Eastern Resonance, 2nd Harmonic: Xamd feature

Eastern Resonance, 2nd Harmonic: Xamd feature

by ESS Fall Curatorial Fellow James Gui

Leading up to Eastern Resonance, the October 30 Quarantine Concert featuring experimental pop and club musicians from Asia and the Asian diaspora, Curatorial Fellow James Gui sat down with each of the performers to get an idea of their background and thought process behind their music. This article will introduce Xamd, the solo project of Kazutaka Sawa, who also makes music as one-half of the electronic duo phai.

I first encountered Xamd while tuning into a Twitch livestream at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday. It was K/A/T/O MASSACRE, a weekly party at Tokyo’s Forestlimit that those in the know tout as featuring the best of the Japanese underground. I didn’t even know who was playing at the time; all I saw were two drummers and a man with a laptop playing music whose sheer power woke me up through my headphones. I later learned the group’s name - Xamd - but couldn’t find anything about them online. The only thing that turned up in a Google search was a 2008 mecha anime created by Studio Bones. But somehow, they found a tweet I wrote about them and re-tweeted it, granting me a handhold to latch onto in my search for more information.

This Japanese interview provided a lot of the answers I was looking for. Aided by Google Translate, the story is as follows: Xamd is a solo project of Kazutaka Sawa, started just this year in 2021. Prior to that, Sawa mainly made music as a part of phai, an electronic duo that’s just as hard to find on the English-language internet. But as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he felt he needed a change; listening to SATOH and Charli XCX, he made a mixtape to escape from his reality. 

That tape was 青狗 Wolf, a potpourri of trance, hyperpop, trap, industrial, and noise. While the power of Xamd’s live performance is what attracted me at first, this mixtape exceeded my expectations in its intricate textures and blending of styles. According to Sawa, the album is meant to be a fictional video game soundtrack. As an avid fan of Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda, game composers who scored my favorite narratives, I was immediately drawn to the album that much more.

青狗 Wolf is indeed a world unto itself, the title track transporting you into a futuristic dystopia; Sawa says that it’s a surveillance state where you play as a mercenary named Wolf. The following is my interpretation: “Speed” sees Wolf in a high-speed chase, breakbeats spurring forward his escape from a fortified prison. “Control” and “Syntax” soundtrack his post-freedom reconnaissance of a bleak capital city, uneasy industrial rhythms that emphasize his precarious situation. There’s moments of tenderness with “Cradle”, soft percussive synths crescendoing into an emotional climax. “Face” is perhaps a showdown between Wolf and a fearsome adversary, while “Stardust” makes for a fitting ending theme. And as an epilogue, the looming bassline of “History” foreshadows conflicts to come.

Below is a short email interview I conducted with Sawa; I’m beyond excited to present a live set from Xamd for Saturday’s concert!

What drives you to create music? What is "experimental music" to you?

I do music to give form to the impulses that overflow in my life. I don't care if it's pop music or experimental music, I just think that what I've created is the right answer. It's just that what I've created is close to "experimental music".

What are your main musical influences currently?

I think I'm influenced by hyperpop, especially A.G Cook. I'm also influenced by the artists of SVBKVLT. I like powerful sounds and melodious songs.

Your debut album 青狗 is quite a diverse record musically, with sounds that are reminiscent of trance, drum & bass, industrial, hyperpop, and trap, but it still sounds cohesive in its exploration of genres. Is there a concept behind the album?

I wanted to make an album that sounded like a video game OST. This album was deeply influenced by "Ghosts of Tsushima". 

I was attracted to the theme of somewhere that is not real because of the severe pandemic. Each song is the music of a scene in a game, and I hope that people will fantasize about the story.