Takatsuna Mukai – Śūnya

Takatsuna Mukai creates intriguing mix of world music, post-punk, dark ambient and at least few other genres. After participating in different bands, including electro-punk Gob$au$age, he decided to play solo with his debut album “Śūnya”. Wait, solo is not the exact word. Actually, the nine vocal tracks and three instrumentals are created by different vocalists and capture their perception for the zero, the void ( as Taka explains “Śūnya is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Zero’. It is also the etymological root for Śūnyatā, which is often translated as ‘Void’ in philosophical or religious sense (for example in Buddhism). The CD, he was so nice to send to me, comes in a pizza-box style and contains also a book with lyrics and beautiful artwork by Manko, photography by Natasha Xavier and calligraphy by Jason Atomic + a sticker. After a minute long intro, the album opens “Blank strip is black” with neo-gothy post-punk sound,

followed by probably my two favorites “Ballade Chaotique” sang by my the amazing Valerie Renay from Noblesse Oblige – band I’ve been following for years.

The next track “Tractate about Kvakas” is a mix of Croatian, English and an imaginary language I’ll call “Kvakian” for convenience! “Śūnya” is a versatile, ambitious and well-crafted project that deserves the attention of all lovers of quality alternative/avant-garde music. Enough from me, let the author speak himself for his music!

Takatsuna, you appear in movies like “Night Train” and “The Grudge 3” how you made a transition to music? Is that your first album? 

To answer the second part of the questions first, Śūnya is the first CD that comes out under my solo name since a super obscure 3-track EP I made sometime at the end of the 90s. Music has always been my main area of work. In London, I’ve done many different bands, including the electro-punk group Gob$au$age in the first half of 2000’s. At the same time, I have been taking part in various theatrical works, films, dance pieces, art installations and so on, including a series of collaborations with theatre director Dragan Živadinov(NSK) between 2005-2009.

Music is something that comes most naturally to me. But in a more broader sense, I guess what I’m interested in the most is storytelling; different ways to get your ideas and stories across using mediums that involve time, like music, theatre, film, and so on. It may be a straight narrative, or more abstract concept, or whatever.

When I come up with an idea, I try to choose the way that can communicate the particular idea most clearly and effectively. So sometimes an idea would end up becoming a narrative theater, sometimes a dance piece, and sometimes I would decide that music is the best way to deliver that idea.

And I think it was this interest in storytelling that got me involved in the world of movie-making as an actor, sometime in the 90s. I could be on set watching and learning how they tell stories in the movie-making world. Film productions are usually pretty big operations involving many, many people. So it was a very educational experience both creatively and also from the organisational point of view.

What does “Śūnya” mean and how would you describe the album shortly to someone who hasn’t heard it?

Śūnya is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Zero’. It is also the etymological root for Śūnyatā, which is often translated as ‘Void’ in philosophical or religious sense (for example in Buddhism).

Indian idea of Zero is not ‘lack of existence’ but rather, it is a result of an entity that is infinitely bloated, and therefore the inside of which becomes Zero, a void.

It’s an idea open to many different interpretations, and certainly in the world of philosophy and religion, the definition of Śūnyatā varies quite wildly between different schools of thoughts.

On a more practical level, perhaps one could make a simplistic analogy between this idea and such things as, the rises and falls of empires throughout human history, or various socio-political and economic system in history that, although successful initially, would eventually crack, due partly to their very success.

I gave each vocalist this basic explanation of the word Śūnya as the starting point for their lyrics, along with some basic musical ideas, and they gave me lyrics and stories based on their interpretations and associations triggered by those ideas, which then I wrapped around with more music and sounds to complete the songs.

The resulting 9 vocal tracks and 3 instrumentals on this album may seem to touch upon a range of unrelated subject matters, but I think you can feel that there is one constant thread running though all of them lyrically. You can listen through the whole album and construct your own story from it. Having a single thematic focus also helped musically to give a certain flow and continuity to the album that stylistically incorporates many different areas of music.

Śūnya was recorded in Italy (Śūnya I and II), Croatia (NAFAKA and Traktat o Kvakama), Germany (Ballade Chaotique and Radiophonique), Sweden (Time That Don’t Exist and Śūnya III), and the U.K.

Each of the country and the city itself was also a big influence on the sound of each track. Each song turned out the way it did because of the environment and atmosphere of the location where it was created.

During the mixing of the album at my studio in London, my role was to stream together the lyrics, the stories, the sounds, the Airs of the locations, into one continuous path.

Your work sounds very eclectic to me – I recognize avant-garde, post-punk, Eastern influences, dark ambient.. can you tell me something more?

My teenage years started in 1984, so I am very much a child of the mid-late 80’s. It was at the end of so-called post-punk era, beginning of new romantics, new breed of industrial bands were coming out from Europe and North America, and thrash metal and hip-hop were about to hit the big times.

In and around the city I was living in at the time, Yokohama, a very strong noise/hardcore scene was emerging, I also formed my first band in 1985 with a bunch of school friends, learning to play guitar by copying metal and punk songs. At the same time, I was listening to a lot of 20th century classical music and traditional music from the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, and Persia.

So, as you rightly point out, my musical background is somewhere in between the styles you mention, plus a bit of contemporary classical and free improvisation thrown in, and maybe a bit of metal…

The lyrics of “Traktat o Kvakama” sound very bizarre, what language is that and did you write all the lyrics yourself?

-First of all, all lyrics on Śūnya are written by respective vocalist(s) of the tracks, with the exception of Feast Proceeds the Carcass, lyric for which was written by Mark Charles, who sings backing vocal on the track, while the lead vocal is by Aza Shade.

Lyric of Traktat o Kvakama is in Croatian, written by Adriana Josipović and Kete Marušić, who are theater actresses and performers based in Zagreb. The lyric is their response to the idea of Śūnya as described in the second question. It’s a very theatrical, funny and clever interpretation of Śūnya and I love it.

The word Kvaka has two meanings in Croatian, the first is ‘a doorknob’, and the second is ‘a catch’, as in ‘what’s the catch?’. ‘A doorknob’ is a handle you can use to open a door with, in a physical and metaphysical sense, while ‘a catch’ is a trick, a deceit, things that fool you, an ulterior motive.

The lyrics are made up with a collection of nouns and verbs that start with letter K. Then, a Vs are inserted after the K’s so that it adds the two meanings associated with Kvaka to each of those words and names.

For example, Komunizam(Communism) becomes Kvomunizam, Kraljica Majka(Queen Mother) becomes Kvraljica Majka, and so on.

Adriana calls this lyric ‘an essay about nothing’, which is where the song title comes from (It means Tractate about Kvakas)

I did the English translation for this song on the booklet myself. It’s quite tricky to get this kind of word game to come across well in translation, In hope the listeners understand what the song is about better after reading this..

The limited edition that I received is very pretty, who’s responsible for the artwork?

-The packaging and artwork is a joint effort between photographer Natasha Xavier, designer Manko, graphic and comic book artist Jason Atomic, and myself, with helps from two different printers in London and Oxford

The front cover picture is a snap shot Natasha took some years ago at a festival in England. It’s actually a girl playing in a ‘Zorb’, which is this giant inflatable ball thing that you can go inside and roll around that you see sometimes in festival fields. Although you wouldn’t think it’s a Zorb when you look at the photograph. It has a certain dream-like quality to it, and I’ve always wanted to use it for something ever since I saw the picture for the first time.

And Śūnya felt like a right project to use this photograph as its visual symbol, as it connects with the idea of Śūnya, an infinitely bloated entity inside of which is a void, zero.

Natasha is best known as a portrait photographer, but she also has an amazing portfolio of still life / atmospheric photographs, and from there, she also let me use the photos that I felt would go with each song for the booklet.

In the meantime, I was in discussion with Manko and Jason about the overall package design. They knew a printer in Oxford who can produce this mini pizza-box style CD box, and we decided that we’d go for this as the outer packaging.

Jason did the calligraphies of song titles, numbers, album title, my name. And then Manko did an amazing job of layout everything together into the booklet and outer cover with her own touches also added on to the process.

Also, the lyrics on the booklet are taken from the actual lyric sheet we used in the recording session of each song.

Tell me something more about the guest musicians and singers? I know that Valerie from Noblesse Oblige contributed to it…

-The album features many vocalists and musicians that I’ve met over the years and deeply respect the works of. Valérie from Noblesse Oblige, Olja and Alen from Loell Duinn, Mark and Susan from my group Gob$au$age, Adriana and Kate from Zagreb theatre projects, there are just so many to mention here.

They come from quite diverse musical backgrounds as well; punk, classical, Reggae, jazz, blues, folk, and so on… My website has the full song-by-song credit list with links to their own works, so please visit that page if you would like to know more about the collaborators.

What type of a movie “Śūnya” could be a soundtrack for. Can you create a short plot you see it fitting in?

-I have a script in development which is not to do with Śūnya directly, but perhaps there is a connection, as it’s coming from the same person..

It’s still in fragments; it’s in Japanese language, set near my birthplace of Osaka-Nara border, the central character is a high-school girl, it’s basically about subjectivity of death and one’s desire and inability to escape from it.

That’s all I can say for now, so watch this space…..

 What’s coming next for you as musician and actor? 

-At the moment, I am planning to make videos for some of the tracks from Śūnya, shot in the ‘countries of origin’ of the tracks, collaborating with local artists and crews. I’m also thinking of organising some kind of live rendition of Śūnya tracks in some ways, probably in some of the European cities Śūnya was recorded in.

Then, in the middle term, I think there will be a couple of band/album projects with some of the artists featured on Śūnya. They’re not album offshoot projects or such, but separate projects with their own identities. Work has already started on one of these projects little by little…

In the longer term, I have a plan to write a piece for string septet or octet, an electro-acoustic piece which will probably become the next album that comes out under my solo name.

My future involvement in films will be more as a director or a writer. There is a Japanese language short film written by my friends that I would be directing, budget permitting, in 2014. As for theater, there is a theater project in Croatia that I will be involved in as a performer/composer next year.

So yes, more interesting times ahead I think!

Listen to samples of “Sunya” here or purchase the album. Taka is also on Facebook and Soundcloud.