Nobukazu Takemura

Nobukazu Takemura是Thrill Jockey Records旗下唯一的日本人。這個來自東京的日本人在80年代中期還是一名嘻哈DJ，為日本當時的Wild Style推廣作出了一定的貢獻，后來在ACID JAZZ和TRIP-HOP的影響下開始改變自己的風格。早期的作品仍然是在WEA，Toy's Factory等公司出的，之后他換過很多工作。80年代后期他曾經(jīng)在MO WAX當過一段時間的制作人，為以后自己的事業(yè)積累了相當?shù)慕?jīng)驗。到了90年代中期，他招集幾個朋友一起組成了自己的樂隊Child's View開始玩起了一些古怪的音樂，很快便吸引了包括Aphex Twin，Coldcut，和Wagon Christ等人幫他REMIX專輯，并且建議他往IDM的方向發(fā)展。經(jīng)過許多年受到各種音樂風格的影響, 中西方文化的碰撞，他終于在99年拿出了自己兩張成熟的作品，加上POST ROCK 概念的興起，他被邀請去Thrill Jockey。
Kyoto-based producer Nobukazu Takemuras career has followed an odd trajectory for an artist produced by the club scene. He emerged as a hip-hop DJ in the mid-80s, inspired by the Japanese leg of the legendary Wild Style tour (largely credited for introducing hip-hop to Japan). A short-lived career as a battle DJ led Takemura to shift focus to the mixing desk in the late 80s, and within a few years he was releasing tracks through MoWax, Lollop, and Bungalow under the names DJ Takemura and Spiritual Vibes. Ostensibly trip-hop and acid jazz, these releases were marked by a high quotient of live instrumentation and, in contrast to his bedroom-producer colleagues, very high production values. In parallel with his club-oriented releases, Takemura was also producing more exploratory material together with Yamatsuka Eye (of the Boredoms) and Aki Onda as Audio Sports; the group released an LP, Era of Glittering Gas, before Onda took sole control of the project in 1992. By the mid-90s, Takemura had signed with Warner Japan as a solo artist, and his releases as Childs View and under his own name tended increasingly toward a challenging diffusion of hip-hop, jazz, pop, drumnbass, and post-classical music. (The 1996 remix album, Childs View Remix, featuring Aphex Twin, Coldcut, and Wagon Christ, among others, suggested his growing interest in the experimental fringes of dance culture.) With 1997s Child & Magic LP, Takemuras interest in the relatively more stable rhythms of dance music had almost completely fallen away, and elements of experimental computer music and overt references to minimalist composers such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich filled his tracks, which tended to pair cycling flute, percussion, and bell-tone patterns with the glitchy desktop discontinuities of Oval and Ryoji Ikeda, among others. Two other releases from this period — Funfair, on the American Bubble Core label, and Milano, on Warner Japan, solidified this new direction. (The latter CD Takemura originally produced for a fashion show by popular Japanese designer Issey Miyake.) Following a Japanese date with American post-rockers Tortoise, Takemura secured release plans with Tortoises label, Thrill Jockey, and 1999 saw the release of his most abstract, difficult material to date. Scope, preceded by the Meteor 12-inch, bore only the most tenuous resemblance to his previous releases, consisting of a dizzying blur of digital static, off-kilter bell patterns, mangled vocal samples, and CD skips. Like his original works, remixes by Takemura also span a wide range, including artists such as Tortoise, indie-pop singer Takako Minekawa, junglist Roni Size, and Steve Reich. 2001 was a busy year for Takemura: in the winter he released the EP Sign, which featured members of Tortoise, Brokeback and Isotope 217; in the spring, he released another Childs View album, Hoshi No Koe.
Takemuras output only increased during the next two years; he alternated experimental records on Thrill Jockey with more obscure efforts for his own Childisc label and indie stalwarts Bubblecore.