About :
Edition NIkO was founded/curated and art directed by Japanese-American sound artist shotahirama in 2007. It is a label cooperation for electronic music based in Tokyo. The main interest was to give uniting sound and art design with strong attention to scientific sequences, Dada, Bauhaus, and drone ambient sound scapes. A surrealistic minimalism. So, priority is to publish series with focus on a specific philosophy of music/ sound/ art composing. Also it is a platform for conceptional and experimental related projects in music, art and sciencemusic both by myself (shotahirama) and by other artists and musicians. All NIkO releases have been on either MP3 or CDR (mostly mp3) as I feel that these formats currently offer the most appropriate form of reproduction. But its basically, a non-profit label..... NIkO Label was closed down at the end of 2008 and reopened in January 2009 as Edition NIkO.
Founder:
shotahirama, is a label director for this Editon NIkO. Most people know him under the name ENG (electronoise group) or JANDEATH. He has been documented on a number of projects, each revealing new facets of his wide-ranging and unique talents on both laptop and tape-operation. He has recorded and performed with Zbigniew Karkowski (mego/subrosa), Toshiji Mikawa (ex-incapacitants, Hijokaidan), ASTRO (Ant-Zen), Adachi Tomomi (Tzadik), Kelly Churko (Canada), and Justice Yeldham (Australia)...etc. In early 2006 he founded his main project, radical free/spontaneous music/art ensemble, The Electronoise Group (ENG). It is a group that are making concrete drone sounds with their free-improv expression and the ideas from "laptop" "noise" and "Art". Using laptop, tape-operation, and tape-loop, generated guitar, the project ideal is to express the content of various psycho pathological conditions, especially depressive psychosis, and paranoia. And also making an art design, a photomontage with strong attention to Dada and Bauhaus.
Under the name of JANDEATH, which is his solo project. Produced sounds of vaguely danceable noise and power-electronics noise using complex mono and poly-rhythm, driving percussion, and meticulous sequencing. His main influences are from the early 1980s, with industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten and also from mille plateaux artists like SND, Alva noto, Pan sonic. JANDEATH also made extensive use of a variety of computer based sequencers, softsynths, and other applications as a means of controlling those synths and processing the synthesized sounds, using Reaktor, Processing and Elektron. Work with an organizing member of the Shinjuku-based Soup collective, MICLODIET in 2008, project was named MICLODEATH.
Edition NIkO festival:
Deep Listening Chair Festival, organized by Edition NIkO, is one of most famous Tokyo's festival for Experimental Digital Music and related Visual Arts. Festival takes place under the theme Surrealistic Minimalism. Sound and other media since 2007 at various venues in Tokyo. DLC will address both theoretical and practical aspects of today’s independent and experimental music production at the intersections of digital music and sound & media arts. Artists, experts and theorists will present their work as a means to pool knowledge and sketch out the sector’s future prospects. Visitors can hone their personal skills in workshops designed to encourage and support DIY experimentation. Selected projects and initiatives will demonstrate what they do in a hybrid formats fusing exhibitions and work-in-progress sessions that engage visitors’ participation. Actions and installations will illustrate further examples of creative output wiring music, art and digital culture.
Deep Listening Chair Festival 2009
11. July. 2009
at Loopline Tokyo.
christophe charles (Tokyo)
Tetsuo Furudate (Tokyo)
Shiho Kano+Yurihito Watanabe (Tokyo)
a snore (Kyoto), Darren McClure (Nagano), ENG/electronoise group (Tokyo), enormous O'clock (Kyoto), Moze/Provoke (Osaka), Yuji Kondo (Osaka).
Deep Listening Kyoto Festival 2009.
at cafe independants, Kyoto.
enormous O'clock (Kyoto), Hakobune (Kyoto), JANDEATH/shotahirama (Tokyo), Provoke (Osaka), SHARP (Osaka), yuji kondo (Osaka).
Deep Listening Chair Festival 2008.
Day1 at Loop Line Tokyo.
Daisuke Kitabayashi+Akira Hakko (Tokyo), DARTE (Tokyo), ENG/electronoise group (Tokyo), Provoke (Osaka), shinjiro yamaguchi (Tokyo), Toshitaka Ikeda (Kanagawa), Emiko Shirayama (Kanagawa), yuji kondo (Osaka)
Day2 at SOUP Tokyo.
cOLLAGE (Tokyo), enormous O'clock (Kyoto), SASAKI hiroaki (Tokyo), MICLO DIET (Tokyo), Rolling Maestro (Tokyo)
Deep Listening Chair Festival 2007.
at Loop Line Tokyo.
cOLLAGE (Tokyo), Darren McClure (Nagano), ENG/electronoise group (Tokyo), Ryo Miyashita (Tokyo), shunjiTAKAMI (Tokyo)
Edition NIkO release.
NI005 "Baconism" release date: 25th Dec. 2008
Artists are: NNY, [-hyph-], Darren McClure, SIFIR, Kasper T Toeplitz, JANDEATH, MICLO DIET, HAARMANN, Shoeb Ahmad.
Artwork by: shotahirama
Dedicated to Francis Bacon.
NI004 "Geometrik Conceptualism" release date: 31st Aug. 2008
Artists are: EDWIN LO.
Artwork by: shotahirama
Dedicated to Walter De Maria.
NI003 "NEUBAUTEN" release date: 24th April. 2008
Artists are: NI., SHARP, s Am0., enormous O'clock, Toshitaka Ikeda, shunjiTAKAMI, moze, yuji kondo, cOLLAGE
Artwork by: shotahirama
Dedicated to Einstuerzende Neubauten.
NI002 "POSTISM" release date: 14th Feb. 2008
Artists are: Anytone/KWC, Kim_Nasung, Toshitaka Ikeda, Transfolmer, s Am0., sherman, SASAKI hiroaki, DISK3, MICLO DIET, yuji kondo, NI.
Artwork by: shotahirama
Dedicated to Wassily Kandinsky.
NI001 "CHAINSIA" release date: 27th Dec. 2007
Artists are: PROVOKE, Darren McClure, Zen Lu, MICLO DIET, yy_zz, yuji kondo, Toshitaka Ikeda, Urajiro, Linda Bjalla, shotahirama, Sin:Ned, Capricornus, NI.
Artwork by: shotahirama
Dedicated to Hermann Nitsch.