Japanische Pop-Inszenierungen - Norient
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Japanische Pop-Inszenierungen | norient.com 4 Nov 2021 10:27:36
Japanische Pop-
Inszenierungen
P O D C A S T by Thomas Burkhalter, Simon Grab, Karin Scheidegger
Heute an den Thementagen «Musik und Globalisierung»:
Japanische Sprechgesänge und Girlie-Melodien interagieren
mit knackiger Elektronika, tiefen Bass-Beats und einem
Schuss Indie Rock. Das zweite Album von Tim & Puma Mimi.
Michiko Hanawa (Puma Mimi) und Christian Fischer (Tim) trafen sich in
Amsterdam. Puma Mimi studierte Museologie und Tim Kunst. Er produzierte
eher «düstere» bis «experimentelle» elektronische Musik und spielte bei
Seelenluft und Märklin. «Ich solle mal auf japanisch singen, fragte er mich»,
erinnert sich Puma Mimi: «Bislang hatte ich allerdings bloss in einer
drittklassigen japanischen Punk-Band gesungen, und dort immer in
schlechtem Englisch». Tim wollte schräge japanische Musik hören: «Ich hatte
dieses Klischee im Kopf, von schräger japanischer Kunst und Popkultur.
Dieses Freche, Frische und Direkte wäre ein spannender Kontrast zu meiner
Musik.»
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Japanische Pop-Inszenierungen | norient.com 4 Nov 2021 10:27:36
Heute sind Puma Mimi und Tim verheiratet und leben in Zürich. Länger haben
sie vor allem via Skype kommuniziert, geprobt, und sie sind auch live
aufgetreten - Tim auf irgendeiner Bühne in Zürich, Amsterdam oder New
York, Puma Mimi zuhause in Tokio. Mit «The Stone Collection of Tim & Puma
Mimi» (Mouthwatering Records) geben die beiden jetzt ihr zweites Album
heraus. Das Rezept funktioniert: Japanische Sprechgesänge und Girlie-
Melodien interagieren mit knackiger Elektronika, tiefen Bass-Beats und
einem Schuss Indie Rock. Quere Klavierpassagen, Steeldrum-Klänge, eine
Querflöte und ein Hackbrett spielen dazwischen. Musikalische Vielfalt und
Direktheit passen zum Zeitgeist, die kunstvollen Videoclips und Pressefotos
auch. Ein stimmiges Gesamtprodukt.
Das Album
Ausschnitte aus dem Interview
The Beginnings
[Michiko Hanawa]: Christian said, could you sing something in Japanese?
And I said, why not? Actually, I’ve never sung in Japanese. In my Japanese
pop punk band, I sang in English, broken English, but English, which I
thought was cooler than Japanese. I have never sung in Japanese.
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Japanische Pop-Inszenierungen | norient.com 4 Nov 2021 10:27:36
Japan-Image
[MH]: I buy colorful clothes for Pumi Mimi, but not for me. Michiko Hanawa
and Puma Mimi are the same person, but I exaggerate a little bit to make
Puma Mimi funnier.
[Christian Fischer]: The funny thing is that in the beginning you were
completely against all that. Michiko played in a punk band before and once
she showed me a video and they were all dressed black and didn’t move at
all on stage, just standing there and playing and I was like come on if you
play concerts I want you to have like colorful clothes and makeup.
[MH]: He had this weird image in mind of Japanese pop singers, with really
weird clothes – so I first had to tell him that not all Japanese are like that.
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Japanische Pop-Inszenierungen | norient.com 4 Nov 2021 10:27:36
Skype Concerts
[MH]: We made these skype concerets, Christian in a club in Switzerland,
Berlin and New York, and I’m singing from Japan in the kitchen alone to the
computer, to the Skype and then that will be projected on Christian’s side,
the big screen in the club. So it’s a long-distance live show.
[Thomas Burkhalter]: In these events were you the private Michiko or Puma
Mimi?
[MH]: Oh, that was a very difficult part. If you have a real show, then you
know I will be on stage. Audience is there and then let’s party. But in the
Skype concert, it’s usually like 6, 7 o’clock in the morning in Japan. And so I
just wake up and still feel like dizzy and then drink coffee and then suddenly
the team calls me and then okay, let’s start the show. I’m like, oh, oh, where
am I. And so it was the most difficult part of these Skype shows for me. The
first one or two shows I was bit stiff on the screen I think. I didn’t know how
much I can move from the screen because sometimes the projector is quite
slow, and delayed. So if I move too much then I’m just like a blur on the
screen. So I tried to stand still and just singing like news, Nachrichten, yeah.
[TB]: Did you were the stage costume?
[MH]: No, sometimes the pajama. And I hang stuff in the back, so you don’t
see the messy apartment too much. And sometimes the tea cup also was in
the picture. So people can see Mimi drinking tea or coffee.
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[CF]: Once we could even show the sunrise. That was really nice. It was in
Helsinki Club and we had to play two sets. So we had half an hour in
between which was just the right moment for sunrise. So Mimi could turn
the computer to the window and you could see the skyscraper and then the
sun coming up. It was funny to have this in a club at 11 at night. At that
moment people started to believe it’s real.
[TB]: How does it work technically?
[CF]: The thing is that we are an electronic band and Michiko hears only the
playback. I send her the beat, and she sings to this beat and then only her
voice comes back. We have around one second delay. And then the same
beat from the playback is played to another channel. And in this channel, I
adjust the delay. So if I press play on the playback, it goes first to Japan, and
then maybe with one second delay, it comes here also on stage and then we
can play to this playback like the drummer plays what he hears from the
playback and I try to fit in Michiko’s voice to this till I sing and often it
works good. But if it didn’t work good, it was also interesting because then
people believed that it’s not a fake. Once I played in New York in a small
club and I was in the middle and around, it was just couches, and some
friends invited friends from a New Media School and the connection was
really bad. The picture was always like hanging and then just some parts of
the picture were renewed and I was like, shit, it’s so bad today. And all these
New Media guys are sitting in front of me. I was really a bit ashamed and
then in the end I asked them, how did you like? Wasn’t it too chaotic with
this bad connection? No, it was great. All this distortion on the image, I
mean other guys do it with visual thing with extra distortion and in your
case it has to be like this.
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→ Published on May 29, 2012
→ Last updated on August 12, 2020
Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist (PhD), AV-artist, and
writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient, the Norient
Space (Norient.com), and the founder and strategic director of the Norient Film
Festival (NFF). He co-directed documentary films (e.g. “Contradict”, Berner
Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness) and AV/theatre/dance performances, is the
author and co-editor of several books, teaches regularly at universities, and runs
workshops for arts institutions. His experimental radio feature, «Gqom Edits – A
Durban Visit», was nominated for Prix Europa in 2017. Currently, he is working on a
new music project, and on the experimental podcast series’ Timezones and South
Asian Sound Stories with musicians from the UK, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.
Simon Grab, the co-founder of ganzerplatz soundstudios has been an active
musician and producer in a wide range of musical contexts. As a composer and
sound artist he produces music & sounddesign for feature films, documentaries,
theatre and radio. In live performances and installations he uses the venue as an
acoustic playground. He likes exploring new grounds by negating existing borders.
Karin Scheidegger lebt als Fotografin und Englisch-Übersetzerin in Bern. Website:
http://www.minxnation.ch
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