Toshimaru NAKAMURA – Martin TAXT
“Listening to the Footsteps of Living Ones Who Are Still on the Ground”

This is a duo album by Toshimaru Nakamura, a mixer player based in Tokyo, and Martin Taxt, a tuba player living in Oslo. Instead of a conventional tuba, Taxt plays a custom-made “microtonal tuba” capable of producing microtones. In this album, Nakamura incorporates Taxt’s tuba sounds in his mixer through a microphone instead of playing his usual instrument, the no-input mixing board, which does not take in external sounds.
The project started with the concept of Nakamura processing the tuba sounds in real time as they played. But in their actual performances, the opposite often occurred: Taxt’s tuba sound directed and obstructed Nakamura’s feedback. This completely unexpected outcome astonished both musicians and spurred them on to new forms of creation. The three tracks on this album were recorded in Japan in April 2016.