Ueda Takayasu

Born in Hiroshima and raised partly in Germany and Austria, Ueda Takayasu writes that he spent his childhood feeling stateless, distant from his own cultural identity and curiously “un-Japanese”. Even now, in adulthood, having returned to Japan, he speaks English, German and Japanese in his home life. He began making music as a teenager, operating with an extraordinary mandate of destructive creativity, deleting music as soon as he finished it. This means that - while Every Clouds Call Our Name - is ostensibly Takayasu’s debut album, it is in truth his debut surviving record. (He has, however, collected new works written since the completion of this album on his Bandcamp page).

The rehearsal records Takayasu produced and deleted ultimately led him to the minutely controlled chaos of Every Clouds Call Our Name. A profoundly singular artistic expression, the strange expressionism of these smudged and smeared longform pieces speak very clearly of a highly skilled creator.