Taku Unami – bot box boxes 3CD

“After several years of not doing anything since Erstwhile first asked me to do a solo album, I suddenly had the idea to record it last week and it was released within a week or so.

I know some of you are thinking “Anyone can do this…”, but in the DIY spirit of doing what anyone can do with what anyone can get, and without any special skills or funds, I tackled improvisation head on, using mostly newspapers and cardboard boxes, which turned out to be this triple CD set.”

— Taku Unami

================================

for the last few years, Taku Unami and I have periodically discussed potential approaches for his ErstSolo, and he explored some of these approaches deeply at times before eventually deciding he wasn’t happy with any of the results. in late August 2023, Taku had a breakthrough and recorded three lengthy pieces in a sixteen hour period, all of which appear here in full, unedited and unmixed. the track titles give clues to the three distinct approaches:

bot uses small robots
box a single box
boxes several boxes

also I’d like to suggest two things:

1) approach this as a one day Taku Unami festival, three solo sets, recorded by one binaural microphone. if you were in his room, this is exactly what you would have heard.

2) the title ‘bot box boxes’ can also be read as a small section of a library’s card catalog, thus the contents here (3 CDs/162 minutes) represent just a tiny fraction of all of the recordings (potentially) stored there.

also it should be noted that Taku began working with cardboard boxes around 15 years ago, with his first all-box sets coming in the Sept 2011 AMPLIFY in NYC, so he has been exploring these types of palettes for many years now.

— Jon Abbey