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Yui Onodera is a Tokyo-based producer, sounds artist whose works explore the relation between musical forms, architectural acoustics and spatial awareness. As a sound artist, he has a distinctive figure in the fields of experimental electronic music, modern ambient and electro-acoustic music, working across the spheres of composition and installation work for over ten years. Exploring notions of perception, memory and sonic affect across a wide array of creative forms, he uses a broad palette of musical instruments, field recordings and electronics to craft provocative listening experiences and creating dense clouds of blurry, hypnotic sound. His works are widely published internationally, he has released numerous works on esteemed experimental labels like KOMPAKT (DE), Serein (UK), Room40 (AUS) and more. as well as composing soundtracks for a film about John Cage, Cage 64. In 2017, alongside his musical profession he works as a sound art lecturer at Rikkyo University and Musashino Art University.
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LP
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FIELD 036LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/9/2025
Exploring the water engineering relationship between Japan and the Netherlands across a trilogy of experimental releases, the third and final part of Field Records' Waterworks series is courtesy of Yui Onodera. Pairing delicate synthesis and instrumentation with field recordings and negative space, the accomplished artist and sound architect examines the impact of water engineering on Japan's Kiso Three Rivers. The location refers to the confluence of the Kiso, Nagara and Ibi rivers on the Nōbi plain in Gifu prefecture. In the late 19th century, Japanese authorities collaborated with Dutch engineer Johannes de Rijke to separate the three rivers at the lower part of the Kiso delta. These extensive improvements, which were finalized in 1912, successfully shielded the city of Nagoya from regular flooding. Onodera's minimalist palette and detailed approach to spatial sound design balances microscopic field recordings and tonally-rich traditional instruments, which he applies with stark focus to the subject of the Kiso Three Rivers across eight extended pieces of music arranged into two distinct parts. The A side's shorter tracks are delicately sculpted miniatures interweaving chiming bell tones, treated guitar impressions and hushed pads. The B side's two longer suites are more overtly minimal in nature, emphasizing sampled water sources accented with patient brush strokes of synthesis. This project is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tokyo, Japan.
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CD
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RM 4199CD
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A note from Yui Onodera: "I stayed in Iwate, where I was born, for a few days and created some sound materials using limited materials and old media. Over ten years ago, Iwate was devastated by the Great East Japan earthquake. Many old things that remained in my memory became rubble, dismantled, and new scenery was there. I bounced every song from 1982 straight onto an old tape recorder. This album that comes out of my interest in sonic 'degradation and rebuilding.' I treated the guitar and synthesizer in a lot of new ways, so using a lot of tape recorders and/or pedal effects. I wanted the guitar to be an extension of the ambient textures rather than technology and imperfection. The raw and the processed. We benefited greatly from the evolution and democratization of computer and audio technology in the early '00s. I was fascinated by sounds that could not be created by humans, such as real-time audio synthesis and granular synthesis. Now, 20-odd years later, I am fascinated by sounds that cannot be created with a computer. It was a unique acoustic texture created by deterioration and wear, including accidental wear, due to old technology that is disappearing. It's like a memory of my old days in Iwate."
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CD
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RM 4172CD
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Yui Onodera's work is patient. He invites a sense of dwelling with his pieces, an encouragement to pause and to allow sound to swell up around you. On Too Ne, he charts out a very specific sonic exploration. Across these five works he creates a lilting passage of sound, a liquidous flow that confirms the adage of ambient music existing as constant, but never solid. Too Ne also invites a sensing of the self, in that the works ask you to examine our own memories as a way to unlocking a deeper resonance within the work. Onodera has created an incredibly generous and open sound field here, one in which you might find yourself dwelling, deeply.
From Yui Onodera: "These pieces are what can be described as almost static ambient tracks. They are about a recognition of perceived stillness, even when there is change in the sounds' relationships with each other, and with the listener. 'Too Ne' is an old Japanese word that refers to a sound that is sounding from far away. It is about distance, and also perhaps about reaching out to those sounds that seem to exist far away from us. 'Too Ne' is a word that is not often used in modern Japan, but it has a long history, and can be found in the oldest extant collections of Japanese waka (poetry in Classical Japanese), such as 'Manyoshu'. It is sometimes understood that there are many sounds that appear in people's minds here, when they think of an imagined landscape. Sounds as memory markers, but also as devices to help us imagine more deeply the places we visit and recollect with our minds. Here, I recall in my mind the distance of static sounds like vague clouds, delicate sounds like a state where cherry blossoms whirl in the wind and resemble snow falling."
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