CD + book – Bisou

In Japanese mythology, Yokai are supernatural creatures that include monsters and demons, but also ghosts, spirits and guardians, magical animals or mutant humans. It is no coincidence that the term itself is made up of the words ‘Yo’ and ‘Kai’, the former meaning ‘mysterious or occult’, the latter used to define something strange or foreign. It is traditionally believed that similar entities manifest themselves through noise, preferably in dark spaces. This modality is what prompted eRikm to evoke a sound from nothing, welcoming what is different, what springs from chaos or simply from the indefinite, from an absence of concrete and replicable forms. A sonic improvisation, together with the fractured and hyper-kinetic collages of the Marseilles experimenter, converge the percussive and electromagnetic experiments of Olivier Maurel and the sensitive flute playing of Ayako Okubo, both founders of the hanatsu MIROIR ensemble. There are fourteen compositions presented. Among these, the voices of several narrators peep out, with sound texts freely inspired by fragments of stories about the Yokai universe, also evoked by a series of ink drawings and scanned photographs by eRikm. The sounds are borrowed from dynamic meditative practices, from audio techniques that pertain to the most disparate languages, also annexing nebulous stimuli, deciphering objects and patterns – or meanings – where it is said there are none. However, for eRikm this does not mean submitting to a “comfort zone” defined by one’s cultural habits. If sounds are living organisms, the setting must be different every time. Between contradictions and extreme freedom, it is necessary to reach new heights of intensity, playing with anticipation and instinct, before some “ghost” can condition our actions. The packaging of the release includes an eighty-page book, with texts in French and Japanese and drawings that resemble Rorschach’s blot tests, even if here – it is clear – we do not want to detect any underlying thought pattern, let alone any psychic disposition.

 

eRikm & hanatsuMIROIR – Echoplasme