Minimalism X is a live performance piece, the system of which is built on Max/MSP. This system consist of a number of pitch-shifters that are partly controlled by simple algorithms and many delay lines. 

The piece explores the transformation of the eight recording files (or so, I don't remember much), which are taken from my life around then. Music as the metaphysical portrait of an anonymous life, back then in Tokyo.

Minimalism X (2001)

This is indeed a very simple remix of one of my live performance pieces. The interest that I had in remixing the piece is to investigate how very simple techniques such as resampling and copy & paste can transform the original piece when the techniques are applied to very short fragments. 

Some fragments involved in the remix are indeed quite short and within the microsound time-scale (in the classification of musical time-scales by Roads (Roads, Curtis., Microsound. The MIT Press, 2004, p.3) )

I was also interested in exploring (or revisiting) a futuristic appearance with intense sound materials after techno/noise decades.

Each of the stereo channels is completely independent and even panning is not applied to the sound materials. While I still haven't worked the further extension of the idea at all since then, this piece is a sketch for an extended multi-channel piece, which I was planning to compose (and that's how the title was given to this piece.)


A Very Short Futuristic Sketch (2007)

This short tape piece focuses on the gradual traditions of drones with some investigation on internal/external harmonic structures.

A Short Drone Study (2006)

I moved to a new city, after spending most of my life in my hometown, to do a PhD program. So far, as a typical international PhD student here, my life is led just between my apartment and the university. I know this never seems so exciting and I definitely agree if someone says my life seems so boring. But what I have learned about life so far, is that the beauty of life sometimes depends on how we see the things around us. So, I decided to write a short tape piece using only the recordings of the sounds of the things around me in my PhD student life. This is not only a tape piece, but more like a private letter to my friends to tell them that I am doing fine in a new city and to write what my life is like here.

A Self Portrait Of My Life (2005)

Sudden Death (2001)

Xenakis is also known for the significant influences that he gave to the emergence of noise music. For instance, In the early interviews,  Merzbow (Masami AKITA) clearly states the influence he got from the electronic pieces by Xenakis. 

Seattle Noise and Pulse Study is a study on loud noise live-performance, which explores such a linkage between Xenakis and noise music, by combining the partly-automated algorithmic controls in the live performance system, the (very) loud sonic materials and the spontaneous reactions to the system by the performer in the sonic environment. 

The system is written in C++ mostly from scratch by myself, while SuperCollider is used just as a sound synthesis server. 

Hiroki Nishino (JP)