Interpretation by Nate Shockey

 

The Japanese underground has a handful of icons: Keiji Haino, Acid Mothers Temple's Makoto Kawabata, Kan Mikami, etc. One of the biggest is Tatsuya Yoshida, a drummer whose tight, yet often spastic style mixes athleticism, humor, power, an almost superhuman stamina, and an encyclopedic knowledge of progressive rock's roots.

His discography is intimidating, in more ways than one. Not only is it enormous, it's enormously challenging, covering many facets of progressive rock, free jazz, and even skewed pop. Yet it maintains an oddly accessible draw, Yoshida's phenomenal energy and obvious love for his music making even the harshest bits go down smooth.

It's therefore not much of a surprise that the man himself is warm, friendly, and energetic. Recently, Jrawk sat down with Yoshida-san in a cafe near his home base in Koenji to discuss Prog Rock, why he can't play straight pop, and the difficulties of using vegetables as percussion.

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JR: One of the most striking things about your work is the challenging time signatures. What attracts you to that?

TY: When I was in middle school and high school, I was listening to English prog. I grew up with that stuff. I was always interested in those kinds of rhythmic patterns. It just happens naturally.

When I started Ruins, I had digested all the 70s prog stuff. I was also interested in modern music like Anton Webern. When I started Ruins, the idea was to take what was happening in modern compositions and infuse it with punk energy. When I was in high school, listening to prog, I never thought I could actually play it. Then punk and hardcore hit, and I realized you didn't have to have the same kind of musical chops the old school prog guys did.

JR: What was your first exposure to prog?

TY: It was on national TV, actually. There was a program that I think was called "The Young Music Show," and they ran Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii. It was pretty shocking, it left a big impression. My favorite is "Dark Side Of The Moon," but Pompeii was the first exposure.

JR: Were drums your first instrument?

Ruins' first, self titled release (1986)

TY: (nods) I was in the brass band in high school. Before High School, I sometimes played traditional Taiko.

JR: Heh...did you ever feel the urge to experiment with the rhythms while you were in the brass band?

TY: (laughs) Of course, there was a big gap between what I was listening to and what I was playing. But no. I did have a friend who played guitar, I'd play with him outside the band: Deep Purple, Rainbow...we did "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas, and some stuff by Camel, maybe Can. We'd do ten minute epics.

JR: So what was your very first band?

TY: My first real band was Ruins, actually. I started it when I was 25, in August 1985. Next year is the 25 year anniversary!

JR: Congratulations! Was it always a two piece?

TY: In the beginning, we tried having a guitarist. We only rehearsed one or two times, but we thought it worked better as just drums and bass. We wanted to push the beat.

JR: Was it hard to find people who could keep up with the Ruins' complexity?

TY: The first bassist in the Ruins was someone I had played with before, we got along pretty well, I knew he would be OK.

Thing is, when we played...usually, the bassist and the drummer will face each other, and have some non verbal communication. But he would stand in front of me and face the audience! (laughs)

JR: What about YBO²? How did that come about?

TY: (Masahi) Kitamura had put an ad in his magazine "Fools Mate," looking for members...he mentioned Magma, and a lot of my favorite bands, so I sent a postcard. I sent it on Monday, turned out there was a gig on Saturday! (laughs) He called me Wednesday or Thursday, we rehearsed Friday, played Saturday.

As it turned out, I was the only person who sent a postcard! I guess the bands he mentioned were too obscure. I started with YBO² at roughly the same time as Ruins.

JR: You can definitely hear your input on YBO²'s Starship.

TY: I composed one song on that album, and contributed some arrangements. In the beginning, Kitamura wanted to mix progressive rock and noisier music, stuff like This Heat.

YBO²'s final studio release, Starship (1989)

JR: Speaking of This Heat, how big was that stuff?

TY: Hmm...the Canterbury scene, as well as RIO. It wasn't that popular, but it had a very strong influence.

JR: How about Magma? When did you first hear them?

TY: I was about 20 at the time. I had been living in the country as a kid, where there wasn't much information about new music. When I turned 18, I moved to Tokyo, and there was all this new stuff...progressive rock, more obscure music. It was almost too much!

JR: There's also the Acid Mothers Temple collective...

TY: I've been involved in Acid Mothers SWR, (Makoto) Kawabata, (Atsushi) Tsuyama and me. Very different from AMT and the Melting Paraiso UFO. I had the idea for the Japanese New Music Festival, where the three of us make seven different bands.

JR: One of the bands is you and Tsuyama attaching microphones to your zippers and playing zipper solos. You also have a song where you grate daikon...

TY: Daikon is really difficult to use as an instrument! If you keep moving in the same direction, it starts getting stuck, so you have to rotate it while trying to keep the rhythm...it requires a very difficult technique!

JR: The humor is present in Ruins sometimes as well.

TY: Well, most of the humor in AMT comes from Tsuyama-san...he's from Osaka, humor is a bigger part of life there. Self expression shouldn't always be so serious, anyway. I can't think of many people that mix things like that, however. Zappa, of course...

JR: Like Zappa, you often take pieces and parts from your environment and shape them into new things...especially with Ruins, where one song can have seemingly endless different parts.

TY: I like the idea of playing for extended periods of time, but rather than one long piece, just string a bunch of small pieces together, sometimes randomly. When I play in Ruins Alone (Yoshida's one man version of Ruins) I don't have a set list. I'll just go off the vibe of the place. Sometimes I'll have an idea in mind, sometimes not.

JR: You've got a whole lot of bands in your discography: AMT, Koenjihyakkei, YBO², etc. Do you work with each as an outlet for a specific idea, or do you simply do it for the sake of collaboration?

Keiji Haino, Tatsuya Yoshida, and Makoto Kawabata's Until One And One Happen Together (2009)

TY: I'll start with a concept then think of who would fit.

JR: It may not have been your idea, but what was the concept behind the improv project with (Keiji) Haino-san and (Kawabata) Makoto-san? (Until One And One Happen Together) That's an unusual format...a DVD with the album included as MP3 files.

TY: Well, we started with the idea of improv...we're planning on doing more. The original idea was to have a DVD of the uncut studio track. People don't really do that very often. Even though it's improv, and it's recorded live in the studio, it's still significantly different than a show, in the way it's recorded with multi track, etc. Then we decided to include everything on the disc as MP3, and at that point, what's the point in releasing a stand alone CD of the same music?

JR: With a history like yours, is there anything you haven't done yet that you'd like to?

TY: (pauses) When something occurs to me, I do it. So no, not really! (laughs)

JR: Pardon what might seem like an odd question, but do you ever feel the urge to play more traditionally structured music? Pop music, maybe...

TY: Hmm...maybe as one song, one part of an album, but not really. I couldn't. I can't keep an 8 beat for three minutes! (laughs)

JR: (laughs) You'd get bored?

TY: No, I don't think my body could do it!

JR: Thank you very much! Is there anything you'd like to add?

TY: (thinks long and hard) Hmm...no! (laughs)