ASUNA aka Naoyuki Arashi

Naoyuki Arashi is a sound artist who goes by ASUNA in Tokyo’s experimental music world. Starting in punk bands as a teenager, Arashi became best known for sound installations (some of which incorporate musical toys) and ambient albums with track names like “How a Spiral Works” (2019) and “tiny worms wriggling under the light shines” (2016).

100 Keyboards is the careful construction of a single chord with many notes, chosen according to the unique resonance of each performance space. The battery-powered electronics—many of which are toys and beginner pianos—differ from one another in timbre and harmonics; even the same note can be rendered with slight fluctuations, making the sound that rises from their little speakers a chorus of gently colliding imperfections. Arashi aligns the phenomenon with the moiré effect, in which similar but not quite parallel lines or soundwaves form visual or auditory interference. In graphics this can create optical illusions; in fabric weaving, subtly misaligned warp and weft can give silk an appearance like oil rippling on water. In 100 Keyboards, Arashi lets the moiré of imperfectly aligned notes form “a complex distribution of acoustic pressure” that plays tricks on the ears.

(Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2021)