NAUTICAL ALMANAC / SEIJIRO MURAYAMA / YLWTR / WEYES BLOOD

Nautical Almanac / Seijiro Murayama / ylwtr (Kurt Gottschalk + Phillip Gayle) / Weyes Blood

Breaking Their Own Mold

The experimental artist is one who is in a constant state of flux, renewing their vision and creative impulses over the course of a career, or even from performance to performance. Seijiro Murayama is a Japanese percussionist currently living in Paris. Active since 1982, he is a founding member of seminal noise/rock band A.N.P. (with KK Null) and Fushitsusha (with Keiji Haino). Currently he plays solo (with only a snare drum), in duo with Jean-Luc Guionnet, Eric Cordier, Stéphane Bank, Tim Blechmann, Didier Lasserre, and quartet “Off-cells” with Taku Unami (guitar), Uta Kawasaki (analog synth), Takahiro Kawaguchi (objects).

Since it’s founding in 1994, Nautical Almanac, the project of Baltimoreans James “Twig” Harper and Carly Ptak, has been hard to categorize. Using an ever changing array of hacked electronics, and sometimes (but just as often not) performing in costumes, jumping into the crowd, or not, Nautical Almanac is certainly never the same twice. “My motto is, ‘Remember how it felt not to be able to play music,'” Harper says.