Simplistically speaking, "Pieces of Air" contains recordings of air vibration. A close up into a lush microscopic world, Tsunoda blurs the border between the selection and composition of sound. They feel like beautiful electronic works although they are actually untreated field recordings. A proclamation of child-like wonder with the world in unusual harmony with his scientific methods.

Toshiya Tsunoda is a Yokohama, Japan based artist who studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music. Since 1994, he has been operating the WrK label, which he co-founded with Minoru Sato. He has released work on Staalplaat (NL), Selektion (DE) and Hapna (SW). His work has been shown at the ICC, Tokyo, and the Kawasaki city museum, among others.

Vital, the Netherlands, said:

TOSHIYA TSUNODA - PIECES OF AIR (CD by Lucky Kitchen) Toshiya Tsunoda is, with a bunch of other people, part of the WrK collective, who investigate sound and space. They release CD's but also do installations. I have seen several ones by Tsunoda and they are almost poetic. Nice in design, but overall silent and which one finds himself contemplating. From the various WrK members, Tsunoda is the one that deals with environmental sounds. He's Vertov's 'Man with the microphone'. Going outside armed with nothing more then a microphone and a machine to record the sounds upon. Sometimes he uses pipes of various lengths to record his sounds with, thus transforming the sound. For all of these pieces on this CD, there is no electronic processing going on. Tsunoda cuts these sounds out of the larger recording, and thus his role as a composer is limited to selecting the sounds out of a bigger part. This collection of fifteen tracks collect the outdoor sounds (mainly Japanese, fields, forests and harbors) with a few exceptions. 'Echo Of A Room' for instance is a piece in which he uses a sine wave test signal and switcher which activites the microphone when the signal is off. This is almost a Pan Sonic piece and operates like an odd ball in this collection, but doesn't seem to be out of place. This is a fine example of sound scaping of a more radical nature. Great stuff (and I dare add: as usual). (FdW)

MP3 excerpt from track 2 :::::::::