Landing at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport is something Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford, guitarist with Super Furry Animals, has done time and time again. Yet, during 15 years of touring in the band, no amount of preparation prevented him lying awake, pacing the streets and staring, transfixed into neon-lit shop windows for his first 24 hours in Japan. The wide-eyed ‘Tokyo initiation’, familiar to so many travellers, has now been beautifully captured in Tokyo Hotel Silence, a masterful study of the city in soundscape recording and video art.
Long-time Super Furries collaborator, artist and designer, Mark James’ interpretation of the guitarist’s experiences on film, has resulted in a bleary-eyed tour of a jetlagged mind. He travelled to Shibuya, Tokyo’s beating heart, in November to gather footage over four days, after listening to the musician’s hypnotic, archive recording of a Tokyo hotel room.
Bunf says:
“After 14 hours on the flight and a hundred Tannoy announcements ringing in your ears, you finally step into Tokyo. Eventually getting to my hotel room, waiting for me is a lovely bowl of fruit and an envelope with the words “Welcome Huw”. After a few minutes you open the lightweight curtains, marvel at the city outside, and from then on in it’s a 24 hour ‘walkathon’. You walk around the room, you walk to the vending machine, you bump into your friend and walk to the bar and then the next bar, maybe to a department store at 3am, but your head is still made of fuzz. Perhaps, you wish you’d just gone straight to bed. I will never get out of Tokyo’s grip, and neither do I want to.”
James says:
“Tokyo is one of a kind, a complete playground for the senses, but things get very surreal when you haven’t slept. The feeling of isolation is almost overwhelming when you’re pacing the streets at 3am, appearing to be the only person in the entire city and ‘Tokyo Hotel Silence’ is a literal soundtrack to that loneliness. The video makes a visual record of the experience, but with careful treatments and the audio alongside it, it evokes the almost unexplainable sense of quiet unease that washes through you until you’ve adjusted to life in Tokyo.”
‘Tokyo Hotel Silence’ The Pale Blue Dots from MarkJamesWorks on Vimeo.
A film by Mark James
Music by The Pale Blue Dots
Shot on location in Shibuya, Tokyo – November 2014
Tokyo Hotel Silence was released on ‘Lots of Dots’, Bunf’s September 2014 album release with composer Richard Chester, coming together as The Pale Blue Dots.
Bunf is a secret collector of sounds, amassing a significant collection of audio cassettes full of recordings made during his global travels. His exploration and appropriation of atmospheric sounds saw him commissioned by The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester in 2012, being set free to gather sounds from University of Manchester grounds, including Jodrell Bank, to be used later in a collaborative performance with artist, Naomi Kashiwagi.
Mark James regularly exhibits his work in his *Subject to Change gallery in Cardiff.
