The meeting between French, often bass-rooted producer and multi-instrumentalist Brain Damage, with Japanese multidisciplinary artist Emiko Ota (OKZ) and English dub maestro and producer Mad Professor on new album Oide Oide is an odyssey that draws from Japanese folklore, the mystical world of Japanese yōkai, taking experimentalism, post-punk, bass and noise-pop into a new era that Brain Damage terms, ‘post dub’.
Featuring 10 songs, Oide Oide’s core tracks are brand new compositions; conceived, written and produced by Brain Damage and brought to life by Emiko Ota’s bewildering Japanese language style of storytelling. The second half of the album are smoky-dub stamps of the originals, courtesy of English studio eccentric Mad Professor. These new works culminate in a subtle revisioning that extends this fascinating and multi-layered project, entering familiar sonic spaced-out territory from a master of the dials.
Japanese yōkai are the supernatural creatures that populate Japanese folklore and are also depicted on the album’s stark cover by artist Wasaru. Emiko Ota, founder of Japanese band OXZ who have had reissues on US label Captured Tracks, draws inspiration from five of these iconic chimeras: Katsura Otoko, Tenome, Isogashi, Azuki Arai, and Baku, each representing a mysterious aspect of the Japanese imagination, ranging from deceptive charm to fear, frenzy, and devouring dreams. Alternately seductive, unsettling, restless, or soothing, Emiko navigates between different styles and emotions, bringing these legendary creatures to life through a rich and nuanced vocal range.
As for Brain Damage’s music, it has undergone a radical transformation. Each track is meticulously sculpted, sometimes playful and energetic, sometimes contemplative and mysterious, capturing the unpredictable nature of the yōkai and perfectly complementing the mythological tales sung by the Japanese artist. All the music is original, so no sampling. Brain Damage and Emiko recorded the album at a studio in Lyon, France (Ota spends a lot of time in France) and it was after the tapes were mixed and mastered and sent to England to Mad Professor’s studio, that a much-revered hero of Brain Damage, embarked on his mission.
Rendering the album into two halves, between the five originals and the five dubs is a likely instinct for the listener and helps us grasp the individual artistic roles and equally build a bridge linking three artists and the body of work as a whole.
The creative and production times alone, offer insights. The five original tracks presided over by Brain Damage from conception through composition and recording with Emiko took well over five months whereas Mad Professors’ dub and post-dub manipulation was completed in one studio sitting. As Brain Damage positively surmises “That’s Mad Professor. Exactly what I expected of him. To do the opposite of what I do”. This speaks volumes of the divergent sense of, and approach to, artistry all protagonists take. Brain Damage plays the parts using all traditional instruments, and we hear guitars, bass, keyboards, synths, percussion and some oddities including toys – perhaps fitting with the project’s foundations and the Japanese folklore theme. Brain Damage’s fascination with The Clash’s spectrum-spanning Sandinista! album is certainly channelled, and it leans on Throbbing Gristle’s invention. Enter Mad Professor, who delicately rinsed the tracks through his mixing desk with tender yet precise results notably with the blistering face-ache bass sounds of Baku and Isogashi.
Oide Oide is a singular, immersive work where the boldness and inventiveness of the musical concept thrives on the allegorical narrative. Post-dub is the premise to explore, captivate, and surprise. It’s an exploration of shadows and light, an auditory and spiritual journey through Japanese legends. Anglo-Jamaican sources of the genre have been replaced, re-conceptualized, recomposed, and rewritten.
Brain Damage explains:
The idea was to completely detach myself from the Jamaican heritage from the start, free from the constraints of the genre and its origins. What interests me is the element of surprise. It’s becoming more and more interesting for me to break the codes. This time it was Mad Professor who took care of making it dub. And live it will be me.
