"Lithium"- My Concept EP
Updated: May 23, 2021
artwork: totha
"遠く 淡く 狭く 影を落とす
青よ 空気を揺らして灰になれ
夢に 夜に 風に はるか届く
赤よ 無に帰す彼方に灰になれ"In order not to disturb the subtlety of the phrases with my poor Japanese, I will skip the translation.
I actually do not consider it a splendidly written poem, but I still wanted to quote it because of my personal fondness for the song. Just like the album artwork, the lyrics use redness and blueness to depict confrontation.
In a way, my artist name and my self-titled album play the same tune.
"Lithium" - My concept EP
It isn’t surprising that people often ask about the meaning behind this strange name. They all share the same curiosity, but hold many different perspective on the word.
Some think of the hit song by the famous rock band Nirvana, others the chemical element, others batteries that imply power, and still others, a medication for bipolar disorder.
Looking back, it seems to me that all of these meanings arose at different stages after I first gave myself the name. Now, though, I see the name as representing a certain balance between musical and emotional forces in confrontation.
Within the album, some moments feel heavy, and some light. Some tracks are vast and epic, while others are subdued and melancholy. There are tracks embodying serious philosophical concepts or thoughts, and tracks that just capture a personal, sensitive, emotional moment.
While making the EP, as I concentrated on the harmonic and melodic composition of electro-acoustic elements, I also developed a new perspective on a purely sonic confrontation: virtual sound vs. hardware synths vs. real instruments. Blending these sounds in the production process is another form of balance.
I have also been exploring the possibility of performing this music live in a way that is visually rewarding for the audience. Specifically, I hope to achieve a playful, “active on stage” aesthetic, while also achieving a level of visual and aural authenticity: I want audience members to see where specific sounds come from as the music takes shape.
"endless spells"
The concept for this track originally came from a Chinese idiom, “滔滔不绝”, which literally means “pouring out words, flowing on without stopping”. I hope that this background sheds some additional light on the English title.
For me, the track represents a strong and precious emotion that occurs “when someone shares their thought passionately, through talking, through words, through texting, through art, through music”.
I actually thought about simply naming this piece with the Chinese idiom, but apart from the title, I didn’t incorporate any other Chinese elements into my creative process. After I finished the track, a new idea came to mind: to rework this track with more Chinese elements, and name the new version after the idiom.
It might work out well, and might not. I will update this blog if and when the idea comes to life.
Getting back to the existing track, it features a variety of notes and sounds that interact with an “endless” loop running from beginning to end, building a sense of emotional unrest. Heavy sounds blend with white noise and a drone created with a Korg MS-20 mini, expressing the feeling of roaring waves.
Meanwhile, the dreamy chords and continuous notes created by an arpeggiator embody the vastness of a moment of “sharing and communicating endlessly and unstoppably”.
I guess there is something else worth mentioning about the ongoing loop. This track was intended to last about 15 minutes, symbolic of the concept: the flowering mind flow. I designed it in advance with an eye toward exploring ways of performing the music live. I talk about this in much greater detail in my post, “Live Performance: Compromise and Tricks to Make Up for It”.
“As you brainwashed by tri”
The coronavirus pandemic has gone on since early 2020 and continues today. The track “as you brainwashed by tri” was created during the most serious period of it in Europe.
During the worst of the pandemic, I was on a train near my neighborhood – Warschauer Street in Berlin, which is normally quite a lively area. On that day, though, the train was nearly empty, with just me and one other person in the entire compartment, both of us wearing thick masks. Even though it was daytime on a sunny Sunday, there was a vibe more spiritless than the darkest night.
The picture was taken as I was surrounded by the desolate aura. I recorded samples on my mobile phone when the idea struck me to capture the sound of that eerie moment.
Ryuichi Sakamoto once said, “Speaking of what music and art can do during disasters, it is comparable to sending food and donations. I think the highest level of achievement is to think deeply about the meaning of disasters and express it in your own works.”
The frightful number of new coronavirus cases made me realize how small and vulnerable human beings are when facing an uncontrollable disaster. I do not have high expectations that this album to can bring solace during the quarantines, yet I do hope that this track can bear witness to the worldwide disaster, offering some reflections for the listener.
In any case, the track title is an attention grabber, I suppose. Some will find it weird and non-serious, while others might be intrigued and want to know the background story, which is precisely why I chose the title.
Surrounded by the pandemic environment, I found that it powerfully affected my mood, as it has for so many. I started binge-listening to Sakamoto’s album “async”, especially while walking empty streets.
As the first album that Sakamoto released after recovering from throat cancer, “async” has strong themes of life and death. I was deeply touched by the album’s more melodic tracks, but initially struggled to relate to the more experimental ones. “tri” certainly falls into the experimental category, as it is performed on a single percussion triangle, always sounding at the same pitch.
However, after listening to the album time after time, I found the sharp sound of the triangle creeping into my mind. I wouldn’t say that I understood the deep meaning of it, yet the sound obviously left a major impression inside me.
“as you brainwashed by tri” is another piano-based track, focused on letting the discordant notes interact with multiple samples that I feel connected to. They include experimental electro-acoustic effects like glitch, white noise and drones, along with some environmental samples and of course the sound of a triangle.
Unlike the album’s first track, I created this piece without any intention of performing it live. As much as I like the piece, I continued to view it as impossible to perform for quite a while, except perhaps by using a playback sample and only performing the piano part live.
Eventually, I found what I believe to be a visually interesting way to perform the piece. I talk about it in my post, “Live Performance: Compromise and Tricks to Make Up for It”.
"gadot"
As I mentioned, with the worldwide pandemic disaster raging, I know that there are many others experiencing the same strong feelings as me: the fear, the anxiety, the loneliness, the sense of absurdity. These feelings have prompted me to think more deeply about human existence. The track “godot” was born of such a time of contemplation.
It had been quite a while since I last picked up a philosophical book. This time, I dove into that epitome of absurdism, Waiting for Godot.
The track is a minimalist piece, featuring prominent, discordant piano drops, alongside experimental glitchy percussion loops created with a virtual synthesizer and drum machine. The repetitive loop symbolizes a circular structure, as well as the theme of waiting. Besides being created to fit the vibe built up by the mechanical loop, the bizarre piano chords express my inner feelings about the absurdity of the play and these times.
Yet although “godot” is heavy and serious at a certain level, I want to pair it with a visual element that balances the perspective of the work, without counterbalancing to the point of twisting the concept. I am lucky enough to be collaborating with a like-minded animator to create a multimedia version of “godot”. You can learn more about our work together in my previous post, “An Animation Collaboration”.
"気になる"
It is hard to give an accurate sense of the meaning of “気になる" in English. It is something like “a subtle emotion of paying sensitive attention”, although that is still an inadequate translation.
The central concept of the track is “the moment of creation”. Consider: If an improvised piece expresses the mood of a particular moment, yet you later discover that it contains certain flaws … would you fix it, or leave it as it is?
The track is a solo piano improvisation, created on a midi keyboard. It is me, around 3 a.m., in my solo apartment, on some normal day, having some particular mood, doing some improvising. When I listened back to the improvisation, I quite liked it, but realized that there are some unprofessional mistakes, like strange pedal effects with the piano sound.
I created a new version of the piece, recording it on an acoustic piano to get rid of the strange pedal effect and remove the unprofessional elements of the composition. Yet I ended up deciding to put the original version on the album, flaws and all.
I felt that the spontaneous improvisation best captured the moment, best made the statement of having a certain feeling in mind that I wanted to express, while being mesmerized by music.
The album also contains a dub mix version of “気になる" by Vrii. You can read about our enjoyable collaboration in my post, “Online Meetup Sessions During Quarantine”.
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