takagi masakatsu - pia press

spin – may 2002 (joint review with boards of canada "geogaddi" release)

genrephobes have had it easy lately. It’s been a while since electronica couged up any new sounds of note. The only real contender at present is a strain of techno characterized by wistful, rustic melody and occasionally even folky acoustic instrumentation. Unlike the "chill-out" movement of the early ‘90s, which emerged from rave culture and functioned primarily as an ambient balm for ecstasy comedowns, "bucolica" – or, if that sounds too much like a fungal infection, "idylltronica" – is a product of the more austere intelligent dance music scene. Distilling the pastoralism of ultramarine and the naïve melodies of mouse on mars down to their dreamy but desolate essence, it can be a soundtrack for childhood reverie or the audio equivalent of recovered-memory therapy….

Like boards of canada, takagi masakatsu loves to sample children’s voices, even giving a liner-note shoutout to "kids around the world on many tracks." But masakatsu’s digital vocabulary is more contemporary, closer to cd-skip auteurs oval or laptop folkie fennesz. Tracks like "eau" and "cino piano" weave birdsong, trickling water, the chatter of kids at play, and the jittery hums of temperamental hardware into a tapestry as roseate as a sunset-drenched skyline. By the end of the last track, "videocamera" – an 18 minute mosaic of playground hubbub, music-box chimes, and tremulous electronic textures – it’s like the air itself is aching with delight. Pia is the sonic equivalent of proust’s madeleine cake, setting the listener adrift on memory bliss.

- simon reynolds 9/10

Vice – march 2002

Every sound you remember from your childhood, remixed.

- hira ishida

Uncut – march 2002

Debut from japanese multi-media artist, featuring separate interactive cd-rom

Sound and vision architect takagi masakatsu holds enormous promise with this album. Compared with so many abstract electronicists, masakatsu goes forth with full fractured sounds. While still becalming and resolutely beatless, pia is full of kinetic detail. Treated electronics, muffled pianos and swarming ambient textures gently collide to map a kaleidoscope of pin-sharp, chiming melodicism. With so much of this vivid and evocative, especially the 20 minute "videocamera", the visual cd-rom becomes strangely redundant.

neil davenport

Mojo – january 2002
'Music concrete and womb-like atmospheres from Kyoto's sound sculptor/video artist'
OK, it's a record without tunes or beats of any recognisable stripe, and boats titles like Toska, Agni and Light Park whose ascetic minimalism suggest anything but unbridled euphoria. Yet, in its way, Pia is an album richer in dynamics than a cartload of nu-metallers. Using found sounds, children's voices, the most organis of samplers and a litany of lambent keyboard textures, Masakatsu conjures interior landscapes of flickering, meditative beauty, occasionally punctuated by bursts of dissonance - imagine Aeolian haprs and radio interference - without once resorting to ambient cliche. Thus, lovely shimmering tones and insect buzz propel the unfathomable Fround to a place where it's always high summer, Guiter clanks like an alien orchestra tuning up, and Water Fall burbles like the soundtrack to a suspiciously damp dream. Tunes? Who needs 'em?

- David Sheppard

xlr8r – december 2001

takagi masakatsu uses abstract video to accentuate his equally abstract electronic music and vice versa, emphasizing fractals of audio and video data slid through a series of micro-thin tubal sound portals. Masakatsu doesn’t so much compose specific melodies (at least in the traditional sense) as construct a series of tonal shifts that ebb and retreat to and fro. Striking some similarities to the fractured sound waves of nobukazu takemura, masakatsu instead interweaves environmental sounds (such as children playing, rain, wind rustling through bushes, and so forth) among the slivers of glacial aural shards. Certainly experimental and minimal, pia isn’t easy listening, but it is an impressive offering of both formats, with a thirteen-track audio cd and a five-track video cd-rom.

- tim pratt

The wire – november 2001

At first blush, pia follows in the wake of Oval. Layer upon layer of digitally distressed tones flow in interrupted currents, nonlinear but never circular. Frigid tones fracture, crack and pulverize seemingly without logic. Microrhythms appear in stuttering cadences, but are quickly obliterated by the radically unstable sprawl. Yet, in a sign of how quickly we have adapted to the once alienating methodologies of computer music, nothing in Takagi’s method seems terribly mystifying; it’s easy to imagine him sitting at his computer, blocking hundreds of fragments together on the screen.

But unlike oval’s sunspot collage, takagi offers a terrestrial – indeed, a social – perspective. What at first seems a hazy flicker of disembodied soun reveals ghost melodies flitting about; on "bienna" a toy piano stutters against a hazy ambient backdrop, while on "cino piano" the jazzy little figures are even more obvious. Takagi’s method intriguingly blends the familiar textures of digitally abraded, alienated sound with more obviously sourced material. This is particularly apparent in his incorporation of field recordings of children at play, further contributing to the sense of childlike wonder that he evokes in the use of sparkling tones and radiant timbres, drawing comparisons to nobukazu takemura’s work. Other listeners may think of boards of canada, who have used children’s voices in an attempt to infuse their music with nostalgic naivety. But here, the voices are turned into pure sonority, a liquid, wordless language thrumming within the pulse of takagi’s curious and wonder-filled musical dialect.

- philip sherburne

wallpaper - december 2001

Kyoto-based artist Takagi Masakatsu has released this as a double CD: one a
selection of multimedia pieces, the other a haunting and meditative collage
of found sounds and electronica. His compositions are minimal yet sometimes
edgy

Amazon.com
The publisher of his own mixed-media magazine as well as a visual artist whose work has appeared in a slew of Japanese galleries, Takagi Masakatsu makes art for a future audience that has just been born. His debut record, Pia, comes with a CD-ROM of images and sound that fits perfectly with the sprawling audio disc, a whimsical, gentle piece of IDM that spins around a pair of headphones like clouds outside a cockpit. Steering away from both the maddeningly wide spaces of pan sonic as well as the dense tech-clutter of oval or plaid,, Masakatsu's approach is more classically ambient. But he doesn't deal in otherworldly minimalism, either; the songs here are filled with organic backgrounds, like FSOL's lifeforms but without the space-alien aesthetics. His pieces are sweet little moments, staying far, far away from bewildering rabbit holes. Like fellow Kyoto composer-visualist Nobukazu Takemura's work (especially in his Child's View persona), Masakatsu's music seems ideally suited for those who haven't made up their minds about the world, when the possibilities seem endless and everything is extraordinary and overwhelming. While this is undoubtedly perfect bedtime music for youngsters raised by hard drives, it's also well suited for adults who could use a dose of simple wonder. As mixed media becomes a new kind of visual art and electronic music more and more gets mashed up in a Stockhausen/Macintosh cocktail, Masakatsu's brand of wired talent is fascinating.

flyer – january 2002

listening to the new album by takagi masakatsu is like getting a leisurely massage while the masseuse jams a large needle of icy freon into your jugular. Masakatsu anchors his melodic ambient with steely rivets of experimental sound. "caroc" catches your breath with its sweeping tonal beauty, while "light park" lets digital notes fall like a staccato rain into your ear. The accompanying cd-rom enhances the art sound installation feel, particularly the visuals to "fround", which chases a fleeting dream – hazy and broken and bursting with light at the seams. Profoundly moving

- janet tzou

chronic art – february 2002 Note : 4
Dans son long-métrage Little Cheung, Fruit Chan filme le dédale des rues de
Hong-Kong au travers du regard éveillé de l'espiègle petit Cheung, épaulé
par son amie Fan. Dans ses moments les plus réussis, le film capte avec
tendresse l'émerveillement des enfants, leur inépuisable faculté à
s'interroger, à transformer la réalité en un terrain de jeu permanent. Une
flaque d'eau, la bâche percée d'un camion sous une averse suffisent à
alimenter la fertile imagination des marmots. Par cette mise à distance du
réel (qui finit par avoir le dernier mot), les deux enfants se meuvent ainsi
dans un milieu à proprement parler déréalisé, idéal, comme des corps plongés
dans un univers qui ne leur opposerait aucun point de résistance. Par un
étrange raccourci, c'est cette représentation de l'enfance et cet ensemble
de sensations qui s'y rattache que Pia, le premier album de Takagi
Masakatsu, restitue miraculeusement.

Signé sur le label new-yorkais Carpark, cet artiste japonais d'à peine 22
ans, a en effet créé un univers sonore étonnament plastique, où field
recordings et fragiles harmonies électroniques s'entrelacent délicatement.
Comme chez cet autre originaire de Kyoto, Nobukazu Takemura, la musique de
Tagaki Masakatsu puise ses racines dans le monde des enfants. Quoique la
démarche des deux musiciens diffère en ce que Takemura essaie "de retrouver
un peu de l'approche ludique qu'ont les enfants face à l'art quand [il] crée
ou organise des sons", tandis que Masakatsu convoque, par l'usage de voix de
petits enregistrées sur MD, le monde de l'enfance comme un environnement
puissamment évocateur venant réfléchir sa musique.

Les parties musicales de Pia ont ainsi plus à voir avec un Markus Popp
(tournant au ralenti) : construction en apparence étrangère à toute logique,
strates de sons superposés, doux et chaleureux, comme cette nappe sur Caroc
couvrant le bruit du ressac. A l'image de Water fall, où une petite mélodie
naïve surnage au-dessus d'un magma de sons liquéfiés (on devine le bruit
d'une bassine d'eau), les morceaux sont souvent habillés par une ligne
mélodique au bord de la pulvérisation, sur laquelle respirent des colliers
de notes mélancoliques, si fragiles qu'ils menacent de se rompre à tout
instant (Light park et son champ de clicks de CD d'où éclôt une fleur de
sons éthérés).

Mais c'est par l'usage de field recordings que la musique de Masakatsu
s'avère la plus enivrante et la plus proche de l'univers de Cheung et Fan
(il faut avoir entendu s'extasier les bambins devant le camescope de
Masakatsu sur Videocamera pour comprendre !). Bien peu de musiques
parviennent en effet à recomposer un univers de sons bien sûr, mais aussi de
couleurs, d'odeurs. Cino piano, mené par un piano jazzy (Masakatsu est
pianiste de formation), permet ainsi de replacer chaque élément sonore dans
un espace physique : la cour d'école d'où les rires d'enfants nous
parviennent se trouve non loin d'un passage que l'on devine baigné de
lumière, à entendre le concert de gazouillements d'oiseaux. Avec la pétarade
de la moto qui passe, on comprend que l'endroit est une ruelle étroite, où
des adultes s'affairent et discutent. Une grille s'ouvre en grinçant...les
enfants quittent l'école et passent bruyamment, c'est la fin de journée. On
ne sera pas donc étonné de savoir que Masakatsu s'est d'abord fait remarquer
comme vidéaste. Pia est d'ailleurs accompagné de cinq vidéos
impressionnistes tournées par l'artiste lui-même, qui restituent l'onirisme
radieux de sa musique.
- Maxime Guitton

dj – december 1 2001

the great thing about the experimental films that accompany this album on cd-rom is that, like most "arthouse" product, you can rip out for a brew without feeling like you’re missing anything. Alas, the same is true of the music as computerised clicks chirrup away to themselves with nary a thought for conventional structure or the listener’s attention span. True, if you’ve got the time and the inclination to fully engage with tracks like "videocamera" previously-obscured details do begin to emerge but, when compared to the best modern electronica (plaid, the detroit escalators), it’s also a bit like stubbornly trying to wire up a tv using instructions translated into japanese. Takagi masakatsu – he wibbles it. Just a little bit.

- paul clarke

Nightlife Montreal - February 2002
Multimedia artist Masakatsu’s pia is as fragile as crystal and rings as
clear. Digitally distressed tones are interwoven with concrete samples of
children’s distant voices, to create an effect that sounds how old film
looks - flickering, scratched, and bubbling as it disintegrates upon a
screen. Luminescent, evocative and fragile as memory, these experimental
soundtracks are poignantly beautiful. Think Oval meets Boards of Canada
while strolling in the Japanese countryside. Masakatsu, a video maker and
VJ, trades in images as well as sounds. The accompanying cdr displays an
equally abstract and sort of digitally concrete aesthetic.

- LC

Alternative press – february 2002

Rating: 7

Who? Tokyo multimedia artist with his debut album, which includes a bonus disc with five quicktime videos.

Sounds like: childlike melodies submerged in slurred digital effluvia, and all the more poignant for it.

How is it? Like a new kind of muzak for data-entry worker drones and computer-graphic artists, pia will keep tedium at bay for such wage slaves.

Kindred spirits: nobukazu takemura, marumari, microstoria

(to all german readers, i apologize if these reviews are not clear.  i was copying from a poorly rendered jpg.)

Spex – november 2001 – ja. Ja. Ja. Genaasu. Das ist technik, fortschritt, multimediale kunst, laptop-musik und visuelle welterfahrung, die natch besuhrt, die funktioniert, die sich nicht in irgendeiner ecke versehanzt. Sondern ganz klar und offenen auges etwas greifhares ausstelle. Takagi masakatsu ist musizienender videokunstler und umgekehrt. "pia" ist eine doppel-cd, aufgeteilt in audio-cd und video-cd rom. Als gerauschesammerler rund um den erdball hastelt er bezaubernde latopamhienfiguren, als bildersamieler vervaliseandigt er seinse kunst mit abstraketen videos von doch hetorender vertraultheit. Er fokussiers dse befreundliche welt in all ihrer schonheit – und es gelingt. "pia" ist wie eine wolfgang tillmamis-ausstellung mit olaf dettinger-untermalung-mehr von masakatsu gibt es im nachsten fruhjahr auf karaoke kalk.

- Tobias thomas

Jazzthetik – november 2001 – so manch anderen projekten, bei denen einer alleine vor sich hin wurschtelt (und diese gefahr ist bei elektronischer musik starker als bei anderen stilarten potenziell angelegt), wunscht man manchmal eine ordnende hand, die an einigen stellen korrigierend eingreift. Wenn z.B. die sounds so dahinplatschern, man ahnt, dass es wieder einmal um die zeitwahrnehmung des horenden geht, und sich wunscht, es moge auch einmal richtig etwas dazwischen krachen, um als ebensolcher einmal aus stuhl gehauen zu werden. All das gilt fur takagi masakatsu, einem japanischen video-kunstler, und seine platte pia. Nette ideen, angenehm gesamplete field recordings, die er angeblich auf der ganzen welt aufgenommen hat, gut clicks und sich daraus ergebende melodien hat er durchaus, aber die sachen durften ruhig haufiger mal als tracks auf den punkt kommen (schlag nach unter freeform, s.o.). das 18-minutige "video camera" uberspannt den bogen diesbezuglich deutlich.

Elektric magazin – november 2001

Es kummt sich immer naher. Bild und ton meine ich naturlich. Was sonst hochstens als anhang auf einer audio cd zu bemerken war, nimmt hier ganz anderen raum ein. Takagi masakatsus werk pia enthalt neben eines datentragers mit ambient narnlich noch eine zweite cd ausschlieblich mit von ihm produzierten video-sequenzen. Die sind ahnlich gehalten wie seine spharischen, nur von gelegentlichen rhythmusfetzen und sprachsamples unterbrochenen stucke. Nicht das klassische video erwartet den konsumenten sondern experimentelles, von farben getragenes bildmaterial. Wer also offen fur neues ist, wer seine sinne in frische bahnen lenken lassen mochte. Dem sei dieses stuck, kunst, nahegelgt

groovesmag.com - december 2001

It may seem like Takagi Masakatsu’s Pia is almost too obviously Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II funneled through Oval, or vice versa, but delving into the 13 compositions and five video studies on the bonus CD-ROM reveals deeper work. In “Cino Piano,” a piano dances with its jarring edits, a young voice warms up, and the exercise becomes the melody. What at first sounds like a self-conscious “field recording” in the background reveals itself as a window honestly open to the mic: birds sing throughout, neighbors are chatting audibly; a motorcycle rolls by a block away. It’s the moment when the artist’s objective eye (flaunted in earlier tracks' layers of icy glitch) is transformed into the artist simply sitting in the room with a subject, Minidisc recorder in hand, and editing that moment later on a computer, but leaving its essence intact.
- Rob Geary

ink19 – november 12, 2001

Since multimedia plays such an important role in modern art and music, it is rather befitting that an artist like Masakatsu would create a hybrid from these two forays. Imagine abstract geometric patterns swirling and morphing within a child’s television program, creating something both hallucinatory and naïve all at once. Like countryman Nobakazu Takemura, Takagi immerses himself within the outer perimeters of contemporary electronics, opting to steal distant fabrics of sound in the air than go for the straight beat jugular. Like a documentary of reality in fast-motion, slowly swelling and then unraveling, Masakatsu’s ambient noise is something as confounding as it is wondrous. This is cutting-edge video relinquished to sound, art for audiophiles and something that many might not grasp at initial listen. So let me be the first to welcome you to the 21st century.

- Kiran aditham

pitchforkmedia - October 24th, 2001

Capitalism's latest affront on human intelligence: oxygen bars. Just when we thought designer water had pushed consumerism to the limits of its frivolity, someone discovered they could sell air by putting it in a fancy package.

I guess we should have seen it coming. For years, the same faux-connoisseurs have been thronging to Starbucks, throwing their money away on factory-made café-culture aesthetics, attractive branding and "gourmet" coffee. Marketing weasels can dress anything up in a clever wrapper and reap enormous profits from America's undiscriminating public. Hardly anybody knows what good coffee tastes like, much less good water or air-- people pay for the illusion of sophistication, and seldom for the product itself.

The world of IDM is not immune to this phenomenon. The recent proliferation of laptop jockeys has left a lot less room in the genre for innovation, and the result has been an interminable output of insipid, uninspired rot. This is not to say that nothing good has come out of leftfield electronica in the last several years; just that it's been imitated ad nauseum, and some listeners don't know enough to draw the line between the originators and the pretense.

Takagi Masakatsu's Pia, an innocuous atmospheric excursion in the vein of Pete Namlook's FAX label, is the sonic equivalent of canned air. There's really nothing of substance here, but the void is concealed by elegant production and the hallmark inaccessibility of electronic minimalism. This may suffice to satisfy simpler audiences, and I wouldn't be surprised if elsewhere this album met with critical acclaim. Minimalism is, after all, en vogue right now. But I can't get past this record's vapid predictability.

This album operates on a conventional formula in ambient music, layering digitally processed light white noise over ethereal synth pads and played out samples. Masakatsu runs through the entire catalog of stock new-age sounds-- running water, a rooster crowing, chirping birds and talking children. Don't forget the talking children. Nothing suggests artistic enlightenment like talking children.

Occasionally, Pia reaches beyond mediocrity. "Bienna," with its strangely inverted refrain and intricate stereo manipulation, recalls latter-day Fennesz. It's a far cry from original, but at least challenges the listener at a more thoughtful level than the rest of the album. "Guiter" introduces a stronger element of musical structure, spreading soft, coherent melodies over percussive jolts of static.

But the rest of the album scrolls by like a nebulous grey mass of experimental cliches. Pianos, sounds from nature, self-indulgent moments of contemplation and profundity-- you name it, it's probably here. And I hope I haven't forgotten to mention the talking children, who crop up on a total of three songs ("Eau," "Videocamera" and "Caroc").

The package comes with an additional disc of "enhanced media," which features five audio/video pieces created by Masakatsu. The pieces are of a similar minimalist nature in many respects, and have apparently been presented in Japanese art galleries. But while these pieces are pleasing enough aesthetically, I can't picture myself sliding it into my CD-ROM drive very often.

Pia, in all of its inoffensive tedium, would certainly be at home on the speakers of an oxygen bar. It works fine as wallpaper-- too understated to scare anyone off, too abstract to be readily transparent. But any judicious listener who subjects this record to sincere scrutiny will find that it comes up lamentably shallow.

-Malcolm Seymour III

de-bug - october 2001
Ein Multitalent, dieser Herr Masakatsu. Dokumentarfilmer, Videokünstler und schließlich auch Musiker. Wenn das mal gutgeht. Auf Pia zumindest ist das voll ok, denn Masakatsus kleine Ambientuniversen sind vollgestopft mit diesen tonal nicht zu überlistenen Drones, die klingen wie Erdbeerpudding und in die man einfach nur reinspringen möchte, merkwürdigen granularen Aussetzern, fiependen Rhythmusgebern und japanischen Kindern, deren Geschichten ich verstehen würde, hätte ich damals die Japanisch-AG auf mich genommen. Das ist alles nicht neu, dafür aber wunderbar warm und irre vertraut, ein bisschen japanischen getwistet, dann plötzlich wieder kleinteilig hoppelig, so als ob man sich seine Melodie erst in einem Ameisenhaufen aus Sounds zusammensuchen. Auf der Bonus-CD gibt es Quicktime Filmchen.
- thaddi    ****

Allmusic – fall 2001

Takagi Masakatsu's debut for Carpark is a quietly experimental symphony of tones and voices, some radically rearranged into glitch territory, but never so much that the computers overwhelm the creativity. Reminiscent of ambient space music and sound sculpture (Takagi was a visual artist before he became a musical one), "Pia" floats from track to track, often with bits of glitch processing burbling in the background, but still focused on trance-state tones and occasional melodies. Even the processed tracks, including highlights "Bienna" and "Eau" retain a soft beauty. For "Cino Piano," a tremulous female voice and some tentative piano work gives way to found-sound music of a playground. Not surprising from a record whose thank-you list includes "the beauty all over the world." ["Pia" comes with a CD-ROM including accompanying visuals for several tracks, as well as the Quicktime movie "Water Fall."]

- John Bush

timeout new york – oct 11^th-18^th 2001

takagi masakatsu’s brand-new double cd, pia, (carpark), is one of those wonderfully alive recordings that offer something new with each listen. The first disc is a dreamy wash of introspective electronic ambience and soft noise, poking whatever chamber of your medulla houses deep emotion. The second disc is a cd-rom with five richly textured and evocative films. Do we need to add that the set is highly recommended?

- mike wolf

weekly dig – 10.10-10.17.01

soundtracks are very potent creations, as they should convey the empathetic sound of the scene, mirroring the internal desires of the onscreen characters as well as the nature of the situation. hazy, ambient, and subjectively open to interpretation, japanese video artist takagi masakatsu’s compositions consist of fractured strings, field recordings, clicks and whirrs….deliberately ambiguous but strongly reflecting emotional inner workings. not really following any particular time signature, tones jostle against one another with plenty of room to breathe, and occasionally mesh to create a singular thought. his work is excitingly freeform, and is not needlessly artsy or academic. why pia succeeds is that it comes off as being upbeat and full of affection, like electronic birds singing outside your window. masakatsu manages to summon imagery of a childhood spent with bubblegum-happy anime characters – the polar opposite of morose! pia comes with a bonus cd complete with five wide-screen quicktime movies, which are as delightfully pixilated as the sound of his music. listening to his work is like watching a dream unfold, except you’re cognizant of everything that is occurring.

- andrew schrock