Yuko Araki is a multi-instrumentalist composer based in Tokyo, Japan. She began playing piano as a child and, inspired by the hardcore and metal music she heard in her hometown rehearsal studios, she first joined a band as a teenager. Araki founded the neo-classical noise duo Concierto de la Familia in 2016, as well as playing drums in the Oriental dream-psych band KUUNATIC. In 2017, she started her solo improvised experimental/noise project using cymbals and analog synths.
FACTS:
1: Resistance.
2: Destruction.
3: Fluctuation.
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
The universe.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I played classical music from a young age and graduated into playing in rock bands in my teenage years. I had many friends playing in bands and working at studios so venues and studios became my place to hang out and started to play music naturally, not as an academic discipline.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Pink Floyd – Ummagumma
Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene
Yngwie Malmsteen – Trilogy
Black Sabbath – Master of Reality
Conrad Schnitzler – Blau
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Music friends.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Ochiai Soup, it’s a vibrant, independent, very professionally run venue in Tokyo.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Psychic training.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Equiknoxx – Eternal Children
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Adrian Sherwood.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Jogja Noise Bombing Festival 2019 in Indonesia both as a performer & spectator. I’ve never seen such excited audiences in my life!
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
I love the errors and unexpected results which inspire my mind to further creativity.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
My brother devoutly hopes that I will become a billionaire.
Yuko Araki performs at Kiezsalon on Wednesday, 30th October 2019 at Musikbrauerei along Kee Avil and Karpov Not Kasparov!
Photo © Shoko Yoshida
