East Bionic Symphonia were a group of improvisers and artists who studied together under
Takehisa Kosugi at the
Bigakko artschool in
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
in the mid-1970s. As a graduation project they recorded an album of
free improvisation that was edited by Kosugi and released on the
ALM Records label in 1976. Several of the members went on to have careers in underground music and the visual arts. The remnants of the group reconvened in 1997 under the name
Marginal Consort
Marginal Consort is a Japanese collective/ free improvisation group made of sound and visual artists, who have played one concert annually since 1997. The group originally grew out of the East Bionic Symphonia, who recorded one album in 1976. The m ...
and continue to play annually.
The original members were
Kazuo Imai is a Tokyo-based guitarist who plays in a rigorous and original free improvisation idiom. His music joins the rigour and texture of contemporary classical with the passion of free jazz. He has played with many Western and Japanese improvisers, inc ...
, Kaoru Okabe,
Yasushi Ozawa
(1958February 2, 2008) was a Japanese musician and sound engineer, best known as the bassist in Keiji Haino's rock group Fushitsusha. He was also a member of the free improvisation group Marginal Consort, and in the past he played with East Bion ...
,
Tomonao Koshikawa, Hiroshi Shii,
Masami Tada, Tatsuo Hattori, Kazuaki Hamada, Masaharu Minegishi, &
Chie Mukai.
Discography
''East Bionic Symphonia'' LP/cassette (ALM Records, 1976)
References
Interview with Chie Mukai. G-Modern, issue 14, Winter 96-97. pp. 11–23 (Japanese)
Stofer, F. (2000). Japanese Independent Music, France: Sonore.
External links
* https://soundcloud.com/disc-sonor/east-bionic-symphonia-live-at
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAaNKhVjiBQ
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc26MxG7lfs
{{Authority control
Japanese rock music groups
Musical groups from Tokyo