Joji Yuasa

2009 release. Outstanding reissue covering some of the best Yuasa experimental and electronic works from the 60s and 70s: Yuasa was developing a fascination for tape music from the very beginning, and the inner journeys that such music would take him on. As he later wrote: “Tape music was [a] completely unknown field at the time. Even reversed playing of recorded sound, change of tape speed, filtering and feedback echo were totally new for the ear.” However, as Yuasa’s knowledge of technology was still rudimentary, his piano music continued to dominate his compositions throughout the 1950s, and, by 1955, Yuasa was well respected enough for his ‘Projection For Seven Players’ to be premiered, on July 12th, by a septet from the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
More piano works followed, including the seven minutes long ‘Projection Topologic’ solo piano work, which was performed, in 1957, by the 19-year-old prodigy Yuji Takahashi. However, it was Joji Yuasa’s vocal and tape experiments which set him apart from other experimental composers of the era, and his epic ‘Aoi No Ue’, recorded throughout 1961, was a dazzling and proto-psychedelic half hour of shamanic chanting. Few copies in stock

extensive article on Yuasa by Julian Cope