About Me
Founded in 2007 by turntablist Morrisim & turntablist Tohru._ _ _ _ _ _1O9 H0WL started out in Tokyo Japan as a rough-hewn Free-Jazz Improvisational Turntable Duo band. From showcasing unorthodox techniques of turntable skills to cut and paste free-jazz snippets including abstract sounds put together from strictly vinyl records. Its approaches were minimalistic to begin with, primarily concerned with the art or the process of making, a soundscape that does not exist within the mainstream turntable free-jazz scene. A soundscape that pushes emotion and personal feelings out of consideration, utilizing turntables & mixer as brushes, vinyl records as pastels. Dark in values & somber in color, and of cause our soundscape/ music piece is our final artwork in itself. _ _ _Over period of time, with various current communal members; Shogo on electronics (sampler) of a breakbeat, trip-hop approach.
Our other communal member; Naoto, percussionist/ drummer of a psychedelic free punk noise approach.1O9 H0WL
has discussed what to call the music we play, but the only thing we can all agree on is that it's improvised, so let's call it "improvisational music". What "improvisational" means to us is that when we play, we are making it up as we go along, as a group, in a form of unspoken democracy. Someone makes a choice, options are laid out, and as a group, we decide in which direction to move, and what parts we will all play in moving. Though the music is moving, it's not about a destination, it's just a journey, and it's over when it's time to stop.
We can play relatively brief "songs", or we can improvise for nearly an hour non-stop. What we play for an audience will never be played exactly the same way again; each time we play it's a new experience for us and for our audience. We have in our bag of tricks a collection of musical themes that we occasionally return to and improvise on, expanding the original song into something different in some way, including Free Jazz standards like Don Cherry's "Brown Rice", Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place", Pharoah Sanders's "Black Unity", and the Miles Davis tune "Black Satin", but even when we utilize a familiar grounding, it is used as a springboard for moving into new places. _ _ _
1O9 H0WL takes inspiration from many musical sources in addition to Free Jazz however, as we've also incorporated elements of classical music, blues, funk, psychedelic, electronic music and music of other cultures. Underneath everything else we are a band of improvisers, which means everything we play is in some way new.
