AUBE – THE SCREAMING CURRENT OF SILENT SUBSTANCE.

Inquiring into the personality, ideas and works of the author of the “AUBE” project Akifumi Nakajima, the only thing causes no surprise – this genius of extremely suggestive psychedelic electronic music is a Japanese from Japan. From the state that was an actually existent autarkeia till the19th century, although this model of state and culture is acclaimed to be an utopia. He is from Japan – the state where people prepare sweets from sea fauna and flora, robots pay taxes as normal citizens, mighty futuristic cities continue growing, individualism is condemned, but collectivism, as in the world of insects, is a virtue. From Japan that transformed in a very short time from a medieval system to one of the most developed industrial states in the world with gigantic economics and the biggest variety of electronic products; and certainly from Japan, the reality of which is so unfamiliar to us who do not live there. We just approach that other kind of reality exploring artifacts of the Japan culture that often fascinates and simultaneously frightens us with its’ strangeness and different, unfamiliar inner logic.

Akifumi Nakajima was born on the 13 th of January, in 1959, in Kyoto. Already studying at school, he fanatically collected vinyl with electronic music. This passion prompted him to start experimenting with simple synthesizers, analogical and digital musical effects. Some time later the would-be composer realized that he liked acoustic combinations discovered by himself even more than other music. Naturally, it was impossible to avoid any influence from the collected vinyls. It is an interesting coincidence, or rather a regularity, that Akifumi Nakajima, like the author of “Deutch Nepal” Peter Andersson – another one brightest star of electronic psychedelic music – listened to the same old psychedelics, such as “Amon Duul I & II”, “Faust”, old-school industrial of the 80-ties “SPK”, “Trobbing Gristle”, etc. Akifumi is not indifferent to German experimental electronic music, namely “Kraftwerk”, even now. He has collected all their releases.

Before naming his experiments “Aube” and precisely defining his conception of sound making, the Japanese composer had experimented with sound for about 10 years (from 1980 to 1991). Such an  incubation period is a long enough for an artist to mature his ideas and methods of realization. During that period Akifumi gained higher education. In 1983 he graduated from Kyoto Art University and became a professional industrial designer. Although the composer claims that ideologies are alien and abhorrent to him, he was fascinated by the ideas of fascistic functionalism and absolutism in design. Akifumi’s passion of tasteful design reflects in his creative works as well. Design is a keystone in his artistic value system. He designs precisely not only his own works (for example, one album was packed into a mini aquarium with water, because water vapour was used to make the sound), but also creates design for works of other “noise” performers. Akifumi makes no secret that he strives to make the appearance of the package notionally related to the material used for making sound. The Japanese composer also admits that he founded “G.R.O.S.S.” release company just for formatting the works of “Aube”. At the beginning it was a tape release company, but since 2000 it started releasing CDRs. As a matter of fact, Akifumi doesn’t regard himself as an artist or a musician, nor he refers to his works as music. Akifumi emphasizes that he is just a designer of sound, as well as its’ media and package, and categorizes rock as music. In his estimation, music is some kind of emotional expression, and Akifumi affirmed that he didn’t want to express his personal experiences in his works. As an artist and an explorer, he just uses his imagination to construct particular sound combinations, and as a scientist, he searches for new qualities of substance by the means of sound. Akifumi also confesses that he cannot play traditional instruments and has nothing in common with traditional Japanese music, that is strongly influenced by Buddhism. Unless that happens in the subconscious level… And something really happens in the subconscious level, because, as critics emphasize, the music of “Aube” is very meditative and the meditations are not so light and gentle. It’s no wonder as Buddhism is the religion of death. The sound of “Aube”, as well as gnostic Buddhism, is mystical and mysterious, it creates powerful and gloomy psychedelic atmosphere that affects the psychics and even the body of a listener in a very strange way. It may have been for that reason that Buddhist monks allowed Akifumi Nakajima to play in one of their underground temples. As a primary source of sound the composer used water springing from a rock in the temple, processed it with musical effects and supplemented with water sound samples, thus creating cold, psychedelic “ambient”. It was not a single concert when Akifumi’s music became an integrant of a ritual. Besides, the very name “Aube” comes from French and designates a lot of different things: dawn, twilight, water turbine, white material. Even a river in some part of the world bears that name. In an interview Akifumi admitted that the name symbolized not some particular object, but his own relation to the search of sound. The composer uses different substance each time to make the sound. Rubbing, beating and physically operating on it in another way, he gets simple, husky sound, that is processed with effects and sampling manipulations to become music. As different substance is used for every album, Akifumi decided that the name of the project had to symbolize very different and unrelated things.

Since the project was named “Aube”, Akifumi used a lot of various materials for creating his records. Some of them would probably shock conservative people in other quarters of the world. But not in Japan. As a generator of sound the artist used water, ice, air, gas, fire, earth, iron, stone, various metal, iron wire, different technical devices, documentary recorded in space, human organs. Akifumi worked as an industrial designer in the industry of medicine and stomatology for four years. He designed medical equipment and communicated with doctors a lot. Therefore he could collect unique acoustic material for his creative works. He recorded encephalic waves, heartbeat, blood circulation, various organs functioning in a body. It is exiting enough, that the artist had an opportunity to record not only a healthy body in relaxed condition, but also the sounds of a suffering and sick body. Some records may seem dreadful, as Akifumi recorded the sound of lungs panting with asthma, or the sound of a body that is pierced by electricity. Recording one of his albums, he tore the Bible. That was not the way to express his ideology, as the composer is not antichristian - one French publishing office offered the book for making sound, and that intrigued the Japanese, because thin leaves of the Bible, when torn, produced very pleasing chirring sound. Akifumi claims that sound reveals utterly new quality of substance and enriches its’ image and knowledge about it. According to him, people smell, touch and look while examining some material. But they can also hear the substance, although it seems to produce no sound itself. Akifumi stresses that it makes no difference if the sound of his interpretation disagrees with the common expectations associated with that particular substance. Every substance is absolutely unique and genuine. The essential thing is that he has some vision in his imagination, and that vision reveals some unfamiliar quality of the substance. In that way Akifumi exhibits the metaphysical aspect of silent substance and the relations between those principles. And it is usually scary as it disagrees with the anticipations.

Critics characterize the music of “Aube” as “noise” and “noise ambient”. Earlier Akifumi created more “noise” tracks and was famous as a composer of extreme psychedelic “noise”. Differently from other Japanese “noise” performers, Akifumi has a very special way of expression distinguished for uniquely generated sound on the one hand, and for inimitable melodics on the other hand. Not like the other “noise” composers, Akifumi uses very interesting tactics of developing a theme. Nearly all his tracks, more noisy as well as more quiet, just emerge from silence and start developing in growing tension, expressed in gradually increasing volume, rising tonality or disharmonic distortion. At the culmination a track is usually terminated very suddenly, leaving a listener in oppressive silence that is even more strained than the noise before. In the world of music the author of the “Aube” project is considered to be the greatest innovator of Japanese “noise”, and Akifumi himself claims that “noise” is an universal, international language, determined by no rules, that people just listen to. The artist got engaged in “noise” music because it affects a human being physically. Listening to “noise” music, one can feel keen pain in a stomach, psychic horror or discomfort. That fascinates Akifumi, and he explains that after listening to the most extreme “noise”, silence becomes particularly comfortable, and every subtle sound becomes interesting. He adds with a tongue in his cheek that pain and suffering are useful for that reason. A paradox and also a tang of “Aube” is that “noise” is usually an absolutely free interpretation of sound, totally uncontrollable acoustic chaos, but it is difficult to find an album of “Aube” where Akifumi allows sound to develop of itself, spontaneously, without control. Akifumi controls noise absolutely, precisely and without reserve. The artist’s attitude towards a computer, that is one of his main tools, proves that he controls the creative process: “A man with no imagination becomes a hostage of a computer and is too much dependant on its functionality. However, a computer is only a tool and not a substitute of personality. It must not be regarded as absolute. I try to use it as little as I can, and I trust my hands more. A computer must not control an artist, but vice versa.”

In 13 years, the “G.R.O.S.S.” release company and a lot of other independent release companies round the world released 167 albums of “Aube” in various media, not including numerous tracks of “Aube” in international compilations of electronic music and projects with other names, where Akifumi Nakajima played. The composer comments that such a rich discography is not a result of his efforts to release the records of “Aube”. Generally, release companies propose to release his records, and he strives to create a more interesting record and its’ design. In 23 years of creative activity, Akifumi Nakajima became one of the greatest authorities of “ambient noise” music in all the world. No one knows, how long he is going to explore metaphysical qualities of substance and how many albums will be released, as there is multitude of substances that have not yet been approached by “Aube”, but it is already certain that the new material that this genius is going to explore is sea amber. There is no telling, what kind of horrifying stories of the ice age a psychedelic play of amber molecules will reveal in Akifumi’s sound strata...

Written by Lashisha, translated by Alwyda, 2004-08-26