Cover of Electroacoustic Works 1.

Hideaki Shimada, photo by Souichi Tanaka.

Following releases and experiments with an analogic aesthetics, Hideaki Shimada, a Japanese artist and violinist from Kanazawa, combines his academic education with an electroacoustic approach, with the solo project Agencement and, most recently, on behalf of his legal name (where, in this sense, his album Electroacoustic Works 1, released for NEUS-318 in 2025, appears as more characteristic). In the relative art, we find overdubbed recorded tracks with violin or asymmetric and alien synth patterns, with a non-familiar fashion in the final yield. Certainly, Shimada’s sound belongs to a musical scenario that is empathic and vital in the free improvisation or avant-garde genres, by avoiding being a stylistic exercise or, metaphorically speaking, an automatic use of a free space.​

The following is an interview with Hideaki Shimida about his art, specifically the most recent developments.

So, can you talk about your beginning in research music? Your previous artistic path includes many diversified instances, such as the artefacted noise by Gambetta and the serialist approach in a spectralist sense with the album by Agecement Six Juxtaposed Works (Tochnit Aleph). Could you tell me anything about these developments?

“Six Juxtaposed Works was the first step in my escape from a long period of stagnation. Before the mid-2000s, I remained silent. After releasing my third album, Viosphere, in 1991, I felt like I had done everything I could. Looking back now, I can say that it was simply due to my own lack of dedication. At the time, Viosphere was dedicated to creating a unique sound image. I meticulously shredded the sound of the violin using tape and digital processing, then manually reconstructed the layers, ultimately resulting in a sound like the gentle murmur of a natural river, bringing it to a close. Since the early 2010s, I have finally felt a growing desire to create new sound images. The title of the first track on Six Juxtaposed Works (2017) relates to serialism and spectral music. I have listened to a lot of this music, and in the work, I used viola and cello for the first time, hoping to liberate it from the limited range of the violin. Daniel from Tochnit Aleph gave me an opportunity when I was feeling stuck.”

The album Binomial Cascade (on behalf of Agencement solo project, released by Pico). Many crescendo-decrescendo intertwines fill the juxtaposed emptiness as an antithetic character. The arc timber encloses biological matter and spreads into some algebraically complex wavefronts, with emotionally loaded calibration of tact, and with an exponential touch. Through the electronic component, the creative process will be encompassed in an electroacoustic creativity that anticipates the following releases. Can you talk about how this idea as a bridge between the past and now took its life?

“My music was almost filled with violin short tones. That was influenced by European improvised music, especially British improvisation, when I started making my own music. There was a technique involved in separating each sound in a non-segmental manner. In my case, to be precise, it’s not pizzicato played with the finger, but rather a way of holding the bow similar to that used for the viola da gamba (although the back of the hand is facing upwards), where the bow is held slightly shorter and the strings are struck momentarily to produce the sound. The reason I produce sounds like the short tonguing of a saxophone rather than a violin is because my background is in free improvised music. It probably still is, but now I also use slightly longer tones.

“The album you’re asking about was recorded in a studio. While I managed to use my broken open-reel tape recorder to create the texture for certain parts of the music, the overall structure was edited using a digital recorder. In my previous work, I finally incorporated the texture of modern classical music, long string notes, but in this piece, it becomes even more prominent. While I am still improvising here, editing allows for doubling and delay effects, enabling a certain emotional expression. Furthermore, paying attention to the trajectory of sustained notes has breathed new life into my music. I’m also playing the piano a little. What I do as Agencement is something like a musique concrète using instruments as the material. However, as the title suggests, this album ultimately focuses more on my existential consequences than on individual techniques, and may be more expressionistic than my previous works.”

Electroacoustic Works 1 is an electronic and experimental work that conceals renewed ideas from your artistic and creative approach. Can you describe the creative process in this work?

“I already owned several analog synthesizers when I started my solo project Agencement in 1985. Except for using them briefly in the third album Viosphere, I didn’t use them in my work until recently, but I’ve always had a desire to create a piece using only electronic sounds. In Agencement, I express intricate structures, so to differentiate it, I aimed for somewhat simpler sounds with the electronic music.”

The first track in Electroacoustic Works 1 (NEUS-318), Fanfare of Statics, appears as a graphical synthesis in your work, where sounds appear as disharmonic, in a sense where the related conglomerate of pitch could be essentially represented by a black-and-white grid where algorithmic and stochastic patterns are printed, with a structural and geometric approach. Can you talk about the ideas behind this computational-like aesthetics?

“As the title suggests, I’ll just say that my first electronic music piece is like a contradiction contained within a sentence. Technically, it involves creating paragraphs ranging from a few seconds to about minute and a half in length – using random numbers or short melodic lines – in sequence, and then connecting them after some listening. There’s no overly deep analysis involved. I simply listened with an open mind. That attitude remains fundamentally unchanged in Reincarnations.”

In the second track, Reincarnations, chaoticity in the electronic craftsmanship has a main role, where the heterogeneity consists of the neat creation of vacua and sonic entanglements. This last track can be considered as a skewed epilogue that converges to a silent slipping into an ethereal dimension. How was this last composition directed, from a conceptual viewpoint?

“In this piece, I am playing the Farfisa organ, especially in the latter half. The long drawn-out notes contain a touch of my own lyricism. I tried to inject a sense of another personality by adding a few narrative elements. Nevertheless, the simplified complexity is not lost because it is connected to paragraphs of varying lengths and random number synth sounds. That’s because my previous works were much more intricate – I’ll also continue it but… – “simplified complexity” is an accurate description, and that might be what I’m trying to achieve with electronic music.”

In the following release, Electroacoustic Works 2, the electronic matter finds a more complex shape on behalf of proper dynamic noise sound. A celestial sound that reminds one of an elastic and obscure massive consistency. So what is the real intention behind this release regarding writing and production?

“As you mentioned, in Electroacoustic Works 2, the elements of ambiguity and introspection are emphasized compared to Electroacoustic Works 1. The electronic sounds seem to move towards an equilibrium state, like entropy, but occasionally my vague will intervenes, and this cycle repeats. This direction in my electronic music will likely continue in the future.”

Link for Electroacoustic Works 2 Bandcamp page.

Binomial Cascade and Electroacoustic Works 1-2 sign a further step in the direction from your release October Variations (scatterArchive), inside the frontier of contemporaneous territories. Here classical sonorities are mixed with an electroacoustic matter, where the assorted timbric palette (arcs, piano and electronic manipulation) converges in an opposite sense to the following electroacoustic creativity, on the constraints of an abstraction with respect to the familiar and heterogeneous elements that figure in. So, in your opinion, is there a conscious link among the mentioned releases?

“I believe there are still considerable discrepancies between the juxtaposition or superimposition of electronic sounds and acoustic instruments, which is why I started this series of works specifically focused on electroacoustic music. However, I am not opposed to these combinations, even though I find them challenging. In my recent works, I have even begun to experiment with abrupt juxtapositions. I am constantly considering how to gradually fuse them together.”

“Speech Bubble” by Hideaki Shimada, oil on canvas.

Lithograph and engraving by Hideaki Shimada.