The legendary cassette "Computer Café Music," produced for the sound installation event "Ikebukuro Dennou Café" (1991), which seemed to combine contemporary music with a cyber-occult sensibility, has been reissued on LP.
The intertwining of rational contemporary music and the mysterious world of the occult cyberspace was a very short period of time, and this work is a rare, behind-the-scenes historical document that pinpoints that intertwining. Commentary by Koji Kawasaki, a leading figure in Japanese electronic music.
This work is a reissue of the elusive cassette "Computer Café Music," originally produced for the "Ikebukuro Cyber Cafe" event organized by Takahashi Yuji in September 1991 at a space operated by Seibu Art Vivant. It features a collaborative computer system using a Mac by Takahashi Yuji and Fujieda Mamoru, recorded by Sakurai Taku at Shibata Minao's home. The recording features nearly incomprehensible sounds, including sampled sounds controlled by Takahashi on his Mac, a sound system programmed and operated by Fujieda in MAX, and FM synthesizers. Takahashi's words in a pamphlet from the time, "In the flickering moments of everyday life, the translucent coordinate axes of a dark cyberspace appear and disappear like a heat haze," suggest the possibility that he was obsessed with the cyber occult. Furthermore, in an interview article from the time, he said, "Those who didn't come are also important. ... You learn later that something was happening. From that image, something entirely different may emerge." Perhaps this was prophecy.
