GGRMS Oct.23, 2020 w/ Serge Nakauchi Pelletier of Teke Teke
In the first hour, between asking you for your charitable donations, we dig into music by Nation of Language, Molchat Doma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi / Shoji Yamashiro, Hysteric Picnic (Call And Response Records), The Green Child (Upset The Rhythm), Mir, Pylon, Bruce Haack, Larynx, population II, The HUMMS, Jyraph, Nakigao Twintail and Meiko Kaji!
In the second hour, we have Serge Nakauchi Pelletier from Montreal's TEKE TEKE. Serge fills us in on his upbringing, how skateboarding led to playing music, the influence his parents had on his career scoring music for TV and films, and how his discovery of eleki music led to assembling Teke Teke. We dive into the band's stellar Jikaku EP, as well as music by Takeshi 'Terry' Terauchi, Pawa Up First, Boogát and Dynamo Coléoptera!
“While working on the album in Rhode Island, we talked a lot about the Brazilian band Os Mutantes, especially their debut album which was a reference to us for its overall crazy production/arrangements but mostly for the strong feeling of total creative freedom that comes out of it. Also, we played a few shows with Israeli-NYC-based guitarist Yonatan Gat and his live show had a big impact on us. Deerhoof is also a band we've always loved and admired. Portishead and Broadcast are also more contemporary names that come to mind when we talked about certain production ideas, or vibe and whatnot… Ah man, I could go on and on...haha.”
From Wikipedia-The 304-page hardcover book is a companion piece to Cope's 1995 book on Krautrock, Krautrocksampler, and covers in extensive detail the post-war democratizing and westernizing of Japan, plus a detailed 28-page analysis of the experimental music scene from 1951-69. The unusual relationship between Japanese experimental theatre and rock music is carefully explained in the 14-page essay 'J.A. Caesar and the Radical Theatre Music of Japan'. There are also detailed biographies of the bands Taj Mahal Travellers, Flower Travellin' Band, Les Rallizes Denudes, Far East Family Band and Speed, Glue & Shinki.
Shuji Terayama (Japanese avant-garde filmmaker) : From Wikipedia- Shūji Terayama (寺山 修司, Terayama Shūji, December 10, 1935 – May 4, 1983) was an Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema.
Yokoo Tadanori (Avant-garde visual artist) : From Wikipedia- Tadanori Yokoo, born in Nishiwaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, in 1936, is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists. He began his career as a stage designer for avant garde theatre in Tokyo. His early work shows the influence of the New York-based Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in particular), but Yokoo cites filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and writer Yukio Mishima as two of his most formative influences.
In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India. Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the "Japanese Andy Warhol" or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo's complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original.
By the late 60s he had achieved international recognition for his work and was included in the 1968 "Word & Image" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Four years later MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work organized by Mildred Constantine.[1] Yokoo collaborated extensively with Shūji Terayama and his theater Tenjō Sajiki. He starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief.
Gagaku music (traditional Japanese court music)
“I absolutely love Gagaku music! We all do in the band... and it's quite obvious in the slow intro to our song 'Omae No Karada', where the intention was to play kind of a dark version of Gagaku, with the same kind of dissonant drones.” - Serge Karauchi Pelletier
Toru Takemitsu (contemporary composer): From Wikipedia- Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹, Takemitsu Tōru, October 8, 1930 – February 20, 1996; pronounced [takeꜜmitsɯ̥ toːɾɯ]) was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre.[1][2] He is famed for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy to create a sound uniquely his own and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation.[3]
He composed several hundred independent works of music, scored more than ninety films and published twenty books.[3] He was also a founding member of the Jikken Kobo (experimental workshop) in Japan, a group of avant-garde artists who distanced themselves from academia and whose collaborative work is often regarded among the most influential of the 20th century.[4][5]
His 1957 Requiem for string orchestra attracted international attention, led to several commissions from across the world and established his reputation as one of the leading 20th-century Japanese composers.[6] He was the recipient of numerous awards and honours[7][8][9] and the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award is named after him.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi From Wikipedia- Geinoh Yamashirogumi (Japanese: 芸能山城組, Hepburn: Geinō Yamashirogumi) is a Japanese musical collective founded on January 19, 1974 by Tsutomu Ōhashi,[1] consisting of hundreds of people from all walks of life: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen, etc.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi logo
They are known for both their faithful re-creations of folk music from around the world, as well as their fusion of various traditional musical styles with modern instrumentation and synthesizers. For example, in the 1980s, MIDI digital synthesizers could not handle the tuning systems of traditional Indonesian gamelan music, so the group had to teach themselves how to program in order to modify their equipment. The album that followed, Ecophony Rinne (1986) was a new direction for the group: they had not previously incorporated computer-generated sounds into their work. The success of this album brought them to the attention of Katsuhiro Ōtomo, who commissioned them to create the soundtrack of Akira.[2] The soundtrack is built on the concept of recurrent themes or "modules". Texturally, the soundtrack is a mix of digital synthesizers (Roland D-50 and Yamaha DX7-II, both of which could, by then, be tuned to the Pure-Minor, slendro, and pelog tuning scales), Indonesian bamboo percussion (jegog, etc.), traditional Japanese theatrical and spiritual music (Noh), European classical, and progressive rock.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi has reproduced over eighty different styles of traditional music and performances from around the world, but despite having performed internationally to a high degree of critical acclaim, they remain relatively unknown.
The group's name uses Ōhashi's pseudonym, Shoji Yamashiro, and translates roughly to "Performing Yamashiro Collective". Ōhashi took his inspiration from a postwar 1950s group of similar characters that lived as a commune.
Films and Soundtracks
Support Teke Teke by purchasing Jikaku EP below.