I’m a self-proclaimed Hip Hop head. It’s my favorite genre of music ever since I was 10 years old. The first 3 albums I ever listened to, top to bottom:
- Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
- Madvillain: Madvillainy
- Kanye West: Late Registration
It quite honestly doesn’t get any better than those when it comes to being introduced to a genre. As time has gone on and I’ve gotten older, I find myself always coming back to these works. Yet, in my older (read wiser) age, I’ve been a fan of exploring more and more the roots of works, the roots of a genre even.
Hip Hop has a deep bag obviously, pulling influence from Funk, Soul, Jazz and Blues to name a few. Yet, it’s Electronic music that might be the biggest influence on Hip Hop, certainly from a production standpoint. The 808 machine revolutionized kicks and bass sounds; it is now forever linked to the genre. House music, with its remixed/altered Disco beats at a high bpm introduced drum programming/sequencing into the equation. Add a sampler and you get the ‘Big Bang’ of sonic soup needed for Hip Hop to be born.
So when I find myself listening to Hip Hop, I always find myself being pulled to listen to Electronic music in equal parts. An artist who blended all of the talked about genres so well for a new style was Seba Jun, aka, Nujabes. I’ve written at length about him and could speak on his influence ad nauseum; that’s not the point though. In going down the rabbit of Nujabes and his label Tribe, I came across an artist I had never heard of before, a gentleman by the name of Speedometer.
If you are obsessed with music like I am, you can understand my immediate elation. That day, about 1 year ago, I ingested all of his music I could get my hands on. I looked for interviews, performances, articles, etc. and to my dismay, couldn’t really find anything. So let’s change that.
This profile exists hopefully to spread the word on an artist who has created his own genre, his own style of Electronic music. Equal parts Ambient, Downtempo, Leftfield and Experimental, all while maintaining the groove.
His name is Jun Takayama. He’s from Osaka. He’s been doing this shit since the 90s. You don’t know who he is. Let me put you on.
—o—
I’m always deeply curious about how artists become artists. I was recently in NYC and as a lover of art, found my way to MoMa. It’s worth noting that one of my favorite artists, like so many probably, is Piet Mondrian, the Dutch painter and theoretician whom we’ve all synonymized as “the primary color artist”. To my complete surprise and fascination, I was face to face with a piece I didn’t know existed. I’m not an art scholar by any means, but I do fancy myself enough of a fan of Mondrian’s to be taken aback by this work, strangely titled, “Tableau no. 2 / Composition no. V” circa 1914.
My fascination with this work, which I stared at for a solid 30 minutes to the dismay of my fellow museum-goers, finally sunk in as I exited the museum. The piece represents a transition in the artist’s career. You can see the roots of his Neoplasticism coming into shape, the beginnings of the De Stijl movement taking form, to be fleshed out just a couple years later by 1917.
The point of this art history lesson is to show that creatives are constantly exploring within themselves and their works, constantly evolving. And I love understanding the root of this fact and the work or works that lead to the quintessential, the defining of the artist.
Jun was and will always be a punker. His first love was The Sex Pistols. New Wave and Post-Punk found their ways into his life as well, shaping his desire to create for himself.
“When I was little, my father passed away before I entered elementary school. Since then, I have lived with my mother as an only child. As a kid, I struggled with stuttering, but I think that deepened my interest in words and language. The pop music that influenced me was YMO and the Sex Pistols, which I listened to a lot in elementary school, as well as many other punk, new wave, and post-punk bands. Since I didn’t have money to buy records, I recorded radio programs and rented records to make lots of cassette tapes.
When my enthusiasm for punk bands began to wane, I naturally started listening to various types of music, such as street culture, hip hop, techno, noise music, contemporary music, and indie rock.
My first experience with music production was when I was in the first year of junior high school and formed a band imitating the Sex Pistols of course! That was about 14 years before I started Speedometer.
I have been involved in various types of music, but whatever I create is myself and for myself.”
It’s always amazing to me to follow the trail of an artist, tracing lineage, to see where they arrive once they start creating. I didn’t know YMO and so did a little deep dive to better understand. All of these influences, from punk to noise and hip hop, I can hear when I listen to Jun’s work.
In 2000, Speedometer. put out Private, a gem in ambient and downtempo electronic music. 25 years later and it still sounds fresh, new; something very hard to pull off sonically.
Now, because I am such a big Nujabes fan, when I got in touch with Jun, he shared his connection with him and it blew my mind. I already work with Nao Tokui, a friend and collaborator of Nujabes’; to meet someone else in his orbit was like hitting the lotto twice.
As retold by Jun, very nonchalantly:
“He liked my ”A Tourist Of Nervous Breakdown” EP that I had already released and said to me, ‘I will buy all the stock in the warehouse!’ and sold all the stock of this item. As a result, a 12” compilation album was released by TRIBE. It was a very cool and surreal experience.”
These are the types of things people only dream of. And yet, Jun shrugs it off and keeps it moving.
As time has passed, Jun has found himself changing as well. After an extended hiatus that lasted almost 20 years, Speedometer. released a handful of albums since 2020. Jun’s latest work, Suburbs, is his first release on his own label, Asanoya Books. It was a pleasant experience and one that took me back to some of the earlier work in his catalogue. I asked Jun where he gets his ideas from and how he turns those into songs, albums:
“I hum. It starts as a humming tune. I usually jot down ideas that pop into my head while walking and replicate them in my DAW when I get home.
I don’t record humming tunes with a recorder while walking. Humming tunes that don’t stick in my memory clearly aren’t good, so it’s okay to forget them.”
So simple, so straightforward.
—o—
So here at Neutone, we are at the intersection of AI and Music. Our goal is to show that AI doesn’t have to be this thing that automates your life or that will take over creativity and art. On the contrary, we think, if handled with care, AI can be a transformative tool for creation. Just like other technologies, we think that the goal should be for experimentation and exploration. It is the job of the artist to use whatever means they have to get their art out into the world. And it is their responsibility to ensure that the human emotion and message they are trying to convey, gets conveyed. If the music is soulless because of quick, cheap AI automation, then that’s on the artist and they should take a look in the mirror.
I probed into Jun’s thoughts on this topic what it means to be a creative, what it means to define yourself by your art, the price creatives have to pay for this labor of love. Were there things he was afraid of when it came to AI? Were there things he wanted to see AI do? Anything that would excite him or give him pause?
“I believe that advances in AI will bring about major changes in various fields. Some people are concerned about the impact on music, but I am optimistic. After all, humans are only moved by human ideas and actions.
I’m an old-fashioned person, so I think of AI simply as a tool for creating music. It’s like a cute pet sitting on my lap. What do you feed them? They react differently to different foods. Who feeds them? Their owners. In other words, the artists themselves.
As far as what would make me excited: I want to see 10,000 AI robots dancing to electronic music created by AI. In that case, who will pay for the beer?”
Even deeper still: what happens when there’s only one beer left?
—o—
I can’t help but to chuckle when I think of Jun writing his responses to my questions. There are equal parts sincerity and “duh, justin, this is a dumb question.” I’m here for it.
Jun is continuing on with his work. New Speedometer. is on the horizon, as well as, potential new acts under his label. What I hope for, more than anything else, is that another 30 years don’t go by before we recognize his talent. I’ll leave you with this closing remark from Jun about looking ahead:
“The future constantly goes back and forth between the past and the present. As subscription services increase, so does physical media. As e-books become more widespread, everyone wants to decorate their rooms with heavy paper books.
Stay in the now.
Enjoy yourself!”
—o—
You can stay up to date with Jun via his homepage. All of his works, musings, links are there for you to explore. The best way to support is to buy his work directly. Hopefully we will do more with Jun in the very near future.
I implore you to take the journey down the rabbit hole.
all quotes and interviews were translated from the Japanese.