ライブ・アト・ニヒル牛（通常盤）＝ Live at Nihirugyu (Final Cut)

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2019-10-23

Label: Telegraph Records

感謝：地引雄一(テレグラフレコード）、石戸圭一(いぬん堂）、林原聡太＆史音、ガイ、野田茂則(キャロサンプ）
大感謝：ニヒル牛、石川ある

You May Forget It? or Untitled
Yoshiyuki Sugawa


1

Between February 23 and March 7, 2019, an exhibition titled "A Man called Yukio Sato" was held at the gallery/knickknacks shop "Nihirugyu" in Tokyo's Nishiogikubo neighborhood. Formerly the leader of the group "Sukisuki Switch," now working solo as well as with "Yukio Sato & Watashitachi (Us)," the musician was the subject of various paintings, dolls, objects, zines and written critical commentaries, created by friends and acquaintances, on display in the crowded space. Sato himself gave a series of performances under the heading "Honto ni Mainichi (Every single day, really)" each night at 7 PM for about 30 minutes. (Some days these consisted of two sets and some days went for longer.) The approximately 130 songs performed there, with the exception of covers, were excerpted and edited by Sato himself for this album. The total tracks number 99 in all, he explains, due to the technical limitations of the CD medium.
Though anyone listening to the CD likely needs no such introduction, let us take a moment to consider this man called Yukio Sato and what his presence in the scene has meant.
Much like Brian Eno's famous remark that "the first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies but everyone who bought it formed a band," Sukisuki Switch exerted a comparable influence over the Japanese rock scene. It is highly probable that musicians like Kera (Keralino Sandorovich) from Uchoten and the members of Tama would not have gone into their creative pursuits if not for this impetus from Yukio Sato, or at the very least, their ventures would have taken a considerably different direction. The entire 80's Japanese indies scene would have had an alternate nature.
The message Sato put out there was simply, "Just be yourself" in your expressivity, and perhaps even more importantly, Yukio Sato himself embodied the ethos in his actions. And so the resultant music differed fundamentally from all other music heard in Japan until then. Here was an individual demonstrating the possibility of an utterly different way of thinking and of expressing; how galvanizing this must have been for the young aspiring individuals bearing witness.
We might question just how precisely the perspectives Sato wanted to communicate to his audience got through, but of course we can never know. Perhaps it's reasonable enough for Sato to resign to himself and reason that however they may have been received, surely something different could emerge from there?
Following several lineup changes Sukisuki Switch faded from existence after 1986, and although Sato then took part in forming "Zetsubo no Tomo," he left the group in 1992, and for a long while was immersed in days of "labor and child-rearing" (Sato's words). All had assumed he would go on to become a figure of legend when he suddenly returned to the music scene in November 2011. In September 2013, he released three new Sukisuki Switch CDs at once, and continues to be active to this day with his solo work and group project "Yukio Sato & Watashitachi (Us)."


2

Prior to the live series "Honto ni Mainichi (Every single day, really)" and this album Live at Nihirugyu (Final Cut), Yukio Sato presented a series titled "Kihon Mainichi (Basically every day)" in October 2016. This series took place in a rental meeting room in the basement of a building in Kanda-Ogawamachi in Tokyo's Chiyoda district, which he rented, basically daily, for an hour, managing everything from setting up, performance, to cleaning up afterward. From this series came the unprecendented album Namae wa Mada Nai (Unnamed as of Yet), in a 24 CD-RW set with each disk containing one song.
The new album is likewise unprecedented, not only in format, but also in the manner each track was edited so as to hold a total of 99 tracks (and contrary to the common tack of cutting up tracks into tenths of a second, in his case, the actual units of meaning are retained).
Why did Yukio Sato set out to create an album like this? A variety of questions occur while listening. Why the approach of cutting out just one portion of the song? And why this particular portion of that song? We find him taking the kernel of one song, while he’s selected a seemingly peripheral part from another. Then there is the part where he actually stumbles over the lyric, clearly his conscious choice.
Of course, each listener is free to search for their own answer, but I suppose it would be a cop-out not to share some of my own impressions.
So we can see here how Sato fully carries through his central idea regarding the "communication between an individual and (multiple) individuals," a key factor in pop music for him. Commonly in ordinary pop, this is only accomplished at the moment the full picture of the song is revealed. But remarkably, despite the fact that only mere portions of the songs are contained here, the work manages to achieve this aim to some extent. I would suggest that this has largely to do with the materiality of the "work" in question.
One surmises that Yukio Sato places greater importance on live performance before an audience, over an album that is no more than the simple collection of songs. For a communication-oriented artist this is only natural. In this situation, the medium of the album might occupy the role of a kind of sampler of music he creates. Or, perhaps it is something like a "stamp" which Jean-Luc Godard used as a metaphor for video in its relative position to film.
Live at Nihirugyu (Final Cut) then, is the realization of Sato's concept of the "album" in a condensed form.
Sato places great importance on communication and the element of surprise in live performance. Nevertheless, communication can exist, and surprise can happen on a product, although additional factors and conditions (such as time) may be required. And while the form of the music differs from live performance, when the listener visits the work through that product, therein lies a potential for impact and wonder (perhaps on every occasion, or perhaps suddenly at one time).
Certainly Yukio Sato does not compromise in the production of his creations. His due diligence in determining the exact point at which the concept of the work and the concept of the medium converge was already apparent in Namae wa Mada Nai (Unnamed as of Yet). Here, conversely, he aspires to a kind of wonderment that can only be achieved within this format.
While meaning is conveyed on a per-track basis in a customary album, Live at Nihirugyu (Final Cut) reveals associations between the fragments and meanings that arise from their interstices to form the pith of communication. That is, in this album, we are to listen for the stuff between the tracks rather than to the tracks themselves. It illustrates once and for all the coherency and diversity of this person, called Yukio Sato.


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Finally, to comment on this album being released from Telegraph Records. In 1983, when Sukisuki Switch released Wasuretemo Iiyo (You May Forget It) from Telegraph Records (yet another unprecedented format of five sonosheets), the label resided at 4-31-9 Nishiogi-minami, Suginami-ku, Tokyo. It feels almost like karmic destiny that Nihirugyu happens to be located on the next lot at 4-31-10 Nishiogi-minami, Suginami-ku, Tokyo. Of course, humans are always attaching this sort of significance to coincidence. Surprise appears out of the blue from beyond forgetfulness.


Translation into English by ito haruna

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