Subdividing Tokyo - Satoshi Tanaka and Mami Shimizu of Mermort (ENGLISH VERSION)

It's approaching the end of March when we leave Aokigahara, the serene and encompassing suicide forest, with it's temperamental soil and long reaching roots. Anastasya and I need to make it to Tokyo where we'll be spending the last three days of our trip. The appearance of Covid-19 has shut down our original train route and we take the only way back to the city, a four and a half hour bus ride. We've been spoiled at the onsen with it's nude baths and views of Fuji, and now we're heading back to the popular hotel chain with its salary men and service staff in suits, filling out it's destiny between a capsule hotel and something classier.

The plan is to meet Satoshi and Mami while we're in Tokyo; the composers and instrumentalists of the insane Japanese avant-garde rock band Mermort. Three years earlier, in pre-Covid times, Fistfights With Wolves played a show with them at Whistlestop in South Park, and the pair left an imprint with their experimental music, colored by that rarest form of intellectualism—one that is practiced, and not a rhetoric.

Being half Japanese, I spend a lot of time missing Japan; wishing it was closer. And during the long summers I spent there as a kid, I'd miss America—my friends, and being able to speak with ease. When you're young, the sentence of being split between two cultures is living with half an identity as an outsider in both possibilities, yearning for a country that doesn't exist. Maybe that's dramatic. San Diego is certainly closer to an ideal than suburban Ohio with its dreamscapes of churches and track housing. Maybe someday I'll find the middle. Maybe Hawaii.

In middle school, I'd read my copies of Natsume Soseki and Eiji Yoshikawa books to tatters. In high school, it was Haruki Murakami and Kenzaburo Oe. Books from before the atom bomb, and books from after the atom bomb, with my preference being the former. Back then, I never read anything one time. It was always over and over. I read the same book till it reached the point that the binding would disintegrate in my hands—and only then could I move on.

Living in Ohio, shaped by English translations of old Japanese literature, I romanticized a Japan that didn't exist anymore, with codes that didn't function against the two thousand white kids in my high school. The modern Japan has a conflicted sense of identity, as does America, as did I.

Enter Mermort, a perfect soundtrack to modern dysfunction.

It's late March and the reality of Covid hasn't quite set in yet. We are worried that we won't be able to return to the United States. Since we've arrived in Tokyo, I've been spending hours a day on the phone with the airlines, trying to figure out whether or not we'll be able to make it back.

There are times when reality feels strong and tangible and there are times where it feels like quicksand. The ground will shift beneath your feet, and the world you end up in won't resemble the one you came from. And at this moment, things don't feel normal.

We watch our idiotic government barely functioning from afar, and discuss renting an apartment in Tokyo for a few months while waiting for the situation to calm down. I don't want to go back to America. I don't want to return to the broken world we've inherited as a legacy from the failed and selfish baby boomers. I want to remain a foreigner and a stranger in a polite land, seemingly far away from the lives our generation had to carve out of the rot.

We meet Satoshi and Mami on the second floor of The Sidewalk Stand, a coffee shop by Inokashira Park. Satoshi is wearing a long red flannel cloak over a black and white striped shirt. On his head is a dapper hat. Mami, with her lime green hair, is wearing jeans with a waist twice her size, held up by narrow rainbow suspenders—contrasting her skin tight spandex shirt. On her head is a large and straw beach hat. Satoshi's shoelaces match Mami's hair and it's such an odd color, I assume it must be intentional.

Wandering around the park, we are a stark difference to the surrounding Japanese. Satoshi and Mami are like anime characters, their visual nature an act of pure imagination. Anastasya is petite and white, her hands glued to her camera. I'm larger than them, sporting a blue Ram Dass tee that reminds me to be present. We are an odd and temporary tribe, moving from location to location.

Anastasya directs them with gestures and simple English, and they respond with gestures and simple English—with both parties occasionally asking for translations from me. I'm confronted with my own haphazard Japanese. We work through it and have a good time.

The shoot ends in an alley, with Mami and Satoshi climbing onto the third story of an abandoned house. They dangle themselves off the deck with gymnastic poses, and Anastasya lies back down in the middle of the street, taking photos, while I take photos of her taking photos of them as an old Japanese couple looks at all four of us like we're crazy. And I guess we are.

Mermort's 2015 sophomore album, Polygon, is organic and intelligent. Satoshi and Mami have been writing music together for 16 years. They tell me they write one song a year.

“We could write something much harder, but I don't want to alienate the audience,” says Satoshi.

“Yeah, right,” I say. Not in reference to their ability to write something harder, but in reference to caring about audience.

“If Mami had her way, the music would be much crazier.”

By their math, the six tracks of Polygon took six years to write. In a world of fast food musicians dropping tracks faster than they can do anything well, Mermort reminds me of that James Joyce quote—something about how if it took the author ten years to write, it should take the reader twenty years to read.

“Shinkei Highway,” the opening track of Polygon, is an introspective start to the auditory rebellion that is their album. Satoshi's guitar is still understandable. It begins in a place of melancholy as though it's a musical for him. Almost immediately, strange noises and percussion begin changing the context, and the guitar, which functions almost as a character in a play, moves forward simply and stoically. Mami enters with clusters of notes and odd stuttering rhythms on piano. The music builds as the piano tone gradually shifts into a purely synthesized and thick tone. At 1:45, the music starts working together and they are powerfully playing rhythms that belong together. The pervasive chaos that will occur over and over again throughout the album is now fully introduced and Mami's background comes across in her ability to navigate the changing time signatures she writes with Satoshi.

I'm a big fan of instrument specific technique, and it's interesting to note that clusters are difficult to do on every instrument besides piano. For example, on guitar, playing three intervals of seconds simultaneously would require the hand of a giant. The physicality of Mami's playing is obvious, and the carnival-esque keyboard back and forth between her right and left hand is an interesting contrast to the monophonic lines. Eighth note lines create a tangible thread the listener can cling onto as they're pulled from piece to piece. Satoshi plays interesting offset and distorted rhythms against Mami's ostinato. Finally, a strong monophonic synth line enters for a moment before some purely staccato final moments and lastly, a held ending.

Following the overture that is “Shinkei Highway” is “The Impulsive Perversion In Polygon,” one of the most impressive pieces of music on the album. Starting with a tiny single guitar ostinato, another atonal Mami ostinato enters almost immediately. The drummer Dairoku Seki impressively and tastefully handles the chaos provided by Mami and Satoshi. At the 1:30 mark heavy guitar is featured—and an intense ostinato that switches between 5/8 and 6/8 is introduced. The rhythmic intensity is used as a launching point as opposed to an arrival. After the sections of 5/8, the 6/8 comes across as a composed ritardando, an augmentation of the idea in 5. Halfway through the piece, there is a light combination of guitar and piano contrasting the initial explorations. The guitar rhythms create a momentum that ends in a return to heaviness—and creates an aural cityscape framing a free jazz keyboard solo with a light 3/4 on guitar before another return to heaviness. There is a doom waltz in 3/4 with all the connotations a waltz carries before an accelerando into 4/4 with tempo changes in 3/4, there's an occurrence of 5/8, another 4/4 and then, finally, an outro in 3/4. Complexity building on complexity.

“Anima Rights” is a 9 minute epic that begins with a tonal quality reminiscent of Blade Runner era Vangelis. The guitar effects and delays once again symbolize a solitary character, and their atonality contrast one of the album's rare moments of diatonic piano. Cymbal runs softly and effectively frame the piano's soft chord progression. The guitar becomes increasingly affected adding an ominous nature to the piano's lines. Heavy drums enter with the first continuous 4/4 of the album, making the listener feel like they're approaching a boss fight.

The 4/4 morphs into changes of 6/8 and 2/8 before a brief drum solo and then an interesting stuttering piano rhythm that switches between 3/8 and 2/8 at will. One of the most interesting piano ostinatos of the album occurs just past the 6 minute mark with a light piano solo. There's another entry of beat groupings in 5, reminiscent of Dave Brubeck. This is joined by a jazz solo that ends in ecstatic piano playing, with a drop back towards an emotional quality reminiscent of the thoughtful beginning—but now with the piano and a sentimental guitar working together as there is a return to tonality and it slowly dies away. Then, functioning as a post cadential extension, the outro occurs as a surprise in a jubilant 5.

“Counterattack Of Height 40,000 Feet” features a back and forth of hardcore interjections to silence and then a very heavy 5/4. Eighth note ostinatos in groupings of 5/8 and 7/8 ominously build to a noise section that sounds like a deconstruction of the tonal elements used previously in the album. The noise slowly diminishes before a return to the 5/8 and 7/8 idea with a new distorted tonal quality that is like the most intense Megaman level. The outro consists of an ascending chord progression in a large 2/4 that evolves rhythmic chord hits.

“Kills Burger” is yet another piece in a strong 5/4 with the most dramatic opening on the album with an effective three against two triple motif on the tail end of the measures. The drums are featured and Dairoku Seki impressively holds the song together with powerful playing. The middle of the song has a postrock breakdown that is refreshingly diatonic after what has been 25 minutes of tonal insanity. The last half minute very much belongs in the idiom of math rock.

“Extinction Of Demagog” begins with chaotic piano runs, drums, and distorted guitar. The distorted synthesizer patterns create unique accent patterns and in typical Mermort fashion, this is contradicted with short bursts of legato lines. The physicality of Mami's staccato technique and playing diversity is audible throughout. In the center is a new piano ostinato which occurs as a series of call and responses of what amounts to cute—if somewhat disturbed—piano lines, and then a full distorted band. The piano ostinato drops in register and then all of Mermort works as one.

Satoshi's guitar playing recontextualizes Mami's piano playing over and over again. The piece moves into a free jazz and noise section. And that “falling apart” motif that occurs throughout their album once again resurfaces in a final form—as though to remind the listener that this is an alternate history, that this could be the primordial soup from which all their music evolved. There is one final guitar rhythm that sounds like the piece could come together a final time. However, as Mami's piano runs stutter to an end, the piece ends a deconstructed guitar and a few single notes, as though Mami has thought all she is going to think, and now she’s done.

It's August 1st and Covid 19 is in full swing. The six year buzz of the studio has slowed to a stream of virtual lessons. I sit in the same room I record piano albums in. I sit at the bench and hit record. Ayari Kanezashi connects from South Park. Mami and Satoshi connect from Tokyo.

The interview takes place in a combination of Japanese and English. I apologize for any awkwardness. All four of us had varying aptitudes with the others' native tongue.

Mat

How did Mermort start?

Mami

We started in 2004... Satoshi and his friend originally wanted to make movies.

Mat

What kind of movies?

Mami

Originally, movies for the sake of making soundtracks.

Satoshi

We didn't finish any of them. But the first one was with Mami-chan and she was going to play the main character's sister, a singer. It was really hard to go forward with the movie and the movie side of it was slow.

Mat

Sure, but what kind of movie was it?

Satoshi

It was a movie about Yellow Cake...

Ayari

Yellow Cake?

Mami

Uranium.

Satoshi

It was a movie about a boy selling Yellow Cake that was actually uranium. Nuclear waste. So the boy carries it as a protective charm, an amulet, but it's radioactive. It was supposed to be ironic.

Mat

What does Mermort mean?

Satoshi

Mermort comes from Kafka and Camus... there is a character from each of them and we created a portmanteau. But it also means The Dead Sea in French.

Mat

Like “Star” “Bucks”... Starbucks. So how long have you guys been a band?

Satoshi

16 years!

Mat

That's crazy, that's longer than most of my relationships. I was teaching a piano lesson on one of the days I was listening to your album, taking all these notes. I was with one of my advanced students, and he's working on Bartok so I thought it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to turn on some Mermort. We listened to “The Impulsive Perversion In Polygon” and had a discussion on it. (plays the time changes of “Polygon” on piano) I know this kind of thing is too complicated to improvise, so what percentage of your music would you say is composed versus improvised?

Satoshi

There's very little improv however Mami usually starts the composition process from improvisation. Then I listen to what she's playing and learn what she's doing. It takes a lot of time.

Mat

So when we were in Tokyo, I previously asked if you write down your music. You guys said no. If you're not writing it down, and you're planning it out, how do the other musicians know what they're doing? Telepathy?

Mami

I just do whatever. Then Satoshi receives it and translates it for the other musicians.

Satoshi

We jam it out.

Mat

So my understanding is this: Mami improvises, gives it to Satoshi, and then there's a back and forth. A composition comes out of it. So it's a lot of memorization. It's memorized the whole time?

Satoshi

There's a lot of jamming.

Mat

But then there's other musicians...

Satoshi

So then after that, I structure it in a solid form, and I translate it for the other musicians.

Mami

Once he understands it, he'll use his music theory knowledge and translate it for the other musicians.

Mat

Most of your music, it's not traditional. It's atonal or you're using synthetic keys. Now, I don't know how to say “Atonal” or “Synthetic Key” in Japanese. Do you understand? (plays a 12 tone run) So it's not traditional harmony (plays an authentic cadence).

Satoshi

Is that easy?

Mat

Yes. But what you guys are doing is very difficult. Especially Polyon. Polygon is muzukashi. I was listening to it over and over again and thinking, “Huh, how are they doing that.” It's a very strange song. There's some compositional techniques I'm going to steal. Translate that Ayari. I'm going to steal from them. I noticed one of the things Mermort does is a lot of rhythmic diminition and augmentation. So you'll have a beat grouping and shrink or add to it. (plays some examples on piano) I enjoyed it a lot, but I was wondering why you arrived at a point of changing your time signatures.

Satoshi

Well if we listen to something and we enjoy it.

Mat

I guess my real question here is: Are you playing music for other people or are you playing music for yourselves?

Mami

Both!

Satoshi

Both.

Mat

No you're not.

Satoshi

(laughs)

It might sound difficult to other people, but it becomes easy for ourselves. We could make it busier, but we simplify. We can always go more complicated.

Mat

Do it!

Satoshi

If it becomes too complicated people won't listen to it. So I decide if normal people can enjoy it or not. If it's too difficult, they won't.

Mat

It's because you play guitar! If you play piano, you just go crazy...

Satoshi

Mami is so crazy...

Mat

So Satoshi, you keep it grounded while Mami wants to go crazier and crazier. But you keep it grounded because you want to have an audience.

Satoshi

How about you Mashu?

Mat

This isn't about me!

Satoshi

How about you though?

Mat

Well if I'm playing by myself I'll go crazy, but if I'm playing with others, not so much. If it's composed it's simpler. Anyways, Satoshi, you're a sculptor.

Ayari

Really?

Mat

Yes, he does metal work. Like avant-garde furniture.

Ayari

Wooooooowwww that's awesome. That's cool.

Mat

Typical Ayari.

Mami

He went to university for that.

Mat

If I'm ever rich I'll buy your furniture. (It's very expensive) So how does music inform your sculpture and how does sculpture inform your music?

Satoshi

Sculpture is a personal creative process, but music is something you make with people. And so in that way sculpture is unlimited.

Mat

What I meant more so, is that both things are acts of creation. Have you learned lessons from one that you apply to the other?

Satoshi

I keep it totally separate. They are completely different. It's because your ears and your eyes... they're different. When you make things and you use different senses, it becomes completely different.

Mat

So Mami, you have a very interesting fashion.

Mami

Well I went to fashion school. And everything in me is shared.

Mat

I like that. See, to me, that's more Japanese. Most of what I really know about Japan came from pre World War Two literature when I was a kid, and post-World War Two literature when I was a little older. So when I think about Japan, I divide it into two peoples. There's your traditional Japanese person, and your modern Japanese person. So my question is, how do you balance those two people. Every Japanese person I've met is more one or the other. Do you feel like you're more one or the other?

Mami

Japanese people... we don't really reflect on our pasts, we don't really evolve from our mistakes into a better situation. It seems like we're passing on our traditions, but not really. For example, kimonos. Young people prefer not to do that anymore. Modern Japanese aren't really intertwined with everything, but we're just easily skipping forward from point to point and generation to generation into the future. I was more inspired by American culture. But what affected me a lot was living with my grandma when I was young, and that really affected my fashion sense as I moved into the fashion world. When I was a girl my grandma taught me knitting.

Mat

So Japan has negative population growth. And Japan has the second highest suicide rate in the world. And Japan also has a phenomenon where people are disappearing. Currently, if someone feels ashamed or like their life isn't working out, they can pay these services to disappear from their cities, so every year, it's something like 70,000 to 80,000 disappear from their lives and start somewhere else with their life.

Mami

In Japan there is subtle discrimination. Even when people aren't realizing it, they're discriminating, and that applies to bullying. Those kinds of things happen a lot. In Japanese education, they're creating people who are closed off, and so when they become adults, there are a lot of people who can't live in their own worlds and have difficulty socializing. When I was growing up I saw so much bullying.

Mat

So in Japan, I always see Uniqlo. Uniqlo. Uniqlo. Uniqlo. Mami. Satoshi. Uniqlo. Uniqlo. What is that? Why are you guys choosing to do something different? Because you do it musically also. Why are you choosing to do something different instead of like everyone else. Because in Japan that seems to be valued over everything else.

Satoshi

All of our friends are musicians and artists. So it's only minorities. There's none of the majority. I have no idea what the majority is feeling. We don't associate with them. The majority runs the society, the world, and we don't get to be part of that.

Mami

The majority wants to feel safe. We're used to being rejected. We're not really accepted in Japan at all. We were so happy to be accepted by you guys in San Diego.

Mat

Really? But Japan has Ruins and Koenji Hyakkei.

Mami

But even with them... they're like Minority- Major.

Mat

But don't you guys have the same audience?

Satoshi

No, no.

Mami

But the same people are listening to us. Like in New York. Do you know Pet Bottle Ningen? Their fan base in New York aligned with us. Once we played together live, our fan base increased with their free jazz community.

Satsohi

Nonoko, a Japanese saxophone player that resided in New York, she set up shows for us. She was a key person for drawing attention to us. She was also the one who invited us in the first place.

Mat

So do you guys think you do better in the US versus Japan?

Satoshi

Absolutely. It's completely different.

Mat

Really? I think they'd love you in Mexico.

Satoshi

Really?

Mat

Absolutely. How many albums do you guys have?

Satoshi

We average about one song a year.

Mat

That's a long time. How do you practice in Japan? Everyone's so close together.

Satoshi

Rehearsal studios, once a week.

Mat

What are your plans for your next album?

Mami

We have a lot of repertoire right now.

Satoshi

The music's not finished though. Right now, we don't have a drummer.

Mat

Well when you played in San Diego you didn't have a drummer.

Satoshi

Right now we're a two piece. Now we're getting faster.

Mat

So what is that? One song every nine months?

Mami

Now that it's fast, it's one a month.

Satoshi

The pieces she writes; it takes a crazy amount of time to teach to a drummer.

Mat

Drummers. It's because you don't write it down! If you wrote it down they'd learn quickly.

Satoshi

Japanese drummers just don't read music.

Mat

Get music majors!

Mami

There's not a lot of jazz or classical musician in our circles, it's mainly hardcore musicians that hang out. And most of them can't read.

Mat

Got it. So that's why. It's the same here. What composers do you like?

Mami

Contemporary music mainly... Steve Reich. I like John Zorn. The drummer Charles Hayworth.

Satoshi

Composer.... composers? I like bands. The Italian band Zu.

Mat

I don't know them.

Satoshi

Wha-at? Listen to them. But our favorite band is Jobs from The New School in New York.

Mami

They're very cool.

Mat

Who are your favorite writers?

Satoshi

I don't read... just manga.

Mami

Yukio Mishima. Abe Kobo. Super crazy writing. I also like old literature.

Satoshi

Even though its a manga, Blue Giant. With a saxophonist.

Mat

And your favorite films?

Mami

Holy Mountain! Jodorowsky. Leos Carax.

Satoshi

Boy Meets Girl. Wonderful Lover. David Lynch.

Ayari

David Lynch is awesome.

Mat

Ugh. I hate David Lynch.

Ayari

Really?

Mat

Yeah, it’s because of what he did to Dune. Should have gone to Jodorowsky. Alright, what about art? Visual art. Painters.

Satoshi

Niki De Saint Phalle. Yayoi Kusama.

Mami

Dumb Type artist collective in Kyoto.

Mat

Very cool. Well thank you so much for your time. I'll try to get something back to you guys soon!

Mermort has been a worthy half year exploration. I've been consistently impressed by their humble intelligence as well as their brand of tongue in cheek seriousness about their art. And I am constantly surprised that we live in a situation where serious artists like Mermort have not amassed more of a following. They deserve recognition and appreciation, and I hope that this article sends you, the reader, on a journey of exploration through their discography.

Since I began the Mermort article, my friend and the subject of the second Bottom Feeders article, Nina Deering, tragically died in a car accident. As death so often does to situations that depend on life, there was an unraveling. A number of us saw the positive and negative aspects of situations in her complex life come to light, and ultimately—despite the multiple layers of injustice Nina had to deal with—she was a beacon of larger than life positivity and artistic energy.

I tried to write the article as honestly as possible. And in reflection, I think that it's important that we are all honest and empathetic with one another. Those two characteristics, honesty and empathy, are the antidote to the poison.

Here's to Nina.