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Toshimaru Nakamura

Toshimaru Nakamura is a Japanese musician, active in free improvisation and Japanese onkyo. He began his career playing rock and roll guitar, but gradually explored other types of music, even abandoning guitar. He uses a mixing console as a live, interactive musical instrument: "Nakamura plays the 'no-input mixing board', connecting the input of the board to the output, then manipulating the resultant audio feedback." Nakamura's music has been described as "sounds ranging from piercing high tones and shimmering whistles to galumphing, crackle-spattered bass patterns." Nakamura has recorded solo albums, and has collaborated with Yoshihide Otomo, Keith Rowe, and Nicholas Bussmann among others.
Toshimaru Nakamura is a Japanese musician, active in free improvisation and Japanese onkyo. He began his career playing rock and roll guitar, but gradually explored other types of music, even abandoning guitar. He uses a mixing console as a live, interactive musical instrument: "Nakamura plays the 'no-input mixing board', connecting the input of the board to the output, then manipulating the resultant audio feedback." Nakamura's music has been described as "sounds ranging from piercing high tones and shimmering whistles to galumphing, crackle-spattered bass patterns." Nakamura has recorded solo albums, and has collaborated with Yoshihide Otomo, Keith Rowe, and Nicholas Bussmann among others.
One Day
*2024 stock* In the summer of 2007, Jones visited Foster in South Korea and did a series of shows there and in Japan, both as their duo English and in other combinations. In Tokyo, they made time in their schedule to spend a day recording with Nakamura, and “One Day” documents the results, as captured by recording engineer Taku Unami at Kid Ailack Hall. Three lengthy improvisations showcase a unique collective aesthetic, dense and organic, pointillistic but rough, focused but not overly polished…
Elements
Tip! Surface World is pleased to share David Lee Myers (aka Arcane Device) and Toshimaru Nakamura’s Elements, a remote collection written and assembled in tandem at the suggestion of the label. Sharing an idiosyncratic approach to feedback-based sound generation and a commitment to their signature instruments (respectively, the Feedback Machine and the No-Input Mixing Board), the pairing lands during an especially fruitful period in their individual discographies. Harmonically dense, energetic a…
Kinjo No Tabibito
Three musicians of different generations came together to form this unusual free jazz trio. Comprised of veteran musician Akira Sakata (alto sax, clarinet, narration), noted young drummer Raiga Hayashi, and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board)—who has been active on the improvised music scene inside and outside Japan since the 1990s—this much-talked-about band performs mainly at live music venues in the Tokyo area. Naturally, their performances contain the furiousness and wildness characte…
No Input Mixing Board 11 - Live In Tokyo
Tip! Introducing the 11th volume in the No-Input Mixing Board' series from Toshimaru Nakamura. Utilising a unique instrument and free improvisation approach, Toshimaru masterly controls waves of feedback to create structured layers of crackling pulses, drones and bass patterns. Featuring four live sets recorded in 2021 and 2022, and demonstrating a harsher side to more recent output, he continues to successfully explore and discover new avenues from his equipment. 'As most of you will know, it w…
A Floor, Walls, and a Ceiling
Tokyo's experimental musicians Toshimaru Nakamura and Suzueri collaborated on a CD released in April 2023 on the Italian experimental label Superpang. Includes two improvisational songs using piano, mixer, and self-made instruments.
Oh My God, And Yours
*Edition of 200. Mirror cover, transparent vynil* "Beautiful release on Yan Jun’s Sub Jam label. Toshimaru Nakamura was the first one that I ever saw using a no-input mixer, already in the 1990s. What exactly Yan Jun’s open-input feedback means, I am not sure, but I love the noise coming from both! Some sounds are as if they come from distorted guitar, I hear earth hums and glitches, there are a lot of different dynamics and small events in the pieces, but all in all it’s enervating music that a…
In Cotton and Wool
** 300 copies** With his innovative performances, Berlin-based trumpeter Axel Dörner has been a leading figure on the improvised music scene since the 1990s. Internationally popular no-input mixing board player/improviser Toshimaru Nakamura structures sound by controlling mixer feedback. These two musicians released the CD "Vorhernach" on the Ftarri label in 2007, and In "Cotton and Wool" is their second duo album. The four tracks on this album (each between 7 and 12 minutes) were recorded in a …
The First Album
Noisy duo improvisation by Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) and Jun Numata (guitar, oscilator, radio, etc.). This CD shows a difference posture to a sound (noise) frankly between Nakamura and Numata. So it is very interesting duo improvisation ! You can continue to listen 30 minutes without getting tired of it. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Toshimaru Nakamura. Recorded on 10 March, 2017 at Shichoshitsu Jinbo-cho, Tokyo. ""An improvisation for about 30 minutes" performed by Jun Numata…
Crepuscular Rays
“The young Norwegian guitarist Håvard Volden uses the table-top approach, but his guitar is an acoustic 12-string that he rescued from a skip, so many of the sounds he works with have clear acoustic origins and contrast interestingly with the no-holds-barred electronics of Toshi Nakamura's famous no-input mixing board. The disc contains two powerful extended improvisations that were recorded at concerts in November 2008 during the duo's tour of Norway.” label info
Soba To Bara
Free improvisation has rarely seen significant new movements as influential as the small group of Tokyo musicians once labeled as "onkyo", who have now been a primary driving force in contemporary improvisation for a full decade. Over that decade, these musicians have been responsible for some of the strongest and most radical work on Erstwhile, and Soba To Bara sits firmly in that lineage.Ami Yoshida strives to create a pure sound, abstracting her voice until it becomes almost completely unreco…
AMPLIFY 2002 | Balance
2003 release ** Featuring: Thomas Lehn, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Günter Müller, Christof Kurzmann, Taku Sugimoto, Keith Rowe, Marcus Schmickler, Otomo Yoshihide, Burkhard Stangl, Sachiko M, Cosmos. "A document of the 2002 Amplify festival in Tokyo curated by Erstwhile's Jon Abbey. Disc 1 and 7 are smaller club shows that took place outside the Festival proper, disc 2 is a studio session that took place around the time of the festival and discs 3-6 feature eight of the twelve sets that…
do
A groundbreaking release from two youngish Japanese improvisers. Sachiko M plays sample-less sampler, and Nakamura uses the no-input mixing board--both instruments which conceptually produce no sound, yet these two conjure it out, somehow."Do" was recorded live in Europe and Tokyo last summer, and features three improvisations varying in length from just over two minutes to slightly under 40. While the shorter tracks are worthwhile and hold moments of greatness, it is the first, very long track …
Aluk
Vienna artist Klaus Filip plays music using nothing but sine waves produced with 'lloopp,' an improvisation software program he invented and continues to refine. Toshimaru Nakamura makes music simply by controlling a mixing board's internal feedback, inputting no external sounds. Two artists with highly individual playing methods, they came together to create this album of improvisational works. Two of the three tracks were recorded in a Tokyo studio in May of 2005, when Filip came to Japan alon…
s/t
ErstLive is a new series of releases from Erstwhile Records, documenting notable live sets associated with the label. The discs are designed to simulate a concert experience, each in the same template design using two colors chosen by the musicians involved, with a photo of the concert on the back cover. Each will be in an edition of 800 CDs and not reprinted. The initial releases will be chosen from the AMPLIFY 2004 festival which took place in Cologne and Berlin in May 2004. ErstLive …
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