PAN ON FIRE + EIRIK BLEKESAUNE - JAPAN TOUR 2016

PAN ON FIRE
Toshimaru Nakamura - mixer
Martin Taxt - microtonal tuba

Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) // Biography

His instrument is the no-input mixing board, which describes a way of using a standard mixing board as an electronic music instrument, producing sound without any external audio input. The use of the mixing board in this manner is not only innovative in the the sounds it can create but, more importantly, in the approach this method of working with the mixer demands. The unpredictability of the instrument requires an attitude of obedience and resignation to the system and the sounds it produces, bringing a high level of indeterminacy and surprise to the music. Nakamura pioneered this approach to the use of the mixing board in the mid-1990's and has since then appeared on over one hundred audio publications, including nine solo CD's.

He has performed throughout Europe, North America, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, China, Singapore and Malaysia, performing and recording both as a soloist and in collaboration with numerous other musicians.

As an active organizer of concerts in Tokyo, Nakamura has helped many musicians coming to Japan find places to perform, both with himself and with others. From 1998 to 2003 Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama ran the concert series Improvisation Series at Bar Aoyama and then later the Meeting at Off Site series of concerts. Both these concert series were crucially important in exposing a new manner to improvised music (referred to as Electro Acoustic Improvisation) to the Japanese public and to foreign musicians visiting Japan, making Tokyo one of the global hotspots for this new approach to music.

Martin Taxt, born in Trondheim, Norway in 1981, finished his studies at the Academy of Music in Oslo and CNSMDP in Paris in 2006. Since then he has established himself in the international experimental music scene. He is releasing albums and touring with groups such as Koboku Senjû and Microtub. Since 2013 he has been a part of the award winning art collective Verdensteatret.
He has been running the experimental music label SOFA since 2010 with the musicians Kim Myhr, Ingar Zach and Ivar Grydeland.

PAN ON FIRE

Toshimaru Nakamura is a pioneer on his instrument no-input mixing board. Releasing nearly hundred albums since the mid 90’s, including 9 solo albums. However, in this project with Martin Taxt he appears with a new approach to his instrument by taking Taxt’s microtonal tuba into Nakamura’s mixer through a microphone and thus, tuba sound affects and sometimes interrupts mixer’s internal feedback signal as well as Nakamura processes Taxt’s tuba playing. This creates a raw, brutal and surprising character to the music.

Eirik Blekesaune has been a part of the Norwegian art collective Verdensteatret since 2010. He works with sound, robotics, electronics, and software development.
As a musician he uses laptop where the music software is constructed during the performance, also known as live coding. The performance is based on creating digital musical instruments in real-time that can only be partially controlled. The laptop becomes a musical instrument that balances between taking control, and losing control.