Ensō

The album you are holding in your hands showcases the cast of musicians in the first edition of the Ensō Festival. Records that document or accompany actual events are not quite able to capture all of the uniquely staged experience of music happening ‘here and now’; they typically can’t substitute the extended immersion and effervescence that are among the goals of any festival worth its name. However, records can give us a glimpse into the meanings of such events, however imperfect. They can convey some of the sensations, emotions and ideas encoded in the music, however incomplete. What counts is how affectively touching they are, not how effectively truthful they appear.

The event

This album is no exception. It attempts to give a sense of the character and the conception of the festival. Ensō is a two-day audio-visual event produced by REITEN – the label of Japanese sound artist and producer Kosei Fukuda. Conceived of as an annual event starting in 2020, it aims to fuse electronic music and visual arts in experimental ways. Divided in two stages, the festival opens up a collaborative artistic field for exchange of aesthetic concepts between the participants. The main stage is curated by REITEN with exclusive focus on experimental live performances, each of which is selected to transgress the outer edges of electronic and acoustic music. The second stage hosts DJs and artists representing local club scenes, and is designed to create playful ambience that reflects their defining genres. What unites them is a singular aesthetic notion that blends spontaneity of practice and contemplative gravity of an object.

The concept

Within Zen philosophy, ensō – 円相 – means a hand-drawn circle created by one uninterrupted stroke. No corrections are permissible as they would represent an after-thought destroying the directness of the original gesture. Not formal perfection but the authentic record of a personal expression counts as an aesthetic value. This does not mean that anything goes, though. On the contrary, it is about playing with the rules or boundaries of a given form without destroying its inner fabric; it is about giving in to feeling without surrendering to pure chance. Herein lies the artistic meaningfulness of ensō – finding a fulcrum between the spontaneity of intent and the discipline of execution, a meaning of finesse.

This approach is not new in the domain of music. It was once referenced by the jazz pianist Bill Evans in the liner notes for Miles Davis’s album Kind of Blue. It epitomized for him an art of improvisation – a free yet disciplined creative practice. Today, live acts that happen at an intersection of techno and electro-acoustic jazz approximate this condition by eschewing strict premeditated strategies in favor of an impromptu delivery of an idea. Performing freely on the spur of the moment, within only generally defined frame, is the gist of this approach. A DJ who acts as a discerning bricoleur of beats, and who thrives on the energy of the dancefloor and a sense of surprise rather than on any preconceived plan also approaches that situation.

The sound

Ensō Festival invites its artists and audiences alike to appreciate the merging of the improvisational melodic explorations with the contemplation of rhythmic cycles. We find this sensibility both in jazz and techno traditions, and especially in various cross-over works. One thinks instantly of Jeff Mills’s projects of this kind. The plain circular graphic form of ensō can be seen as a generalized visual symbol of the circular forms of techno. Both find elegance in simplicity. Both elevate the loop to the status of an aesthetic principle, celebrating their internal voids as much as the contours of their structures. Such an attitude is central to the festival’s sound, for it means cultivating the mutuality of transgression and integrity, ecstasy and framework. After all, one can be meaningfully ecstatic – literally ‘outside’ oneself – by being firmly anchored ’inside’. The practice of ensō traditionally embraces that ambivalence, re-connecting the sublime emptiness of outside universe and the mirror of one’s inner states.

The pieces gathered on this double record vary in style but coalesce around this outlook, always intent on generating atmospheres and sonic textures corresponding with it. They are soundscapes rather than tracks. And while they can be approached on their own, they jointly create a kind of narrative that unfolds like a soundtrack to a non-existent futuristic film. Some of the selections evoke that cinematic feel quite literally; others seem to be more into blurring the genre borders than creating recognizable sonic signifiers. There is something idiosyncratic and open to interpretation in each of them. They may even come across as under-stated or enigmatic. Yet taken together, the sounds spread over these two vinyl records are about intriguing spaces – imaginary and real, acoustic and physical, and all that can happen in between.

The locus

Records – unlike clubs – are portable objects designed to cross borders and change location. Sometimes the record and the venue are intimately connected. Certain live recordings come immediately to mind, but there are cases in which the relationship between the sound and the site is more of a symbolic kind. This album has that kind of added value. It conjures up a cultural space that corresponds on several different levels with the physical space of the event. The festival takes place at The Ōya History Museum, a venue built inside an enormous former stone quarry in northwestern Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo. The human-made cavernous chambers were originally developed there during the Edo Period of Japan’s history.

Ōya stone is an igneous rock, formed by solidification of magma, and amenable to exquisite architectural uses. A prominent instance is the facade of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. This stone is famous also for its texture and capacity to absorb and diffuse sound. It assumes a special symbolic valence in the context of Ensō. As lava flows following its ‘spontaneous’ course and absorbing whatever lies in its path, it eventually congeals, creating a durable form out of its mixed elements. The heat and movement of the original event – the eruption of energy – cannot be preserved, but a materially fixed, lasting product of the process stays with us. A trace. An artefact. It is therefore not unlike an ensō drawing, or an improvised and recorded DJ set or a live show. Immerse yourself in the first cycle of Ensō.

Dominik Bartmański 



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