Some of my favorite artists are those that fluctuate along the same wavelength as yours truly. One of these is the incomparable Ayuo Takahashi. Never moored by any specific idea, his vision is expansive — all is fair game in his musical world. From English folk to mystic Persian devotionals, to electro and mutant funk, ever the mercurial artist, Ayuo has a career that warrants sharing more than one bit from its trajectory. Why Ayuo Takahashi’s Silent Film first, you ask? It’s where everything first came together.
Editor’s note: Ayuo contacted me recently to kindly correct some of the record. Below you should find some of his commentary correcting my errors.
Although Ayuo currently resides in Japan, I wager he’d be the first to point out that he’s more of a citizen of the world than anyone strictly “Japanese”. Ayuo would be the first to admit that he’s never really felt any specific tie to any homeland. America was his home during his most formative years in the ‘60s. However, as he grew up, and his personal life went from living in a happy family to one going through the throes of divorce, he bounced around cultures and households, developing a love of Arabic music from his Iranian stepfather and one of medieval folk music while accompanying his family through Europe.
Although music was his calling (much like his pioneering father, contemporary composer Yuji Takahashi), Ayuo in the great tradition of other mercurial artists like Lou Reed and Bowie came from an art school background. Literature, film, and design were as big as pulls as anything else. The avantgarde didn’t feel separate from the traditional. World music, that nebulous term others struggle with, was simply music Ayuo grew up with.
In the mid ‘70s, Ayuo would finally settle down in Japan with his father and bring his truly global experience into a culture where exhibiting such openness was not the norm.
I never settled in Japan with my father. In the early 70s, I had a Persian-American step-father married to my mother and an Irish American step-mother from Oklahoma married to my father. My father lost his teaching job at the University of Indiana and took his wife to Japan. They were of the generation that was involved in left-wing beliefs and changes in society. They also believed that human beings around the world must be similar and that the differences were created more by politicians and capitalists than by the people themselves. My step-mother, Karen, did not realize how different the culture in Japan was to Oklahoma, where she grew up.
In the Summer of 1975, I went to Tokyo to spend Summer vacation with my father and step-mother. They did not tell me that they had gotten a divorce a few months before I arrived. I spent one month with my step-mother, Karen, and my half-brother while my father had some touring dates in Australia. Then my mother suddenly left my step-father. I had gotten along very well with both my step-parents. I grew up in NYC, which may be quite different from Oklahoma, but still, I could tell the difficulties that anyone coming from abroad will have in Japan (including many Japanese-Americans).
When my father came back, I witnessed a lot of fights. Some were personal, but many were based on cultural differences. My father re-married a Japanese woman who was the babysitter to my half-brother. She promised to care for my half-brother but asked me to leave. My father became bitterly very anti-American after this divorce. I was going to an International School in Japan where they give both the SAT tests for the US and the GCE test for the UK. I intended to go to University either in the US or the UK, but my biological father prevented me. He told me he was going to stop paying my high school because he does not approve of American or English education. I hadn’t learned either the Japanese language or culture and since the woman who then married my father did not want me around, I became isolated in a country that I knew not much about. I was already 17 years old at this point, and nearly an adult, so Japan was a foreign country for me.
(My step-mother, Karen, went back to Oklahoma, but the last I heard, her own father locked her up in a mental asylum believing she came back deranged from Asia.)My father did not understand why Karen did not understand Japanese culture. He also expected me to start to understand Japanese culture even though I was nearly 18 years old. To this day, the woman who married my father does not speak to me. I hadn’t spoken to my father in 7 years until about two weeks ago, but since this woman is virtually his manager now, it doesn’t really change the situation of our relationship.
My father started to reminisce about the years before he left to live in Europe and the States, which were the post-WW2 years up till 1963. In Japan, he had become a star in classical music after he arrived back. But he stopped playing the piano and stopped going abroad. For about 5 years, he would write left-wing political essays and compose political songs. He started to re-live in his mind the post-WW2 years when such songs were popular. He started to say he should have never left for Europe and the US. I felt he was going mad. All this completely upset my future plans. I felt stranded in a country where I knew nobody, didn’t know the language very well or the culture. My teenage years were quite awful. This is why one of my main themes is cultural differences.
I spent the late 1970s writing songs such as “Annabelle Lee”, “Across the Seasons” and many others using a guitar in open-tuning. Much of these songs would be recorded in the 1980s. (“Annabelle Lee” is on the CD and Cassette versions of “Silent Film”. I much prefer the remastered CD version of this album rather than the analog version. You must have the analog version since Ryuichi Sakamoto’s name is not on the CD version. )
Ayuo Takahashi, via e-mail correspondence
Difficult teenage years in Japan, eventually gave way to Ayuo discovering and joining a nascent Japanese experimental art scene where others miscasts like him could find their voice. Performing with groups like Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha or creating music for dance and theater like fellow scenesters Koharu Kisaragi, Phonogenix, and Akira Asada, finally found Ayuo staking out his own voice.
My mother worked as a coordinator for some visiting Japanese artists in NYC in the late 60s and early 70s. Tristan Pollack’s grandfather is the film director, Hiroshi Teshigahara. My mother co-ordinated Hiroshi Teshigahara’s interview with Andy Warhol. My mother also helped Tadanori Yokoo in meeting artists in NYC. Tadanori Yokoo would design the jacket for my albums in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Tadonori Yokoo introduced me to Haruomi Hosono in the late 70s. I played him my demo tapes of “Across the Season” and guitar solos in open-tuning. He was not that interested in my demo tapes but invited me to come to the first recording of Yellow Magic Orchestra. I was re-introduced to Ryuichi Sakamoto at the studio. I had met him a few times before. His father worked with my grandfather at the same book publishing company. My grandfather invited Ryuchi Sakamoto’s family to my father’s first concert around 1962. This left a big impression on him, and he came to visit my father a few times when he was in college (and before my father turned political and stopped performing piano).
However, I was not that interested in Yellow Magic Orchestra. On my way back from their live show, I met a musician who said he was gathering some musicians to do some improvisations and asked me to come without hearing anything I was doing. I went, and on the first day, Keiji Haino came up to me and asked me to perform with him. I also met Chie Mukai, who went on to form Che Shizu.
Fushitsusha, the band he formed at this time did not work out. We did not know that the drummer was making a living as a heroin dealer. He didn’t tell either Keiji Haino or me because he thought we wouldn’t be into it. He was right of course. The drugs he sold were rumored to be bad. Many people who bought from would cough up blood. He then got arrested taking down many other musicians with him because he told the police everyone he sold his drugs to. Entire bands were arrested and he got his picture in all the major newspapers. Although Keiji Haino and I had many similar musical tastes including medieval European music, world music, and psychedelic music, I wanted to wash my hands from this messed up underground scene and try to live a more normal life.I took the exams to enroll in UCSD in the states, but my father told me he wouldn’t assist me in getting a college education. I had saved up enough money by myself for nearly a year, but my father did not believe in American education or the necessity of a college education. He would say that many people in the post-WW2 years never went to college, and many never went to high school or middle school. I tried to make him understand that 1980 was very different from 1946, but without much results
But then a strange unexpected thing happened.
Both Tristan Pollack‘s mother and my mother were playing occasionally with musicians in NYC such as Steve Elson and George Eliot (who composed many songs with Klaus Nomi and played guitar). David Bowie would later come to take an interest in these musicians. Tristan Pollack’s parents had a band, and they came to Tokyo to perform. A classmate of Tristan’s mother had recently married a producer/manager who had been managing Eikichi Yazawa, a Rock’n Roller, who wanted to be Japan’s answer to Mick Jagger. This producer wanted a meeting with me because he had heard that the next big thing was going to be New Age Ambient Music. He would name Richard Clayderman and Brian Eno in the same breath as representatives of this kind of music. I had no education in classical piano. But neither did Brian Eno. I thought this may be the answer to my prayers.
Ayuo Takahashi, via email correspondence
In 1984, Ayuo made his debut on Epic. Carmina found him creating its intriguing mix of electronic, folk, drone, and spoken word. I hate to compare it to anything but it’s soundscape of biwa, synth, drum machines, and hurdy-gurdy reminds me of Peter Hamill’s mystic technical folk heard on a few releases like Loops And Reels and The Love Songs, albums where the melodrama of their own respective life comes through minimal maximalist music that is instantly arresting — albums that could sound so modern yet feel so ancient. Setting aside Japanese lyrics, Ayuo sang in English and German, such was the powerful creative vision Ayuo was able to suss out of his then green, 24 year old life, that such conceits could work.
I was 22 years old when I recorded this.
The record producer didn’t understand the music I recorded because he was expecting something more like Richard Clayderman – soft-sounding mood music by a classically trained pianist.
I would tell everyone that I can’t play the piano very well (because I never learned it), but often in Japan people would think I was only being modest. To this very day, many people still assume that I studied classical piano.The record was picked up by photographer Kishin Shinoyama, who used many of its tracks as a soundtrack to his Shinorama, a panorama slide show of photographs he took in South Korea. He also advertised it on TV. This was how it got known. Kishin Shinoyama was a friend of Tadanori Yokoo and many others of the art scene in the early 60s.
He invited me to a party and screening of his Shinorama and invited Ryuichi Sakamoto, his manager, and many people who would become the staff at Midi Records. Both Ryuichi Sakamoto and his manager were impressed by my music in Shinorama and felt I had a future. I told them that the producer who introduced me to Epic-Sony was planning to let me go. They told me that Ryuichi Sakamoto was planning to leave Yellow Magic Orchestra and that they were going to set up a new label, and that they would contact me.
Ayuo Takahashi, via email correspondence
It’s not easy to see what Ryuichi Sakamoto saw in him. Ryuichi probably saw a like-minded individual who didn’t stop exploring music from only certain spheres. Later that year, Ryuichi would convince Ayuo to sign to his School label, lockhing in the spirit of promoting whatever new vision Ayuo could come up with on Sakamoto’s Art Pop label. In the span of one year two other albums would be produced.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was not involved in the making of “Silent Film”. He, however, wanted to have the track “Silent Film” remixed and changed the order of the tracks, although I much prefer the remastered CD version of this album. Sakamoto told me that he much preferred “Carmina”, my first album. His manager, however, told me that he liked “Silent Film” because it reminded him of bands like The Pentangle and Fairport Convention. His manager had been involved in promoting The Pentangle and was working promoting Folk-Rock before he began to manage Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Ryuichi Sakamoto and he would fall out shortly after the label started. Sakamoto took him to court with a lawsuit during the time I recorded “Earth Guitar” for his ex-manager’s Midi Records in the late 90s. Discussions for Ryuichi Sakamoto leaving Midi Records were going on at the time I recorded “Nova Carmina”.
Although the label was promoted using Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘famous’ name, Sakamoto did not have much control. It was not his label. He was only one of the artists signed to the label. He could make some suggestions but did not have the ability to release anything he wanted. He later felt that he was given an unfair recording contract and this is why he would later take the label to court.Midi Records later went on for a brief while to license albums produced by Joe Boyd. Joe Boyd was the producer of The Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, and Pink Floyd’s “Arnold Layne”, and went on to produce artists release in the world music genre such as Marta Sebastian. I helped as a coordinator by contacting a few musicians for a couple of CDs to be released by Midi in Japan.
First, he would record in Japan, Memory Theatre, a surprising crowd-pleasing, sunkissed, accessible collection of gorgeous Japanese neo-psychedelia like “不思議な夜”, “ことばのあいだに”, and “City In The Sky” unlike anything in Ayuo’s or Sakamoto’s previous oeuvre. Here, guest session work by Taeko Onuki, EPO, Tatsuro Kondo, Saeko Suzuki, and Sakamoto-san himself placed it in the realm of new Japanese alternative rock music. A marked turning point from its debut, and sung partly in Japanese, it proved that Ayuo can make accessible music that also had this naturally artistic edge to it, too. Now Japanese audiences could buy into what he was trying to do.
In New York, Ryuichi would switch to executive production duties enlisting the help of frequent Bowie session musicians Carlos Alomar and Steve Elson to expand the sonic panorama of the originals.
“Memory Theatre” was the second album for Midi. “Silent Film” was recorded before Midi Records had officially begun. Sakamoto’s then-manager called me up and gave me all the finances to go and record this album alone in NYC with my mother’s friends, Steve Elson, George Eliot, and their fellow musicians such as Carlos Alomar. I was not given any introduction by Sakamoto.
When Midi Records officially started, they rented the recording studio, Onkyo House which took up most of a building in Ginza, Tokyo. All the artists signed to Midi were recording at the same time including Taeko Onuki, EPO, Saeko Suzuki, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Sometimes I would be told to go to Studio D because Ryuichi Sakamoto wanted to record on the piano in Studio C or to go to Studio B because EPO wanted to sing in Studio A and so on. Sometimes the other artists would drop in on my recording after spending hours recording next door. This is why they are all on the record. Jun Tohyama, the synth programmer would record for EPO one day and come in to record for my album the next day. Ryuichi Sakamoto was too busy recording his own album. I think he only dropped in for two days.The Japanese audience did not find this album accessible. I was interested in New Order at this time and went to meet them when they came to record in Japan. I thought I could be accessible by recording what I did in “Memory Theatre”, but it didn’t work.
From the very beginning, I was advertised as a classic pianist and composer of contemporary classical music, even though I told everyone I studied guitar from when I was 8 years old and was playing open-tuning guitar in the style of Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny, and British folk artists from when I was 13 years old. People in charge of advertising in Midi Records paid 6 million yen (approx. $57,306.04 now) in advertisement and to bribe magazines and journalists.
The result was that for “Silent Film”, I would get short reviews in newspapers saying that “Silent Film” was an album of classical piano mood music in the style of Erik Satie. Journalism in Japan often reports fake news, but I didn’t realize it was going to go this far. I realized that many professional music journalists don’t even bother to listen to the album or any of the music.
Even in the 1990s and the 2000s, I would get “interviews” from journalists who would insist that I am a classical pianist and that I was lying when I say that I never studied piano or that I essentially play guitar, open-tuning guitar, and various string instruments. I would say, “Why should lie about something like that?”.
When I asked an executive at King Records in Japan, why all those albums failed, he said it’s because it was advertised mainly to classical music fans and fans of music by composers such as John Cage, but the contents were more closer to progressive rock. And classical music fans don’t often accept progressive rock as even legitimate music.
Most reviews and profiles created by the major companies in Japanese were often completely false. Even if I tell people that what they read in the major newspapers were false, they often don’t believe you.
My profile in English and those published by Tzadik Label are however accurate.
Ayuo Takahashi, via email correspondence
First, he would record in Japan, Memory Theatre, a surprising crowd-pleasing, sunkissed, accessible collection of gorgeous Japanese neo-psychedelia like “不思議な夜”, “ことばのあいだに”, and “City In The Sky” unlike anything in Ayuo’s or Sakamoto’s previous oeuvre. Here, guest session work by Taeko Onuki, EPO, Tatsuro Kondo, Saeko Suzuki and Sakamoto-san himself placed it in the realm of new Japanese alternative rock music. A marked turning point from its debut, and sung partly in Japanese, it proved that Ayuo can make accessible music that also had this naturally artistic edge to it, too. Now Japanese audiences could buy into what he was trying to do.
Silent Film would be his turning point. Jettison off from Japan and staking his place in New York City from August through September, 1984, Ayuo would join Ryuichi Sakamoto and work on tracks that would come to form the bulk of this album. Trying to create a new kind of urban Japanese art rock, Ayuo would dive into his background, finding inspiration from global folk music, classic power pop, and progressive contemporary experimental music.
In New York, Ryuichi would switch to executive production duties enlisting the help of frequent Bowie session musicians Carlos Alomar and Steve Elson to expand the sonic panorama of the originals. Ayuo would task himself to creating vastly different songs that touched on heavier moods. “Silent Film”, the titular track, appeared from some kind of motorik haven. Others like “Here We Go” had all those involved capturing some of that plaintive mood heard in the dreamy side of art rock, as heard in the music of the Cocteau Twins and New Order.
Playing like Ayuo’s take on indie rock radio, we get brilliant treats like “Nothing Left To Say” which track like forgotten Feelies groovies made to be played in the pasture of some fond memory. Everything sounded like a shoud-a-been hit in Anywhere, USA. But then you get those wonderful Albion-tinted folk songs…
Songs like “You’re Not Alone” and “Be The Night Of My Darkness” hint at Ayuo’s not-so-hidden influences: bards like Nick Drake, Roy Harper, Bertolt Brecht, and groups like the VU and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd or mental trips memorized from melismatic traditions others didn’t get to experience like he would.
Only Ayuo could get away with ending the A-side on a poetic recitation from the journal of Sylvia Plath. It’s all him, surprising as it is.
The album ends on a piece, “Birds Of Paradise” that will point to an even more surprising direction. Joined by the other little heralded Japanese musical nomad, violinist Takehisa Kosugi, they somehow find a way to blend the avantgarde mindset with all sorts of shiftless choruses, fusing darkness and light in a passionate play of mysterious recitations, putting a breathtaking cap on an album of pure “What in the hell was just that?”.
As to what happens next? We’ll revisit that that shortly.