Side A / Side B ～Conversation & Music

Hideo Furukawa lets loose with words. Shutoku Mukai replies in song. “Literature” and “Music” collide.What kind of record will these two artists cut using a mix of literature and music?
For more information on this event, click HERE

Record Release (October, 25, 2023)

“Tracking Time on Plastic Lines”.
When the audience entered the basement hall of Waseda University’s Okuma Tower at 5pm on October 1, 2022, they were greeted by a large projection. Almost the entire screen was filled with a large, featureless, black circle. Surrounding this black circle was a jumble of wires and metal. This curious looking, multi-armed machine was a record lathe, and it was primed to cut into the blackness of the disc sitting motionless in its clutches. They were about to watch as novelist Furukawa Hideo and musician Mukai Shūtoku cut a record—live and direct.

5,500 yen each, 500 limited, with liner notes.^(*)
Purchase HERE

(*)There was an error in the credits of the liner notes. We apologise and correct it below.
Old:　写真：河合宏樹、菊池茂雄　　Photo：Hiroki Kawai, Shigeo Kikuchi
New:　写真：朝岡英輔、菊池茂雄　　Photo：Eisuke Asaoka, Shigeo Kikuchi

Niou: When We Were Together Inhaling the Same Scent

Experience something invisible, smell, in one place, and share it in words.
For more information on this event, click HERE

Record Release (December, 15, 2024)

To engage “nihohi” on a record…. On November 23, 2023, the second phase of the Yanai Initiative’s “Record Project” was undertaken in what seemed like an impossible venture. Writer Erika Kobayashi and Olfactory Artist Maki Ueda gave readings and talks on “nihohi”, followed by a session in which participants sniffed special “nihohi” and expressed their feelings in words. Each moment, their words are engraved on the record by Atsushi Yamane using a live record engraving technique, which is extremely rare worldwide.
On Side A, Kobayashi reads the essay she wrote for the event and they discuss it. Side B is an experience of the “ozone scent” that Ueda mixed based on the inspiration from Kobayashi’s essay. This precious session, in which the audience felt a sensation due to the “nihohi” togather, and the words that emerged from this experience were recorded along with the vibrations of the air in the venue, you can relive again.

5,500 yen each, 500 limited, with liner notes and a “oxon scent” sample.
Purchase HERE