Yen

Greetings, all. No doubt I’m shooting myself in the foot with this message, as usual.

For me, music is synonymous with peace and also with a sweet emotional therapy to escape the misfortunes of this base, greedy, materialistic world that is way too concerned with personal interest and where men of illusory power who rule us are so preoccupied with personal recognition they are incapable of dealing with and managing the social poverty of the innocent, humble, overly-kind people, who are mostly starving.

Moreover, we live in industrialised countries, in a modern jungle where cold technology increasingly controls us (one of the highest suicide rates is that of Japan, a world leader in new technology), conditions us and turns some of us into slaves to our machines, which is the main reason why I have decided to make an intimate and minimalist record with just vocals and acoustic guitar, and no machines. I am swimming against the tide and after a number of setbacks I am determined to finally transmit my emotions for the pure listening pleasure of at least one person on this earth in its current pitiful state.

In absolute terms, our ears should be the only judge of music, but unfortunately for purists, or fortunately for a certain sector of showbiz, music has a visual sense as well. I do not have much feeling for that visual sense but I understand that it is the professional driving force of people who are materially dependent on image.

Through my solo music I would like to also get across a long-term ecological message of the cleanest sustainability possible, even though I know that we poor human parasites conditioned under the aegis of material and social success are sucking our mighty mother earth dry of the natural resources necessary to maintain her balance. I would like your kids and mine to be able to live full and decent lives for as long as possible without too much of a retroactive cure.

The connection between ecology and my acoustic music lies in the fact that it is classy, in symbolic allusion to the electrical consumption of our household appliances, since to be played and performed it requires a lot less grey energy than the Pharaonic productions by artists who pride themselves for example on a clean label for sustainable development, whilst at the same time supporting and consuming megawatts of electricity in the form of light shows during stage performances that are obliged to be over-lit to make the show even more spectacular. To me all that is smoke and mirrors, and at its objective antithesis, this overconsumption is increasingly consuming us in every sense.

You could also say I make biomusic out of pieces of wood stuck together, with a few strings added for the guitar and my two vocal cords for the message.

It is easily fallible, this eco-ideal of mine; it is incomplete, as I still have a double-bladed razor accompanied by shaving foam packed with chemicals which I use once a week on average (but who gives a damn!), and a car that pollutes. I also eat sweets that are just as full of chemicals and which I give to my son (but who gives a damn, my dear Yen!) much to his delight. I buy him Star Wars Lego too, in plastic packaging sterilized and coloured using solvents, but I just can’t resist the urge to make him happy, and to cap it all, I work for a company indirectly affiliated with oil. I told you I was going to shoot myself in the foot because I am really small but pretty frank on the whole and I take pleasure in some aspects of my current way of life. But in my dreams I would like to escape from it through my music. I will see what awaits me after my record.

Artists, public personalities par excellence, have considerable influence on people’s behaviour and thinking, in the same way political personalities do, hence the fashion phenomena to which they give rise. And this is also the reason why, for example, the most frustrated individuals among humanity, led by the little Hitlers, have been forced to exterminate artists so as to further satisfy their illusory power through an authority that is facile, artistically devoid of inner richness and increasingly ill-intentioned. Politics in itself is not a complete art or only a means of pushing through ones convictions or sometimes ones interests. Politicians pure and true are people like the ground-breaking French priest, Abbé Pierre, people who devote their lives to others while remaining poor and humble of their own volition and through altruism, which is unfortunately not the case with most politicians, who mostly defend one section of people, in this case their electorate. This politics is partial, hence the phenomenon of parties, but then that is to be expected, as you can’t please everyone with a line of conduct to be followed and the least bad political system so far has been democracy.

I am not a believer in a spiritual God and will never become one either, even if I h