released May 1, 2005

musicians/travellers: sota, naoto, sinta, ryoka, jea, shiho, pei

85% are japanese, 85% use internet, 25% are girls, 45% has been to india, none of them are coming from the same city

musical instruments: harmonica, african drum, indian tabla, brazilian drum, bottles, voice, whistling



while we lost in the meanings of objects, names, there is a "tone generation", people who listen to each other. isso is a name of a river and start from a volcano in the island of southern japan. it is also a small village beside the mountain, one hour by foot from the recording place – white river, which is another name given to isso river by locals.

musicians are travelers who live in doju (a practiced place for traditional japanese monks). there are no monks nowadays and the function of doju had transformed to sleeping and self-contained place for backpackers come from all over japan in search of a peaceful place. the boy in charge of the doju community - sota, who also plays the drumming, moved there 3 years ago after returning from India. he turned 26 years-old the next day after recordings, and i only asked him the names of other players. his life is so simple that almost everyone envy about it, and would like to take over such a pure form of living.

these recordings are mostly improvised acoustic drumming, inspired by a beautiful impulse from nature, music played from happiness and respect, where recorded trees are growing for more than 7000 years old, true, true…

sorry for being such a bad writer, that's all i can say about the story of this great time, i was the only non-japanese there, so most of time we didn't bother to communicate in english and played music, played with nature, were singing and drinking, shiho and sota would go to a fish factory to earn money as a flying-fish season was busy. this is what we did during this month.


--- pei