Tongue

Written and Recorded in 1995

One of Prog Rock tunes I wrote in the first half of 1995. The demo recording was made for my band called Culotte and because of this reason, I deliberately didn’t use the rhythm machine as a part of the accompaniment. This tune represents my interest and intention for combining inspirations I gained from Progressive Rock, especially King Crimson, and from Blues Rock, especially Jack Bruce and Cream, with a brief homage to Daevid Allen’s Gong, a French Prog Rock band in the middle section. The original demo also included a lyric that expressed my sexual obsession, which might be still obvious by the title given to the tune. For making this video, I tried to cut off the obscene lyric and, as a result, the rhythmic structure has been modified to more difficult, but also more likely to the original intention of this thing.  

(The Holy) Abandonment

Written and Recorded in 1992

In terms of music, this tune was written based upon the influence of The Doors, especially of their well combined aspects of soulful taste and baroque elements. When it was written, I was reading a book of occultism that weighed on the importance of mental abandonment, which made me write a silly lyric that used to go along with the tune in its initial demo recording. By removing such a silly component, I reckon the tune now sounds quite well. 

Before & After

Written and Recorded in 1988 (Before) / Written in 1988 and 1995, Recorded in 1995 (After)

This is a tricky video that features a couple of my personal demo recordings from different eras. Whilst ‘Before’ stands for a sketch recording of the basic idea of the tune, roughly recorded in circa 1988, ‘After’ stands for a summarised edition of what was later written, based on the very idea in 1995. In my view, whilst the former was still in the realm of influence from the 1980s pop music, the latter reflected my desperate feeling at the time of recording; playing it rough like a Punk Rock thing with using a cigarette lighter to play the slide guitar. The tune was written for my band called Culotte, which had just lost its permanent drummer and in the lyric associated with this tune, I tried to pour out my irritation caused by that situation. In other words, ‘Before’ represents innocent and pure state of the tune, when it was born, while ‘After’ represents the same thing with ill-minded make-ups on, yet it is furnished with more aggressive and vivid tones of guitar sounds, in order to make it a bit more attractive, perhaps.

Ontological Nobodies

Written and Recorded in 1992

Probably one of the finest pop tunes I have ever written despite its’ seemingly odd title. The tune was mainly written by using the guitar except for the piano part, which was written while I was programming it on a digital sequencer. After the demo recording has been done, I thought it must be handy to write down the chord progression I programmed for the piano part on the paper, while I still remember it, but I could not take enough time to do so because I was busy working at an office job at that time. The initial demo also accommodated a lyric I wrote, which reflected my pessimistic views on being an ordinary office worker – the title of the track was a definition, or description I gave for those who I had to deal with due to  my position in those days.

The song was played live by my band Culotte for only once, and the footage I used in this video was actually taken from that performance. However, it went terribly bad and we never played it again since then. 

Bondage – Part One / Part Two

Written and Recorded in 1995

When the original drummer of Culotte left the band in mid-1995, I had to struggle to cope with the difficulties to carry on with ‘business as usual.’ The first few materials I newly wrote since his departure were either directly addressed to him or furnished by past materials that featured him on the drums. Bondage was one of such attempts, which features a sound-check sequence from our past live recording in its intro. Despite the given circumstance, I decided to stick to a principle that when I make any demo material for the band Culotte, I don’t use the rhythm machine in order to give the drummer enough room for his creative imagination.

Writing of this tune coincided with my mental crisis as well. The lyrics, I wrote for this tune, contained a line like following: ‘If DNA and the Akashic Records were compatible…’ Unfortunately, I can’t recall what followed the line.

After the relatively dynamic Part One, it is followed by Part Two, a typical one-chord jam by me at that time. I dared to leave my voice parts in this section because it’s not anything like singing, but a reading of something written in Latin that I have found in a fishy book in those days. Extended piece of Part Two was newly discovered from the original master tape while I was making this video. 

Conversations We Used to Have

Written and Recorded in 1992

A catchy pop tune I wrote in early spring, 1992. It originally had lyrics to go with that reflected the impression I have got through some interesting conversations with a girl in her age of eighteen, to whom I came across in the previous year. The lyrics were too personal and intimate to be revealed even in this form of publication, but this piece of music still reminds me of how influential she used to be at the time when I wrote this thing. Apart from my personal sentiment, I simply reckon that this is just another well written sophisticated pop tune from mine.

Remember Me (Part One)

Written in 1991 and 1993 / Recorded in 1994

Remember Me was originally a song I wrote for piano and voices as the closing track of the soundtrack version of Zone, a students' theatrical project, in the end of 1991. This original recording was technically accompanied by roughly recorded improvisation music played by my fellow students that featured a bass player providing a repetition of mere two notes – G and D – and the acoustic guitar flowing upon it freely. When I thought about remaking my original part of the tune, I simply guessed it would be interesting to rewrite the accompaniment section as well. When the demo recording of the renewal version was made, it was designed to have all the guitar parts to fade out while playing the melody line, as you can hear at the ending of this video, the bass part was to be left continuing to provide the two chords, upon which the piano piece can be later added.

When I brought this demo version to my band called Culotte for recording purpose, the drummer continued to play even after I recognised that enough length of material has been already recorded. So I joined to play the guitar as the jam spontaneously went on, as usual with these guys, and it resulted in to leave an interesting jam piece captured in good audio quality. Playing back the recorded material made me decide to divide the whole thing in two parts and the piano piece in question was assigned to the Part Two. In addition, the guitar into for this Part One is obviously quoted from MC5’s Kick Out the Jams.     

Your Umbrella

Written in 1992 / Recorded in 1992 and 1995

This tune was written in early 1992, reflecting a petty thing happened between me and one of my female colleagues just outside of an office, where we were working at. As soon as the initial demo version was made, it became a key repertoire of my band called Elegance, which gave a basis for a new band called Culotte within a few months since then. Culotte also played this tune for countless times and left several recordings as well, from live performances on stage to an official recording conducted in a professional studio. The live footage featured in this video was captured in June or July, 1995. Despite the band survived for few more months, this was the last time we played this thing as a band. So what? Not much. Simply, I have spent some of my life time being strongly associated with this tune for a bit too long and that fact sometimes makes me a bit sentimental, that’s it.

Untitled #2

Written and Recorded in 1996

After the break-up of my band called Culotte, in early 1996, I reluctantly decided to go back to make recording materials by using the rhythm machine. Whilst I continued to write new materials from scratch, I also reviewed some of my past works to be renewed for this new recording scheme. As for newly written materials, I decided not to write any lyrics and leave them in the state of instrumental backing track. For this reason, these things were only called New Thing with numberings added. This tune was originally numbered as  #1, the very first attempt of this series of things. By that time, I recognised that I am not capable to sing quite well so that I thought it would be better to leave my new things without adding my voice parts and hand them to someone capable to finish it, hopefully, someone who can also write lyrics and melody lines. Despite it didn't go quite well, with hindsight, I later took to call the entire scheme as The Soft Core Project.

In publishing these things in the form of videos, I changed the title from New Thing to Untitled, with a different numbering system. This thing, Untitled #2, is a candidate to be treated as one of my masterpieces.