Yoshio MACHIDA & Cal LYALL : Premeditation
By the Bluest of Seas #1, double 10″ – April 2020
In the early 2000s, Tokyo’s SuperDeluxe was a meeting point for many experimental musicians, both international and Japanese. This duo sprung from a live collaboration at the venue in 2006, where Machida was experimenting with processed steel pan and Lyall was largely performing using a tabletop guitar setup with a range of electronics. Many subsequent encounters were heavily experimental, ranging from densely layered noise music to sound collage.
Through the years, the collaboration shifted to a more tonal approach, with standard tunings and stronger compositional elements. Both musicians have a deep interest in traditional improvisational forms, so there was a natural evolution towards structural ideas—based on minimal scalar patterns—as the sound became more acoustic. The most recent instrumentation explores the unusual combination of steel pan, slit drums and banjo, while also delving deeper into the characteristics of the instruments themselves.
Yoshio Machida : steelpans, gamelan, metal slit drums
Cal Lyall : 5-string banjo
Recorded by Yoshio Machida at Smallaxe, Yokohama (2016-2017)
Mixed by Cal Lyall and Yoshio Machida at Subvalent Studios, Tokyo and Smallaxe, Yokohama (2018)
Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering, Montréal (2019)
Vinyl Cut by Fred Alstadt at Ångström Mastering, Brussels (2019)
Photos by Beata Szparagowska, Finland, USA, Belgium, Italy, Poland, France (2013-2017)
Artwork by Isabelle Vigier, Amsterdam, summer 2019
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