In Conversation with Kina:suttsu

Japanese musician, performance and visual artist, Kina:suttsu, uses saxophone, electronics, noise, and field recordings to create immersive performances that blur the boundaries between ancient ritual and contemporary experimental music. Leading up to her Pyramid Club show, Kina:suttsu spoke to Emma Bernard.


You work across music, performance, visual art and film, often moving between ambient soundscapes and much harsher, more abrasive noise. Do these different disciplines explore similar underlying ideas? 

I think the historical and social context of the times has a great deal to do with it. I feel a sense of discomfort with the rapid acceleration of modernisation. At the same time, for me, noise is also a kind of return to the womb.

Babies are constantly surrounded by all kinds of sounds while they are in their mothers' wombs, aren't they? The sound of a heartbeat, the flow of blood, and so on. In a sense, it's a world filled with noise. There's an interesting story about a friend of mine who played the sound of a hairdryer to a baby who was crying and wouldn't fall asleep. Apparently, the baby fell fast asleep. Perhaps there's something similar going on there.

The belief that "the only path for humanity to return to is animism" has remained unchanged since my first album. For me, animism means not seeing humans as the only beings of significance, but sensing life and spirit in nature, plants, animals, and all kinds of things, and understanding the world through the connections between them. I feel that humanity needs to rediscover this way of perceiving the world. I think my music, videos, and artworks are all tools for communicating these ideas.

You began releasing music in 2005, and your practice has developed across solo work, collaborations and different artistic contexts. What first drew you towards experimental music, and how has your relationship with it changed over time? 

After having a child, I began to rethink the way I lived and how I could leave a better future for the next generation. As I'm from Hiroshima, I've often had opportunities to think about war and environmental destruction. I began to wonder why these things happen, and came to believe that, at their root, they are all connected to the struggle for oil and other resources.

I felt that living in a way that relied as little as possible on oil was one way I could take action for the generations to come. So I began living without relying as much as possible on electricity, gas, running water, or cars. I decided that the only energy I would allow myself to use was energy on a human scale, something that my own body could generate or manage.

I hardly ever used a car and travelled everywhere by bicycle, no matter how far away the destination was. The furthest I ever went was Narita Airport, about 1,000 kilometres from Hiroshima. I cycled all the way there over ten days, with my child riding on the back of my bicycle. In this way, I began a movement to let go of modernisation. Looking back now, I think my approach was a little extreme. But at the time, I believed in what I was doing and lived without relying on established systems as much as possible. I was vegan, didn't send my child to school but educated them at home, and lived an anarchist lifestyle without electricity, gas, or running water.

Then one day, I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to create sound. Around that time, an old musician friend also came to visit me, and together we began making music in a room that had been converted from a horse stable.

The music we created there is the recording that has now been released by Tape Lab. Back then, I didn't have internet access or a mobile phone, and I knew almost nothing about what was happening in the music world. I didn't even know what genre my music belonged to. I simply created sounds spontaneously, following my own instincts. Only later did I discover that this kind of music was called experimental music.

Sometimes, I wondered whether I was the only person who felt that this kind of intuitive, unconventional sound was good. It was so far removed from popular tastes that I found it difficult to trust my own instincts. But times have changed, and I feel that more and more people are beginning to listen to music intuitively, rather than judging it solely through established values or preconceived ideas.

Looking back now, I've come to understand that experimental music can play a role in expanding our narrow perspectives, freeing us from fixed ideas, and opening up more possibilities for living freely. For me, experimental music is not simply a musical genre. I see in it the possibility of freedom - something I believe is essential to human life.

That seems very in line with descriptions of your work as “blurring the boundaries between ancient ritual and contemporary experimental music”. What does the idea of ritual mean to you, and how does it enter your creative process?

I believe sound has had an important role since ancient times. Of course, music can be a form of entertainment, and that's wonderful. But I feel that sound has a much deeper spiritual dimension at its core. This might take the form of reverence for nature, among other things.

For me, ritual is an expression of reverence for nature. I think a ritual is about becoming one with the universe and nature - and if we think of them as divine, then becoming one with that divinity. I believe that connecting with the divine in this way is what it means to enter a trance state.

In modern society, I feel that we've lost touch with the natural turning points of the year, such as the spring and autumn equinoxes, and the changes that come with each season. We don't often take the time to celebrate or acknowledge these moments anymore. Unless we consciously make time for these kinds of practices, they can easily get lost in the busyness of everyday life.

I've seen you say each performance is shaped in response to its environment, with a focus on immersive, site-sensitive work that treats the performance space itself as an active collaborator. What do you mean by this?

For me, the place where I perform is not just a venue. The acoustics, the atmosphere, and the surrounding environment all influence how I produce sound and how the performance unfolds. I think this is a natural process. In improvisation, rather than reproducing a piece of music that has already been completed, the music emerges from what I feel in that moment and what is happening around me.

There is one experience that has left a strong impression on me. When I was playing a session with Damo Suzuki, formerly of CAN, an image of dolphins living in the ocean suddenly came to me as an unexpected inspiration. I began playing my saxophone, imagining the sounds of dolphins.

In this sense, I believe that the people I play with, the inspiration I receive from them, and the space itself can all be considered participants in the process of creating music together.

You've toured in Georgia, Turkey and the UK, connecting with different experimental music communities along the way. Have different local scenes changed your understanding of experimental music?

Yes, I think so. I choose to travel to different places and perform live, inspired by what I encounter in Japan and elsewhere. For example, in Georgia, there was a music community made up of people who had fled Russia because of its political situation. Through conversations with people who had escaped, I heard firsthand accounts of the war in Russia, as well as stories about their culture.

On this Oceania tour, I started by travelling around Australia. There, I heard about the oppression of Indigenous people by the government, among many other things. In every place I visit, I have all kinds of conversations with different people. Whenever I have these deep, personal conversations with people one-on-one, I often feel that although performing live is important, these small gatherings are actually just as important, if not more so.

My English isn't very good, but that's exactly why I'm grateful that I can use sound as a tool to communicate with people. I believe that building friendships with people across national borders is my own form of peace activism.

As for my sound, of course travelling to different places influences it. I think of sound as a living organism, so I believe it gradually changes as I meet different people, jam with them, and have conversations. And this is a bit of an aside, but I don't really think of my music as experimental music. If anything, my entire life is like an experiment, so perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the music of an experimenter! This tour is actually one of my experiments, too!

So what can people expect for this upcoming experiment at Pyramid Club?

I don't know that yet either! That's because, at this point, I still don't know what kind of performance it's going to become!