the Noh

All Noh theatre pieces are always about how you enter the other world, and there’s always a spirit that comes, and the samurais change into a giant spider or something, so it’s quite appropriate. But for the rest of the music, I have to say, I thought the Japanese-ness should rather be that emotional state that I was hungry for when I was a teenager, when I was reading those books, and I guess kind of searching for some sort of minimalism, for lack of a better word, or sort of meditative state. And maybe Shinto also is very much about placement of things, and that when I put a glass on the table I put it in respect of the other glass on the table, and that with two musical notes there’s that respect for each other and there’s actually a lot of silences, you know. And I think I try to approach Japanese-ness more from this angle.

Mixing It @ BBC Radio 3, 5 august 2005