Name: Yuko Araki
Nationalities: Japanese
Occupation: Multi-instrumentalist, composer
Current release: Yuko Araki 's IV is out via Room40.

If you enjoyed this Yuko Araki interview and would like to find out more about her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.



Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in sound?

I think so yes. I started training classical piano when I was five years old and also enjoyed playing music instruments at primary school. There were several kinds of drums and big rhythmic instruments like the xylophone, and a grand piano, where I often spent my lunch break in a music classroom. Somehow I don’t like piano sounds now but love to play drums the best.

And perhaps on the other side of classical music training made me interested in noise music because I might want to be unleashed from beautiful equal temperament.
 
Are there places, spaces, or everyday devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

Yes I do. When I hear a Japanese pop-song I feel very, very uncomfortable. It’s everywhere in Japan, I can not avoid it because it is a BGM in stores, restaurants, even on the street someone sings with a guitar or sounds from advertising cars … it’s like a terrorist situation for me. I might be catching their unilateral emotions unconsciously.

I feel much more comfortable when I hear inorganic sounds like from construction or MRI scans.

For some, music equals sound, to others they are two distinct things. What is the relation between music and sound for you? Are there rules to working with sound, similar to working with harmony, for example?

Music has context or - If I can say in Japanese - “Kishotenketsu”, which means introduction, development, twist, and conclusion (you can read more on this idea on wikipedia).

Sound is more like a texture and emotions for me. There are no rules! The most important thing is that I feel it’s cool.
 
What were your very first active steps in terms of working with sound and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist/producer?

It was an improvised live performance. Especially for noise music I see veterans perform better and better sounds so experiences are quite important for training and learning I think.

But I’m wondering if all people can have a specific sense like “chromesthesia” by training. It’s one of themes which I would like to research in the future.

For your own creativity, what is the balance and relative importance between what you learned from teachers, tutorials and other artists on the one hand – and what you discovered, understood, and achieved yourself? What are examples for both of these?

I am not a good player on keyboard instruments because of my training in classical piano I think. I can beat it well but couldn’t make melodies even after I quit training for a long time.

But for example I am a drummer of my band KUUNATIC, I play quite my own style. I didn’t know some general rules of playing drums like playing cymbals with kick drums for the first 3 years, I was thinking that there should be a different timing to play them. And also I’ve never broken any drum sticks until now, using the same one for over 6 years and it’s a little bit moldy haha.



My drumming is kind of a process to create new sounds with the band but of course I want to play good drums so I am watching tutorials on youtube sometimes now.

However it was not difficult to begin playing drums because I trained on a piano I think. Toms are like piano keys for me, they have different tunes. I want to have a lot of them in my drum kits on stage one day.

How and for what reasons has your music set-up evolved over the years and what are currently some of the most important pieces of gear and software for you?

I used to play some analog synths and vintage guitar pedals and it’s a pretty heavy weight, like nearly 20kg in total, including cables and hard to bring around for live shows. So I’ve been trying to make it smaller and smaller, optimizing the set.

As a result, I don’t use many pedals now, only a reverb and a distortion for send-return, making feedback in an analog mixer. And instead of vintage synths I built a small Eurorack system with ”4ms Stereo Triggered Sampler” which is the most important gear for my current set. I record something with Studio One then make it as samples, put them into a tiny SD card to the Sampler. Then I play it with some CV generator - it’s really fun at the moment.

But also I have a plan to record at Worm in Rotterdam after my November tour. They have an amazing vintage synth studio and that’s one of the things I can not do by myself. I really love to play instruments, so my dream is recording a Gagaku album just by myself at a Japanese traditional instruments studio if it exists! But there is none … so … I will try something instead of that in the future.

Yann Tiersen, in a surprising statement, told me: "I feel more sincere with electronic instruments." Is that something you can relate to?

I can understand because … they feel closer to mathematics. Their response is always predictable.  

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your sounds, pieces, or live performances that's particularly dear to you, please?

I felt that there was a limit to what I could do by myself for my new album Ⅳ. Then I had a guest vocalist - Taichi Nagura from Japanese band ENDON for a track to make the album more intense.



After finishing all the recordings, I spent a lot of time on the mixing of the album but couldn’t feel satisfied so asked Nobuki Nishiyama, who works at Ochiai Soup - the best venue in Tokyo where I often play, to help with the mixing. We did it with a sound system in Ochiai Soup for 2 days. Then also Lawrence English who released the album helped with the mixing and post production.

[Read our Lawrence English interview]
[Read our Lawrence English interview about Sound]

I'm lucky to have such great people who believe in different ideas. I would say it's a great opportunity to do other things when you are limited.
 
In relation to sound, one often reads words like “material”, “sculpting”, and “design”. How does your own way of working with sound look like? Do you find using presets lazy?

I am very open minded to use any sounds and just thinking outside of the box.
 
To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

It would be great to  be able to compose and play music by brain waves -  because we are not immortal.
 
How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health? What importance does silence hold in this regard from your point of view?

I had an opportunity to go to an acoustic anechoic chamber in Tokyo to help with their sound experiments.

“The walls of the acoustic anechoic chamber are covered with the largest acoustic absorbers of their class in Japan (approximately 2 m in length), and are able to eliminate reflections down to extremely low frequencies (40 Hz). This enables very precise measurements with almost no reflection effects.”

It was a very scary experience that there were completely no sounds, feeling like I was getting choked. So sound is quite important for our life and a bit of silence. Like maybe we need 4 minutes 33 seconds just once, every year!

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I should protect myself from that risk but unfortunately I love playing loud sounds and love the frequency which is cut by earplugs.

However I am trying to put earplugs on when I play drums as much as I can. 　  

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

I guess that communication approaches and people’s actions will change a lot. We will have less interest in touching anything if we don’t look at their texture or movements. So people start acting in strange ways.

The world might become colourless, there may be less lighting, more unification.