Japanese composer and glitch pioneer Yasunao Tone dies aged 90 · News ⟋ RAThe multi-hyphenate artist and his radical theory of ‘anti-music’ helped pave the way for labels like Warp and Mille Plateaux.
Japanese avant-garde composer and glitch music trailblazer Yasuano Tone has died, The New York Times reports. He was 90 years old.
Born in Tokyo in 1935, Tone studied dadaist and surrealist literature at Chiba University, playing the saxophone in a few experimental groups while at school. He cofounded the collective Group Ongaku with Mieko Shiomi and Takehisa Kosugi shortly after graduation—he also cofounded the early computer art collective Team Random. After moving to New York in the 1970s, he fell into step with contemporaries like Yoko Ono, video artist Nam June Paik and experimental composer John Cage.
A key figure in Manhattan’s storied mid-century avant-garde movement, Tone used scratched CDs and skipping samples to develop a bespoke sound he described in a 1961 essay as “Anti-Music.” It built on the core principles of the Fluxus “anti-art” movement he was part of: prioritising artistic process over a final product, and accessible modes of production over highly technical methods.
Tone’s work, which he dubbed “paramedia art,” helped pave the way for the boundary-pushing 1990s electronic output of labels like Warp and Mille Plateaux. Tone elaborated on his process in a 1997 interview, sharing: “You have to deviate. Manufacturers always force us to use a product their way…however, people occasionally find a way to deviate from the original purpose of the medium and develop a totally new field.”
Tone continued releasing music into his eighties, including the influential 1997 noise album Solo for Wounded CD, which he created by sticking Scotch tape pierced with pinholes to the underside of a CD of “Préludes” by Debussy. He turned his technique towards artificial intillegence on the 2017 piece AI Deviation #1, #2, an interaction between Tone and five AI models taught to simulate his performances.
He debuted AI Deviation #1, #2 live in Brooklyn in 2023. Tone also performed at New York nonprofit Artists Space as part of a retrospective on his career titled “Region of Paramedia.”
Listen to Solo for Wounded CD.
AloJapan.com