Tone Glow 128: Koichi Shimizu
An interview with the Japanese composer about growing up in the countryside, working with Thai directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pen-ek Ratanaruang, and creating the "bang" in 'Memoria'
Koichi Shimizu
Koichi Shimizu (b. 1972) is a Japanese musician who was born in Yamanashi, Japan but has spent multiple decades living in Bangkok, Thailand. It was there that he started a regular party that put on regular electronic music shows. While working as a composer for TV advertisements, he was asked to contribute sound design work for Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Invisible Waves (2006). Shimizu would also end up meeting Rit [aka Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr], a sound designer who he has collaborated with for various films and installations by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Notably, Shimizu was involved with the creation of the “bang” in Memoria (2021). Shimizu also makes music of his own, with some of his earliest IDM tracks appearing on a 1999 split titled Latest Gorgeous Energy. His newest album, titled Imprint (2024), is inspired by his recent move back to his hometown. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Shimizu on February 28th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss the Japanese hardcore punk bands he loved as a kid, his experiences in Thailand, his work with various Thai filmmakers, and his hometown Yamanashi.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I know you were born in Japan. Where in Japan, specifically?
Koichi Shimizu: I’m from Yamanashi, which is a small town next to Tokyo. It isn’t very far from the mountain called Fuji—it’s less than 40 km away. I just went there two days ago. It’s beautiful, especially in this season.
Do you remember the first time you went to Mount Fuji?
I never climbed to the top, but my mom is from the town that’s right under the mountain, so I’m sure I have been there since I was one year old. I went there every summer to meet my grandparents.
What was it like to grow up in that area?
So I’m actually living in Yamanashi now. I lived here until I was 18, until the end of high school. I had no feeling that I loved this town when I was a child; I think it’s the same for every kid who lives in the countryside. It’s pretty boring (laughter). We would always hear about great music from Tokyo and other big cities in the United States and Europe. But still, I enjoyed nature even when I was a kid. As soon as I graduated from high school, I left.
Did you explore nature a lot when you were a child?
At the time, I don’t think I really appreciated it. I mean, it existed, and I didn’t feel like it was special because we always lived near it. But there would be times when I would get out of class and go to the park or river and just lie down. This town is surrounded by mountains, like in all 360 degrees, so I really enjoyed watching that, especially during the winter when there was snow at the top.
You mentioned that you were aware of music happening around the world. What sort of things were you listening to?
I was a very typical teenager. I grew up in the 1980s so I was, of course, into heavy metal and thrash metal. I’d listen to punk music. There was Japanese punk, too.
Like the hardcore punk bands?
Yeah. I was playing guitar at the time and I was into S.O.B. Do you know them?
Oh yeah, they’re great.
So I was into them, Systematic Death, and Death Side. As much as I liked thrash metal, I was really into Japanese hardcore music too.
Were you ever able to see these bands live?
At the time, no. I was very scared to go to the gigs (laughter). I only listened to the vinyls or cassette tapes at the time.
There were so many great bands at the time. Gauze and G.I.S.M. and the Stalin.
G.I.S.M. were legends. Their gigs were very dangerous. I remember learning that people had to sign a paper saying they wouldn’t complain if they got hurt or died (laughter).
Did you ever go to punk shows when you were older?
In the States. After high school I went to New York City. That was in 1991. I didn’t see a lot of hardcore bands, but I saw the Ramones many times. I did see Murphy’s Law.
How did you find out about the hardcore punk bands in Japan? Did you go to record stores?
Even though I was living in a small town, there was this drummer—he was really good. He dropped out of high school and joined a hardcore band, Assfort. They were pretty famous in the Japanese hardcore scene. He introduced a lot of this music to the kids in our town. We only had a few copies of cassettes so we’d keep copying them, or we’d be borrowing vinyls and copying them to cassette. He was the original drummer—his name was Kiku [Toshikazu].
Did you play in bands as a kid?
Yeah, I was joining bands with my friends. We were playing Japanese pop punk. We played heavy metal. We covered S.O.B. and Deathside and another band called Laughin’ Nose.
So you moved to New York in the early ’90s. I know that you studied audio engineering there.
At first, I just went to study English, and then when I was looking for what to study, I was reading the Village Voice and found this advertisement for an audio engineering school. It was the Institute of Audio Research, which was next to NYU. To be honest, I was not a good student. I only studied one year and dropped out (laughter). My teacher told me he was one of the engineers for Television’s Marquee Moon (1977). I love that album. He was kind of crazy—he would just come into class and smoke weed (laughter).
New York was full of excitement, especially because I was from a small town in Japan. It was a big culture shock. I was actually living in New Jersey and going to school in New York, and I liked my life there—I was in a quiet, suburban town—but I loved going into New York. It was one of the best times of my life. I mostly spent time going to gigs and clubs, I’d buy CDs, I’d play guitar with friends. I have many good memories watching shows.
Are there any shows that stand out?
Sonic Youth. At the time, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing. For one of the gigs, they were just playing feedback noise (mimics the sound of sustained, explosive feedback). It was too advanced for me, but it still had a strong impact. I saw Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. and I saw lots of grunge bands. My friends also took me to warehouse parties with house music. I still couldn’t believe what I experienced inside the clubs. There was this one big warehouse party and it was my first club experience—I wasn’t really into club music at the time, I was going to rock gigs—and the sound system was amazing, the music was amazing, and the people were amazing. There was a motorcycle gang who was, like, guarding the club. They’d park their motorcycles in front just to protect it. Sometimes they’d go into the club with their bikes and (starts making the sound of revving engines).
Wow, that’s amazing. You ended up leaving New York in 1993, though. Did you go back to Japan or did you go to Bangkok?
I went straight to Bangkok, yes.
What was it like living there compared to your experiences in Japan and New York?
To be honest, at the beginning I didn’t really expect that I’d be living there. I had a Thai girlfriend who I met in New York and we went to Thailand together. I studied a little bit in Bangkok and, at that time, it was kind of becoming popular for young Japanese people to go to Southeast Asia as a backpacker. I was excited to explore this new world. Southeast Asia is totally different from Japan, and it’s always exciting for me to explore new things. So I lived in Thailand from 1993 to 1997. And then I moved back to Japan, and then I moved back to Bangkok again in 2003.
Why did you decide to go back and forth between Japan and Thailand?
I was pretty fucked up during my initial time in Thailand. It was the rave era, and there were lots of drugs. I was into the club scene in Bangkok, which was very rough and crazy. I could see my life going [downhill], so I moved back to Japan. I lived in Tokyo for five years, but those five years were one of the most important eras for me.
I know you released music in 1999, Latest Gorgeous Energy with Himuro. That whole B-side was you and it was cool because you were exploring different styles of IDM. How did you end up getting into this type of music?
Wow, I didn’t expect that anyone would know that release. I was actually making music in Thailand. I had samplers and synthesizers and a computer. I made a lot of bedroom music in Bangkok, and as soon as I went back to Japan, I wanted to make more. I didn’t know what to do with my life because I was at rock bottom. I didn’t have any money at the time so I asked my friends and I took some of the gear that they didn’t use. I just kept making music every day, like three songs a day, every day. And when I was in Bangkok, I was really into music from the UK, stuff on Warp. Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher—all that stuff. I was also influenced by hip-hop.
Wait, so IDM was popular in Bangkok at the time?
Well, at the time we didn’t call it “IDM,” we called it “electronica” and “left-field music.” It was strange. Electronic music wasn’t very big at the time, but there was this one shop where they were importing music from the UK and the States. It was in an area called Siam Square. We would spend every Sunday listening to music at this shop, every single week.
And you were going to raves at the time too?
Yeah, these were techno parties. There was this one DJ who played all this electronic stuff on the radio. His name was Bee and was from the UK. Later, he was the leader of the multinational electroclash band Futon. He had a radio show and introduced all this music to people as well. I would record his radio program all the time. There was electronica, drum ‘n’ bass, and techno—this was like a “listening techno.”
Did you DJ in Bangkok?
No, but I did record all my demos onto a cassette tape. I went to this street called Khaosan and would sell them there.
So then you moved to Japan and eventually got gear from friends and were making music. How’d you end up on Worm Interface and release a record with them?
I had lots of demos and, at the time, we started having internet so I checked the address of the label. Actually, my very first release was on a Japanese label called Childisc, which was run by Takemura Nobukazu. The label had a few compilations and I was on one of them. And then I had a chance to travel to London, and I brought some cassettes with me. I went to clubs and passed them to DJs. I went to [record shop] Ambient Soho and passed the tape to someone, and Worm Interface was run by them. After a while they called me and asked if I was interested in having this music released. It was pretty surprising.
Did you ever DJ for people in Japan?
To be honest, I’ve never DJ’d in my life. But after this release, I joined this Japanese label called Revirth and I started playing live with my laptop. I totally enjoyed doing that. At the time, playing on a laptop was still a new thing, and we were using Max/MSP and Reaktor to make our own patches and play in the clubs. I think it felt very fresh for the audiences too.
I know with Revirth you had records in the 2010s, like Otolary (2015). So you had releases with them back in the 2000s, too?
Yeah. I released an EP and I was on a compilation during that time. This was around 2000 or 2001.
The thing I’m wondering, then, is why you decided to go back to Bangkok if you had all this success in Japan.
At the time, I was taking music very seriously. I met a good friend who is also like my guru, his name was Numb, and he ran Revirth. He taught me a lot about electronic music and sound processing, and he taught me how to use Reaktor and we studied Max/MSP together. So even today, I’m making music with a modular synthesizer, and everything goes back to that time when we were studying Max/MSP. Also, from joining events and playing live, I learned a lot about organizing parties. And so I started doing that in Bangkok.
You had a record label while in Bangkok, too. SO::ON Dry Flower.
Yes, I had an indie label but it started as a party. I felt that maybe I could do all this based on what I saw in Tokyo. I wanted to explore more, and I didn’t want to stay in Japan—I wanted to experiment with my life. I had a choice to go to Europe or to the United States but I thought it’d be more unique to go somewhere else in Asia and make electronic music. As soon as I got to Bangkok in 2003, I started these parties. The concept of the first party was to have music made by laptops, which was still fresh at the time. So I asked a few local Thai artists and the drummer of Mogwai also joined.
Whoa, really? How did that happen?
I was talking with some people in Bangkok and there was this one woman who came from the UK to Bangkok to teach English. She was a DJ as well, and she was the girlfriend—and now the wife—of Martin [Bulloch]. Martin was coincidentally traveling to Bangkok at the same time that we had the party.
How was the response from the Thai audience?
It was a really good response. And we had quite a big audience for the first gig. It was very primitive, but the feedback was very good. At the time, there’d be two or three parties a month. It wasn’t much, so maybe that’s why each party had a big audience—at the time, we didn’t have that many choices for these alternative parties.
Were other people putting on similar parties?
There were a few indie gigs happening but not a lot of electronic music gigs.
How did you make the soundtracks for so many of these directors? There’s Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Aditya Assarat. Was it from connections you made through these parties?
It’s kind of a mixture. For my living, I was making music for TV commercials. At the time, I met this guy named Rit [aka Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr]. He’s been doing sound recording and sound design for Apichatpong since Tropical Malady (2004), and he’s still my very good friend.
The owner of the advertisement studio I was working at was a very good friend of Pen-ek. Pen-ek would come to the studio sometimes, and he said that he was making a new film called Invisible Waves (2006), which featured Asano Tadanobu. He knew I was making this experimental music and asked if I could help him with the sound. He wanted me to do sound design but we didn’t really know what sound design was at the time. I experimented with field recordings and synthesizers and he thought it was interesting, and then he used some of what I made in the film. Rit was also doing the sound mixing for the film, and he later told me that Apichatpong was making a new film called Syndromes and a Century (2006). Apichatpong wanted some unique sounds, stuff that wasn’t exactly music. I passed some demos to him and he liked it, and that was the beginning of that.
Do you remember when you first met Rit?
At the time, Rit had just come from San Francisco. He was studying film sound. He came back and when we met… I think he was coming back to Bangkok. We talked about many things.
Like what?
Oh, like what he did to survive in San Francisco. Stuff like that.
What’s it like working with him?
He’s very different from me. I’m very intuitive. He’s very smart. He does a lot of research on every piece of gear and technique, and I learn a lot from him—I’m still learning from him. We fight sometimes, but it’s not really serious. It’s kind of funny when we’re working with Apichatpong. Like, when we worked on Fever Room (2015) or the new one, A Conversation With the Sun (2022), these weren’t studio jobs, they were more like theater works. We went to the site and set up all the sound systems and the mix and we had some silly arguments. We have different tastes and approaches to mixing the sound. He’d be like “Why don’t you do this?” And I’d be like, “No, I think we’re good.” It was just those kinds of arguments.
Can you describe for me how you two work differently?
He’s the guy who mixes all the sound in the studio with Apichatpong in Thailand. I’m the one who brings all the sounds to the site and plays them back through the speakers. Sometimes, I feel like it’s good on this particular speaker, but it’s not how Rit would mix it. We end up talking about which approach is better. I totally understand how, for Rit, that it must sound the same at this site as it sounds in the studio. We end up finding a middle point. And at the end, we talk with Apichatpong about which one he likes.
So you have these initial works with these directors. What sort of things were you discovering about sound design? Like, there were the films we already talked about, but there was also Ploy (2007) and Wonderful Town (2007).
It was pure sound design for Invisible Waves. For Wonderful Town, I provided more music than sound design.
Right. It was a kind of ambient music, though.
Like an ambient, acoustic music. I had other musicians. For Wonderful Town, I worked with a Singaporean guitarist named Zai Kuning. But for Invisible Waves, it was just pure experimentation with sound because I didn’t know what was good or bad. With Apichatpong, because we have Rit as the main sound designer, what I provide is a collection of sounds, and Rit or Joe [Apichatpong’s nickname] gives me a request for a scene. I usually work without seeing the movies, though. I’ll make sounds and they’ll put them into the films if they think they fit. For Apichatpong, I just keep making sounds that I feel are… right (chuckles).
So you’ve never created music based on any footage from the films?
Sometimes I’ll see a rough cut, like a very short clip, but I prefer working without knowing that much, without having that much information. If I see the footage, it’s gonna limit my imagination, so I prefer to work with a totally blank canvas. And it usually makes for a better result.
What sort of things does Apichatpong request?
It’s very abstract, and it’s a bit like a poem. For example, I’m making music for his upcoming exhibition and I made some sounds without any prior information. He said, “Okay, this music sounds like floating on a sea but it never reaches the shore. What I want is for this music to reach the shore, for you to go on this island, and then for you to come back into the water and see ships passing in front of you. And then I want you to go to the next island and explore that, and this island will be the brother of the first island.” He says these kinds of words. And the film won’t have these scenes at all; it’s all his imagination.
What was it like to work on Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) after having worked with Apichatpong on Syndromes?
For Syndromes and a Century, I provided a lot of sounds. But with Uncle Boonmee and Memoria (2021), Rit asked me for some sounds and at the end, I would see the film and it’d be like… I don’t know where my sounds are (hearty laughter). Sometimes it goes underneath… I think with Memoria, I could feel it in the last scene. But there was the “bang,” yes.
So was that you who made the bang?
Rit made some and I added some sounds; we kind of made it together. Originally, that bang was made for Fever Room. That was the first time it appeared. Then it appeared again in Memoria.
What was changed between Fever Room and Memoria?
In Fever Room there is no explanation for the bang, it just (makes explosion sound) comes from the darkness. And we all liked it. You’d have to ask Apichatpong if that bang was what inspired him to make Memoria; I don’t know the background story about this.
I talked with Apichatpong in France back in 2021, when Memoria came out. I know that the bang was inspired by his experiences with “exploding head syndrome,” which I’ve had before. It was really interesting to talk with him about that because I’ve never known anyone else who’s experienced it. Did he talk about that with you guys?
Yeah, he explained when making the bang that he was looking for a sound that didn’t happen outside in the world but inside of your head. It’s not a “listening” sound, but a “feeling” sound.
So how did you approach making that sound, then?
It was really difficult. There was no answer for what was right and what was wrong, so the only thing we could do was make a lot of sounds and let him choose (laughter). That’s why Rit asked me to provide some bass drum sounds. He has a big collection of Foley sounds and field recording sounds. But sometimes, that is not enough to fulfill the sound, so I will provide sounds made by synthesizers and other electronic devices, and then he’ll put them together.
There’s the scene in Memoria when they’re trying to recreate the sound. Was that similar to how you two approached it?
Maybe with Rit and Apichatpong, but for me I work alone in the studio and we’re communicating via email.
Do you remember how many different sounds that you sent, approximately, before you all figured out the bang?
I don’t remember. I just kept recording and improvising with machines. It was a lot, but it was just one file, like a 20-minute file with many different sounds. “Just use whatever you like!” (laughter). I think Rit and Joe spent a lot of time revising the sounds. I heard from Rit that mixing Memoria took so much time, that there were so many revisions. Apichatpong may be happy with everything, but then a few weeks would pass and he’d want to do everything again. To be honest, I don’t know what’s going on in the studio during the mixing stage, but I’m sure it wasn’t completely smooth.
There are other films that you’ve worked on, like Karaoke Girl (2013) and Samui Song (2017). And interestingly, all the stuff you’ve worked on are pretty quiet and low-key. How does it compare to work with someone like Apichatpong and then with directors like Pen-ek and Visra Vichit-Vadakan?
Apichatpong is very unique. He’s the director I know who cares the most about sound. In fact, he is the sound designer, and me and Rit are more like the operators. He always has a strong vision of the sound in his head. He even provides his own sound sometimes. He’ll record something and give it to us and ask us to modify them for use in the film. Other directors care about sound, of course, but it’s a little bit different. They’ll give us more opportunities to make decisions about what will fit for a scene and what will not. They’ll ask us. Apichatpong, though, has a very strong vision. Thus we always respect his decision.
So you’ve released your own music over the years. You have the Wholetone EP (2017), you’ve got Demon State (2022) with the Observatory, and that album is cool because a song like “Panopticism” will throw in gamelan. You also have the new album, Imprint (2024). It originally came out in 2021, and I remember listening to it at the time when I was looking into all the people who had worked on Apichatpong’s films. It originally had “Cycle,” which was more of a techno song. And then you’ve added new songs, too. Do you feel like working on these films has helped you approach making your own music?
I’m sure it has, but I cannot tell how, exactly. Working on these films has made me think about what is most important when making any piece of art, and I’m not just talking about music. A lot of electronic musicians, including myself, often rely on the process behind making sounds, but having worked with film directors, I feel like what is most important is the kind of story that we tell. I try to consider the story, but it’s very difficult to become a good storyteller. All these film directors made me realize that we need to tell stories to people in order to make art.
Do you feel like you were telling a story with Imprint?
Imprint was inspired by my life after coming back to Japan in 2020, during the pandemic. I didn’t try to tell a story, exactly, but I did try to make the scenery that I had been seeing; it wasn’t just this pure experimentation in sound.
What sort of things were you seeing?
I had been living in Bangkok for nearly 20 years and then I came back. To be honest, I didn’t expect to come back to live in Yamanashi. At the time, I bought my first bicycle and I kept riding it everywhere. I would see lots of beautiful sceneries, and sometimes I became very emotional because so much time had passed since I left my hometown but it still looked the same, especially the countryside. If you go into the mountains, there are more small towns there and they don’t look the same. They look like they’ve been abandoned; there are fewer people living there. I’ll look at the signs and they look old, and that would make me very emotional too. I was very happy to explore Yamanashi again and “Cycle” was kind of like the feeling of me being happy and riding my bike.
I know you said you went to Mount Fuji two days ago. What’s your favorite thing about Mount Fuji?
It’s just very beautiful. And it’s not the only special thing to see here. I had a friend come from Italy and I took him around by car. We went to a hidden waterfall that is very beautiful. There’s no one there and it’s very quiet, and it’s in the forest. We also went to a lake. It’s kind of weird that I don’t see anyone, though, because these places are so beautiful. I feel like I can meet Mononoke in such a place, like God is living in such environments.
Is there anything that you wanted to talk about today that we didn’t get to?
To be honest, I’ve never had an interview this long before, so it was a pleasure to talk with you. But no, I hope the music tells you everything.
Oh, I guess we didn’t talk about the record label that you ran. What was that like?
That was a fun time. I got a lot of great experience working with good artists in Thailand and organizing shows. That was the good side. The bad side, well it’s not really bad, but I realized that I’m not good at doing business. I devoted most of my time to running the label and taking care of artists, and so I didn’t have time to make my own music. That was the reason I stopped. But it was a very good time in my life.
There’s always one question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
My honesty. I’m the kind of person who cannot lie to people. And I feel very good being honest, and I apply that to when I make music.
More information about Koichi Shimizu can be found at his website. His new album, Imprint, can be purchased at Boomkat.
Thank you for reading the 128th issue of Tone Glow. And thank you for being honest.
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An interview with the guy who created the 'bang' in Memoria. Wow. Great stuff, as usual.