Tommykaira Tomita Garage I brochure

Translation of first and last pages

tommy kaira

lightweight supreme

We thoroughly pursued lightness

Not only the main frame but also the subframe

Highly rigid monocoque chassis

The ultimate racing sports car

The closest commercially available car to a racing car.

The skeleton was constructed from extruded aluminum.

"Tommy Kaira ZZ"

TOMITA Dream Factory

Hamamatsu

GARAGE I

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Car Sound Pro Shop GARAGE I

Excellent know-how for enjoying music to the fullest.

The pursuit of the purest car sound.

Garage I takes car audio to a new level.

Before listing the system or starting the installation, Garage I will first ask you about the genre of music you usually listen to.

"What genre do you usually listen to?"

Garage I begins like this.

Car audio is like a gemstone in the rough.

To put it in extreme terms, depending on how it is installed, it can shine or look like just a stone.

For you to truly enjoy music

If I had a nickel for every electronic re-interpretation of Pictures at an Exhibition I had in my collection, I'd have two nickels! Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that I have two of them. Anyway! Isao Tomita was a Japanese electronic music pioneer. Actually, looking online it seems like he has a lot in common with Wendy Carlos, both scored various movies and shows, and their main claim to fame was electronic arrangements of classical music.

If you're not familiar, Pictures at an Exhibition is a collection of short pieces for orchestra by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Each section is named after a different painting or drawing by Mussorgsky's late friend, and the idea is that you're visiting one after another in an art gallery, linked together by a common "promenade" theme.

I'd like to write out Tomita's own notes on the back of the jacket; the print is very small in the picture:

"Two kinds of loud sounds in the natural world have been growing on the earth since time immemorial. One is the roll of thunder, the other is the sound of volcanic eruption. Both of them were feared by mankind for many centuries as the anger of God. However, the roll of thunder has been proved to be the sound caused by an electric phenomenon - that is, it is an electronic sound. Volcanic sound, on the other hand, is produced by the eruption, impact, and rubbing of the substances involved; later such dynamic sounds were made by tools - hammers, bellows to make fire, etc. With the passage of time some of these tools were gradually transformed into musical instruments. At present the methods of blowing, beating, rubbing, etc., are incorporated into many musical instruments in the symphony orchestra.

Electric music instruments, on the other hand, did not come into existence until the present century. In 1927 Leon Theremin devised the first electric musical instrument, whose pitch was controlled by placing the hand near to or away from its vertical rod. In 1928 Maurice Martenot, a French musician, invented the ondes martenot, which is considered the father of the present music synthesizer.

It has been said that electric sound is not expressive because it is not a natural sound but an artificial one made by a machine. However, I think that natural sound implies the rustle of the leaves by the wind, the murmur of a brook and the sound of the waves beating upon the shore. In pianos, violins, flutes and other instruments the determination of their musical scales and the methods of their resonance are made by the art of mankind, so their sounds are not intrinsically natural but mechanical .

Compared to the traditional instruments with a history of many centuries, electric musical instruments have a history of only 50 years. In addition, their shapes are not yet established, so the player is apt to become disoriented. Players of these instruments equivalent in ability to virtuosos of the piano of violin have not yet appeared. I think we must make more effort to study electric musical instruments for the future.

I have used a great variety of electrical sound-producing and -controlling devices, as in my previous album 'Snowflakes Are Dancing', I have been encouraged to believe that my efforts have produced music that is truly expressive, evoking the emotions of a high musical experience. It is very rewarding."

From the get-go, I have to notice that the album art is very evocative of H.R. Geiger, and in fact, it looks similar to this Emerson, Lake & Palmer album cover with art by Geiger. The reason I bring this up is because ELP also made a recreation of Pictures at an Exhibition. I don't know if Tomita did this on purpose, but I just thought the connection was interesting.

While ELP's version of Pictures also features synthesizer quite heavily, it's taken in a psychedelic/prog rock direction, while this rendition is a much more straight-laced version of the classical suite, arranged for synthesizer. It's pretty much a note-for-note reworking of the original. It reminds me a lot of Wendy Carlos' recreations of Bach's Brandenburg concertos in that way, but Tomita takes more liberties with the voicings than Carlos does.

My favorite piece on this album is definitely "The Old Castle". It does a great job of capturing the spooky, mysterious mood of the original. That weird, warbly ...singing? synth voice is equally charming and unnerving. This whole album reminds me of someone taking a coloring page and using surreal, otherworldly colors to re-imagine what's in the original picture. Enough of it is there to be recognizable, but it's interpreted through a whole different paradigm.

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