Aube

Aube is the name used by Japanese musician Akifumi Nakajima (中嶋昭文 Nakajima Akifumi?) for his experimental noise records. He has released many CDs, LPs and cassettes since 1991, and is regarded as one of the most important noise musicians working today. He himself does not like to term his work &music,& preferring the term &design&: &I don't think of myself as a musician or an artist. I'm a designer. I therefore consider my sound works to be designs as well&. The essential element of his Aube project is that each record is composed with only a single material source, manipulated and processed using various types of electronic equipment. Examples of sources he has manipulated include water, fluorescent lamps, voltage-controlled oscillators, voices, pulmonary sounds, the Holy Bible's pages and sounds made with steel wire.
 
Akifumi Nakajima was born in 1959 in Japan. He was interested in sound work since the 80s, but had not released anything until he was asked to create music for an art installation in the early 90s. Since then, he has created an enormous amount of work - most of which is based on one sound source. Anything is used - from glass to oscillators and even pages from the Bible. His early work is noisier, while his new direction leans toward ambient.
 
As stated previously, each recording in Aube's catalogue is synthesized from one source sound. Many of his earliest recordings use water as a source, in either a still form or a gush, as from a faucet or a stream. Among the most well-known are Hydrophobia (1991, Vanilla, Japan), Luminous (1993, G.R.O.S.S., Japan), Métal De Métal (1996, Manifold, USA), Cardiac Strain (1997, Alien8 Recordings, Canada), Set On (2001, Manifold, USA) and many more. (wiki)
 
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by John Bush
 
Akifumi Nakajimas Aube project has amassed a lengthy discography, most entries realizing the maximum capacity for audio variation from a minimum of sampled (in many cases, a single sound source). Influenced by space rock and musique concrète, Nakajima began recording in 1980 but released nothing until a decade later, when he produced music for an art installation given by a group of friends. Since the installation involved water, he decided to use appropriately watery sounds for the music. Nakajimas first Aube release came in 1991, when the Japanese noise label Vanilla released his cassette LP Hydrophobia. Quite a few more water-related recordings followed, and Nakajima soon began branching out by using varied sources such as field recordings, the hum from fluorescent lamps, human voices, brain waves, heartbeats, even pages being ripped from a Bible. He has recorded for Staalplaat, Manifold, Charnel Music, Pure, Iris Light and the Grand Rapids-based upstart Elsie & Jack Records. Nakajima also operates a cassette-only label named G.R.O.S.S. that has released several albums of Aube material. In 1999 the album Evocation was added and a year later Aube closely released, Richochentrance and Blood Brain Barrier, respectively.