Nobukazu Takemura

Nobukazu Takemura是Thrill Jockey Records旗下唯一的日本人。这个来自东京的日本人在80年代中期还是一名嘻哈DJ，为日本当时的Wild Style推广作出了一定的贡献，后来在ACID JAZZ和TRIP-HOP的影响下开始改变自己的风格。早期的作品仍然是在WEA，Toy's Factory等公司出的，之后他换过很多工作。80年代后期他曾经在MO WAX当过一段时间的制作人，为以后自己的事业积累了相当的经验。到了90年代中期，他招集几个朋友一起组成了自己的乐队Child's View开始玩起了一些古怪的音乐，很快便吸引了包括Aphex Twin，Coldcut，和Wagon Christ等人帮他REMIX专辑，并且建议他往IDM的方向发展。经过许多年受到各种音乐风格的影响, 中西方文化的碰撞，他终于在99年拿出了自己两张成熟的作品，加上POST ROCK 概念的兴起，他被邀请去Thrill Jockey。
Kyoto-based producer Nobukazu Takemuras career has followed an odd trajectory for an artist produced by the club scene. He emerged as a hip-hop DJ in the mid-80s, inspired by the Japanese leg of the legendary Wild Style tour (largely credited for introducing hip-hop to Japan). A short-lived career as a battle DJ led Takemura to shift focus to the mixing desk in the late 80s, and within a few years he was releasing tracks through MoWax, Lollop, and Bungalow under the names DJ Takemura and Spiritual Vibes. Ostensibly trip-hop and acid jazz, these releases were marked by a high quotient of live instrumentation and, in contrast to his bedroom-producer colleagues, very high production values. In parallel with his club-oriented releases, Takemura was also producing more exploratory material together with Yamatsuka Eye (of the Boredoms) and Aki Onda as Audio Sports; the group released an LP, Era of Glittering Gas, before Onda took sole control of the project in 1992. By the mid-90s, Takemura had signed with Warner Japan as a solo artist, and his releases as Childs View and under his own name tended increasingly toward a challenging diffusion of hip-hop, jazz, pop, drumnbass, and post-classical music. (The 1996 remix album, Childs View Remix, featuring Aphex Twin, Coldcut, and Wagon Christ, among others, suggested his growing interest in the experimental fringes of dance culture.) With 1997s Child & Magic LP, Takemuras interest in the relatively more stable rhythms of dance music had almost completely fallen away, and elements of experimental computer music and overt references to minimalist composers such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich filled his tracks, which tended to pair cycling flute, percussion, and bell-tone patterns with the glitchy desktop discontinuities of Oval and Ryoji Ikeda, among others. Two other releases from this period — Funfair, on the American Bubble Core label, and Milano, on Warner Japan, solidified this new direction. (The latter CD Takemura originally produced for a fashion show by popular Japanese designer Issey Miyake.) Following a Japanese date with American post-rockers Tortoise, Takemura secured release plans with Tortoises label, Thrill Jockey, and 1999 saw the release of his most abstract, difficult material to date. Scope, preceded by the Meteor 12-inch, bore only the most tenuous resemblance to his previous releases, consisting of a dizzying blur of digital static, off-kilter bell patterns, mangled vocal samples, and CD skips. Like his original works, remixes by Takemura also span a wide range, including artists such as Tortoise, indie-pop singer Takako Minekawa, junglist Roni Size, and Steve Reich. 2001 was a busy year for Takemura: in the winter he released the EP Sign, which featured members of Tortoise, Brokeback and Isotope 217; in the spring, he released another Childs View album, Hoshi No Koe.
Takemuras output only increased during the next two years; he alternated experimental records on Thrill Jockey with more obscure efforts for his own Childisc label and indie stalwarts Bubblecore.