Who

Taku is one of our very favourite musicians, a Japanese improviser who’s selection of instruments seem to have developed thus: ultra-minimal guitar > amplified vibrating objects > crying > metal guitar > a porn theatre > cardboard.

What

Taku’s performances seem to be more and more inspired by the supernatural horror of H. P. Lovecraft, black metal and a sense of worry as to what constitutes an object, or a world, as much they are by his routes in super-minimal improvisation. Seemingly more absurd puppetry than obviously musical, they remain at root deeply involved in musical concepts but also have maybe taken on a kind of serious, funny and gentle parody or mocking or music: Taku mocks himself, but he invites us to mock ourselves too.

Why

Is this Taku’s unstated hypothesis: life is cosmologically meaningless, and so any action or plans or efforts we might make would seem to be completely pointless. But pompously, absurdly we still do stuff, have thoughts, make plans, make art. Why!?

Could it be anything to do with Peter Wessel Zapffe’s concept of sublimation: here beautifully summarised by Thomas Ligotti – “That we might annul a paralyzing stage fright having to do with the nightmare intervals of being alive, we sublimate our fears by making an open display of them.”

Taku’s performances (the ones we’ve seen or been involved in anyway) are all the more rich for thinking about them at least partly in these terms, as well as just being incredibly musical, engaging, funny, absurd, and even sometimes quite moving and bleak. They have involved bottles of Laphroaig. Tramway’s technical staff consider him to ‘have style’.