Test ToneTest Tone

Test Tone vol. 64

Material Boundaries of the Song and the Dance

Featuring: Jean-François Laporte (Québec), Cyril Hernandez (France), Yukitomo Hamasaki + shotahirama + Go Koyashiki, Tetuzi Akiyama + Cal Lyall and DJ Evil Penguin



Test Tone Homepage

Cal Lyall and Yasufumi Suzuki Special Interview!! (JP only)

Artist info:

Jean-François Laporte

Integrating visual art and sound exploration, Québécois artist Jean-François Laporte has been an influential figure on the contemporary art scene since the mid-1990s. Taking an intuitive approach to creating music, Laporte has learned his art through concrete experimentation on matter, actively listening to each sound, object or material. Much of his work is the result of working with raw material, devising simple yet ingenious constructions born of each material he explores. Receiving his fifth "Prix Opus" last year, Laporte was named "Facteur d'Instrument de Musique de l'Année" by the CQM (Conseil Québécois de la Musique). This gives timely recognition to the quality of Laporte's work and the importance his visionary musical inventions.
Homepage

Cyril Hernandez (France)

Percussionist and multimedia artist Cyril Hernandez explores the way our bodies interact with space, using elements of choreography, installation and inventive musicianship to create captivating work that transcends artistic boundaries. As a performing artist, Cyril seeks to communicate with a wide audience, preferring public spaces and environments for his work. He engages viewers by pulling them into his performance with circus sideshow aplomb, while at the same time hoodwinking them to eventually reveal the greater complexity lurking within his visual and rhythmic ideas.
Homepage
La Truc
Movie

Yukitomo Hamasaki + shotahirama + Go Koyashiki

A growing concern, Yukitomo Hamasaki's minimalist sound and design imprint mAtter has expanded to include a new generation of artists, two of whom have become recent collaborators in a number of projects. By joining forces with Go Koyashiki and shotahirama, both accomplished composers in their own right, Hamasaki has created something of a movement within the current Japanese scene. Blending intuitive improvisation with electronic composition, their previous performances have often been set to evocative photography, capturing minimalist patterns in the urban soundscape. As their international activity picks up, it is getting harder to catch all of these fine artists in one sitting. It might do you well to check in on team mAtter while they are still in town.
mAtter.jp

Tetuzi Akiyama + Cal Lyall

Part-iconoclast, part-bluesman, and one of the leading players in modern Japanese improvisation, Tetuzi Akiyama has taken his guitar far and wide, gaining a large international following while influencing countless younger musicians in the process. With a certain stark minimalism, Akiyama forged a name for himself in the onkyo scene in the late 1990s with the likes of Otomo Yoshihide and Toshimaru Nakamura. These days, he explores the full resonance of his instrument from a myriad of musical gateways, from primitavist leanings to drone and even some hypnotic guitar boogie. On this evening he'll be joined by improvising artist and electronic musician Cal Lyall (Tetragrammaton, Jahiliyyah), who will shed his characteristic layers of drone for a downtuned guitar duo of some (very loose) blues lassitude.
Tetuzi Akiyama Homepage
Cal Lyall myspace

Evil Penguin

Master of disguises, Mexican top-hats, ambient rockabilly to minimal Hawaiian Kumulipo chants, the Evil Penguin poses the primordial question of evanescence against a backdrop of New Wave folk. Celebratory, subliminal, moment-to-moment. A Tasmanian treasure with a penchant for open spaces.

About Test Tone

A monthly experiment offering irregular art, music and performance in Tokyo.
The Test Tone series aims to offer a venue for diverse and challenging artists to bring their ideas to a larger community. As a free event open to the public, we hope to bypass the old economies in order to create new ones, while encouraging collaboration in all forms. A collage of media, sound and art in a space available to anyone off the street, the event is a bazaar of potential collisions, where passersby are treated to the unexpected.
For all of this, we found our home base at Super Deluxe, a unique space in Tokyo's midtown, providing a relaxed atmosphere within its modular interior. The event continues to be a celebration of off-kilter creativity in the city: from installation pieces to performance art and visual collaborations; from noise, electronica, ambient sounds and free rock to disorderly jazz and manipulated field recordings. To date, close to 500 artists have been a part of the event, together creating opportunities for unexpected improvisation, collaboration, and festival spirit.