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Destination Tokyo
The Red Bull Music Academy takes its complement of music festivals and workshops to a new city each year, and previous stops have included NYC, Toronto, London, Madrid, Sao Paulo, Melbourne, and Cape Town. Tokyo is one of the world’s most iconic cities – a place that tends to inspire mythic reimagining. This is a country that has long embraced the soul in the machine, while its composers, equipment designers and game soundtracks have had an inestimable influence on modern music. Ever since the pioneering work of artists like Isao Tomita, YMO and Yann Tomita, the country has produced many fine purveyors of detailed, ethereal soundscapes and electronic music with elements of new wave, jazz or psychedelia. Technology provides a constant departure point, and many of Japan’s front-running electronic music artists– Daito Manabe and Ryoji Ikeda among them – have embraced the use of video art, multimedia platforms and large-scale visual installations in realising their work. Dancehall, hip hop, garage rock, experimental music and funk and soul have variously grown into burgeoning scenes on the streets of Harajuku, in big music arenas, in grand concert halls, and in the many small but well-stocked second hand record stores that are a collector’s dream.
Tokyo, the original urban jungle, with over 13 million inhabitants, is a place where the ancient past and the recently imagined future are deeply entwined, and vestiges of old Edo underlie the city’s sprawl. We’re excited to become part of the sonic kaleidoscope this fall. From October 12 through November 14, 2014, the world-travelling music lab and festival will set up shop in the city for five weeks’ worth of workshops, concerts, club nights, and all-round musical extravaganzas held all across the city.
Beautiful Rewind – Academy Lecturers
Exchange between genres and generations has always been central to the Academy philosophy. Former lecturers include Bob Moog, Nile Rodgers, Steve Reich, Kim Gordon, Flying Lotus, Giorgio Moroder, Erykah Badu, Bootsy Collins, Brian Eno, Richie Hawtin, Tony Allen, Q-Tip, Sly & Robbie, Chuck D, M.I.A., James Murphy, and Moodymann, to name a few. Find an archive of Academy lectures at our homepagewww.redbullmusicacademy.com
Going Places – Red Bull Music Academy’s Various Assets Compilation
The infamous yearly compilation ‘Various Assets – Not For Sale’ provides a snapshot of the ideas and collaborative projects that tend to spring out of Red Bull Music Academy studio sessions. The latest edition of Various Assets, to be released on January 15, 2014, features 30 tracks created by participants at the Academy in New York. It includes a few solo tracks, and a whole lot of collaborations. As time passes at the Academy, those initial inhibitions are lost, and the fun starts. One dollar pizza slices become instant inspiration – a misheard guitar lick from the next studio over, too. And the equipment room, that trove of instruments, synths, drum machines and other mysterious circuitry, is emptied as its contents are used to populate ten bedroom-sized studios. The CD release can be picked up in music shops, clubs and cultural institutions the world over – ask your local Red Bull Music Academy rep for more details. In addition, it is available for download on www.redbullmusicacademy.com/various-assets from January 15.
Red Bull Music Academy Workshops Near You
To find out more about the Red Bull Music Academy experience, musicians can attend one of the three-day ‘Bass Camp’ sessions in San Francisco, Montreal, Bratislava, Detroit, Bucharest, amongst other cities. Participants will receive a full-fledged mini-Academy experience including studio facilities for collaboration, inspiring international lecturers, and a host of club nights. In addition, interested applicants can also attend one of the many introductory one-day sessions being held throughout February and March in over 50 countries worldwide. More information on the whereabouts of these events can be found onhttp://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/events.