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Nozaki Ryota, the sole man behind the masterful Jazztronik moniker, will puzzle his peers with such a dramatic departure. Released under his name, Piece of Mind (Flavour), is the music for the Jazztronik after party ride home. It is an acoustic piano driven album framed in organic, electronically imbued landscapes suggesting strolls along the seaside, recitals at concert halls, and flights into the techno future. It is a minimal, electro-acoustic expedition where neo-classical, melodic ambient, and chill out exist as an agreeable entity.
The idea to work outside of Jazztronik for the meantime-Nozaki already recently released a mini-album of new Jazztronik material with Sandii (of Sandii and the Sunsetz)-had been in consideration for some time. "I was thinking to make a solo album for years, but didn't have the chance and time," explains the sometimes short-spoken Nozaki. "Jazztronik is going well now. So I thought it's a chance to try [something else]. Then I talked to my friend Eugene Otsuka who runs the Flavour of Sound label. I have known him for many years even before I started Jazztronik. He liked my idea of ambient and so on, then it happened."
With the composing process beginning last fall, writing piece by piece, Nozaki met with some initial problems. "It was kind of difficult to get a good balance with piano and synthesizer sounds. There was no click. So I was straggling with minutes and seconds rather than bars and beats," he says. As a recording period of approximately two weeks ran to a close, Nozaki parlayed a body of work that he describes as being influenced by the likes of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, and Keith Jarrett. But this is hardly a whim, as Nozaki notes, "I have liked ambient music for many years. I feel that it's somehow related with contemporary music."
This sabbatical from Jazztronik also provided Nozaki with a renewed sense of freedom. "It was really fun. I like piano music a lot," says the man who names the piano and strings as his favorite sounds. "I could use some chords and sound colors which are too cool for Jazztronik. Also as you can see, there is no rhythm [in these new songs] besides one tune. In the other hand, a rhythm is always important in Jazztronik music."
From the album opening "Days," which Nozaki describes as "an image of paradise on the earth in the future," to the deeply moving "Yumeji III (The Model with Three Faces)," which can easily be the sequel to Sakamoto Ryuichi's BTTB, Nozaki proves himself as much a graceful intellect as he is a jazzy jet set, if he was so inclined.
Born and raised in Saitama, Japan, Nozaki had a younger sister and music-teaching mother who forced him to learn the piano when he was five; he later quit, "but started again with composition study" in high school, the period at which he decided music was the way to go. He was an active teenager, joining pop, rock, and hip-hop bands, all the while listening to techno and jazz-fusion. "Then I got into Sakamoto Ryuichi and Kryzler and Kompany and classic jazz, [and eventually] to Brazilian. When I was a college student, I took a Contemporary music course and Orchestration study in the daytime, and hung around Techno, Jazz, and Brazilian clubs at night. I have been asked by my professor, 'What do you want to do really?' 'cause I was interested in several types of music then," shares the Nihon University College of Art graduate who majored in Composition.
Marked by an early eclecticism that manifests reasoning in his present musical conscious, Nozaki extended his heart and hand to compositions for piano, chamber, orchestra, and movie and stage soundtracks while in college, but still managed time as player in several different bands. Under auspicious fortune, although entirely deserved, Nozaki secured a record deal upon graduation and began work under the name of Jazztronik, which he confesses has "no special meaning. Could be jazz and techno-ish."
The answer to the question posed by Nozaki's professor has never been a difficult one to come to. With the Jazztronik name building in prestige and the formation of the super group Sleepy Tongue, in which Nozaki joins the brilliant Osawa Shinichi and up-and-coming Tanaka Yoshito for the supreme producing unit, Nozaki should rightfully expect Bjork and Flora Purim-whom he would like to collaborate with-requesting his soulful touch. This medium of music is, as he offers, "my only way of expression or it could be a diary."
All this and he's only, as he reveals, a "little egotistic"-justly warranted, no matter. Existing on a different cloud from the rest, there is, thankfully, a very humbling quality that renders him quite mortal. "I've had a sweaty hand since I was a kid. It gives me a hard time playing live. So I always carry a towel. It could be unusual for a person who doesn't know me well. As a musician, I meet many people and I have situations where I have to shake hands… If you find a guy who is carrying a record bag and towel in the club, it's definitely me."
http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/nozaki-ryota/nozaki-ryota-jazz-on-leave/2029/
Meer Nozaki Ryota op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/nozaki-ryota
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