Koeosaeme

*100 copies limited edition* Tokyo-based artist Ryu Yoshizawa has spent the past decade developing a singular language as Koeosaeme. His works sit somewhere between electronic composition, musique concrète, sound collage and sound art. Following a series of acclaimed releases on Orange Milk Records, this album turns his attention to a place close to home: Kaihin-Makuhari, a coastal district on the outskirts of Tokyo. Land that was once part of the sea. 

Conceived as a future city, Kaihin-Makuhari is a planned landscape of elevated walkways, convention centres, commercial complexes, residential areas and waterfront. Suspended in motion between city and suburb. Koeosaeme developed Makuhari through walking and listening. Moving through the district at different times of day, he collected fragments of sound. These recordings were combined with additional sonic materials, custom-built audio systems and synthesizers. Together, they offer a synthetic glimpse of the planned city. A meditation on a city as it was imagined and a city as it is actually lived. 

Rather than attempting to represent Kaihin-Makuhari directly, this work drifts back towards the district's former oceanic state. The otherworldly qualities that so many so-called ‘future cities’ seem to hold seep through these tracks: anonymity, divergences in time, emptiness, sleepiness, sterility … evaporated waves breaking idly on imaginary shores.