phantom Limb), they’ve been an ideal vessel for this fantastic release and also, helped with a language barrier!
K. Yoshimatsu: In the early 1980s, I was a student at Yamaguchi University and had a band called JUMA. We played live at school festivals and such. At the same time, I was recording music at home for DD Records.
AC: The liner notes for ‘Fossil Cocoon’ talk about a label called DD Records which apparently released around 40 albums of your music on cassette at some point in time, when was that? Are those quite hard to find?
K. Yoshimatsu: I first got involved with DD Records when I was a freshman at Yamaguchi University. I saw an advert in a magazine that Kamada had placed and sent him my music.
Nowadays it's hard to get hold of DD Records cassettes from back then. Only a few DD Records collectors and artists from back then keep them in their homes.
AC: What do you know about the other releases on DD records (222 in total)? Is the label head, Tadashi Kamada, still around?
K. Yoshimatsu: I'm familiar with the content of other DD Records releases, such as Isotani's, which I was involved in, but I don't know the details of the releases that I wasn't involved in.
However, DD Records members regularly sent introductory tapes with one selected track from each release, so I was able to listen to samples of other releases.
Tadashi Kamada is no longer in contact with me, but I have heard from his acquaintances that he is still alive and well.
AC: You mentioned that you sent home recordings to Kamada. What sort of recording equipment did you have at home? Was it easy to acquire home recording equipment then? Did you know anyone else who was home-recording?
The only person close to me who was doing home recording was Isotani, another artist with DD Records.
AC: Also mentioned is a cassette-sharing postal society called the “Recycle Circle”. Was that just in Japan? Tell us all about it.
K. Yoshimatsu: "Recycle Circle" is a club that only exists in Japan that exchanges music cassette tapes via post.
Members of the club publish a list of the records they own in their club magazine. Other members see this and mail a cassette tape, asking them to copy the record onto a cassette. The member who receives the request dubs the cassette and sends it back.
AC: ‘Fossil Cocoon’ is a compilation of selections from those ≈40 albums. Please tell us about your experience initiating this project with the label Phantom Limb, and the process of curating the six selections.
K. Yoshimatsu: The six songs on "Fossil Cocoon" were chosen by Phantom Limb from my 20-odd albums and I accepted their proposal. I didn't ask them to choose these songs in particular.
By doing so, I wanted to discover a fresh perspective from which others could view my work.
AC: The music here ranges from radio-friendly to avant-garde. What kind of music were you into at the time?
K. Yoshimatsu: I listened to all kinds of music, mainly rock, but also pop, jazz, classical and ethnic music. My favorites were progressive rock, krautrock and jazz rock.
K. Yoshimatsu: The woman in "Violet" is Fumie Yasumura, the vocalist of JUMA, a band I was in at Yamaguchi University.
The lyrics of "Violet" are as follows:
"Dreaming, the dream of Violet. I enter your body. There's nothing there, it's an eternity of emptiness. All memories flow with the flow of blood."
"Violet" was basically created by myself and Yasumura. I layered Yasumura's voice over the track I made.
AC: Escape features an early sequencer, and a bubbly sound which takes over at the end. What do you recall about the instrumentation on this one?
AC: The rhythmic sound on 1848 is so odd, I can’t tell if it’s percussion or guitar or something else! Can you tell us about how you crafted these kinds of sounds using the technology available at the time? (Also why is this track called ‘1848’)?
K. Yoshimatsu: The percussion in ‘1848’ was made by hitting electric guitar strings with metal rods.
‘1848’ is a song from the album Spherical Voyage, which has song titles ranging from 1838 to 1848.
I created this song with the impression of creating an era in the 1840s when the world was gradually trading with each other through voyages. I think there were various frictions and peace negotiations there.
AC: There’s a decent discography of your work for reference on Discogs, where we can see cover images for the original cassettes. And there’s also additional artwork from the inserts - with Spherical Voyage for example, there are depictions of ballerinas, some sort of urn, and various charts and graphs.
What do you know or recall about this imagery, would it generally come from you or from Kamada?
K. Yoshimatsu: The jacket image design for 'Spherical Voyage' was entirely created by Mr. Kamada. I did not give any instructions on the jacket design. I think Mr. Kamada designed the jacket based on the image and inspiration he got from listening to my music.
AC: Pastel Nostalgia is a particularly evocative piece of music. I hear three elements at the forefront: a melody piano line, a tiny tinkling noise, and a woozy electronic texture which seems to keep pitch-shifting. To help us understand your creative process, can you tell us how this one was made?
K. Yoshimatsu: 'Pastel Nostalgia' was inspired by Eno's ambient music.
I first recorded a piano melody, then added a subtle but pleasant granular noise from a synth, and finally dubbed a curtain of drone sounds with a constantly fluctuating pitch.
I aimed for unsettling ambient music that mixed feelings of relief and anxiety.
'Pastel Nostalgia' was created with the image of an unstable, faint nostalgia.
AC: Speaking of nostalgia, what is it like to revisit this music from 40+ years ago? Do you think it aged well? Does it remind you of the past?
K. Yoshimatsu: Re-examining the music I made 40 years ago allows me to confront my old sensibilities and give me an opportunity to re-examine myself now. In doing so, I can look at the scenery where I am standing now with a fresh perspective. I love Tarkovsky's film Nostalgia, and I feel that confronting memories has a strong impact on the person I am now.
K. Yoshimatsu: In recent years I have been making films, but I also continue to do some music work. Most of my films are uploaded to YouTube, so you can watch them immediately.
For more information, see the K. YOSHIMATSU link on Discogs.
There are also links to my YouTube channel and my music unit's website.
AC: Any final comments for our readers?
K. Yoshimatsu: I'm glad that you're interested in Japanese underground music from 40 years ago. I hope you enjoy the mysterious music that existed in Japan at that time.
Thank you.
