Mikado Koko will release ‘PIANOINACAGE’ on February 16th via Caliban Sounds.

Japanese outsider avant-gardist, poet and producer, Mikado Koko will release ‘PIANOINACAGE’ on February 16th via Caliban Sounds.

‘PIANOINACAGE’ is a solo piano work from a progressive artist returning to the traditional. Koko tells us that “I like anarcho-punk and avant-garde music, but now I feel that beautiful piano music is more radical than that. I am deeply influenced by Erik Satie's rebelliousness. His compositions are more than just beautiful”.

Through minimal, emotive compositions and with a technical proficiency, Koko mines nostalgic melodies that in their own way challenge the status quo. She’s looking back in order to move forward, while crafting serene and tender pieces that reward a meditative listen. ‘PIANOINACAGE’ contains melancholic, contemplative instrumentation and tender keys designed for the listener to lose themselves in. She continues “We have been living in this difficult world over the past years. I feel that we really need more beautiful music. In this album, I compose and do not compose, I play the piano and do not play the piano. I hope that the album can help you go back to your peaceful childhood.”

Caliban Sounds founder Penny Rimbaud says, “Mikado Koko’s art is that of engagement, storms in a desert, avalanches of reason, dislocation. John Cage created 4’33” of silence, thirty-three seconds beyond a nuclear early warning, time to take a run. Koko steals the balance and creates a fragmented universe, a jigsaw of desire.

Beauty is a machine, the beast is in our interpretation. Notes are laid even; the emotion of chance. There is no there. This is it, right here, now. The affirmative ‘no’. Everything is self-evident, the program is secure. Launch a deterrent and wait. Koko hangs out in the wings dancing a Tai Chi. Green matcha politely sipped during the interval: space incognito.

This is order on the level, a deeper emotion than that of self. The Master is invisible in his ascent of the mountain. Sisyphus rolls an ancient rhyme. The known is subdivided into pitches, some’ll call it music of a kind, some might see it as the waves at turn of tide. Understanding might be a challenge to acceptance. The Samurai knows better. Whoosh.

Koko takes on the challenge of the pandemic, sees it for what it is, the hope of it, the renewal, the seasonal thrust, a rewrite. The potential exists far beyond the known, and some might even say the knowable. The spaces are infinite, but here we are grasping for straws. Koko is a haystack. Get aboard.

Emptiness is an infinity. Immortality is its name. Nothing doing. PIANOINACAGE is a cartographer’s dream”.

Koko began her solo career as a club producer using elements of Japanese traditional music. After many releases, remixes and compilations, she now focuses on avant-garde poetry reading and post-genre composition. Her relationship with Penny Rimbaud was forged through her submitting a track, ‘Asylum’, for the Crass Records remix project, ‘Normal Never Was’. The track was selected for inclusion alongside dance floor giant, Steve Aoki, as the first release in the series. Koko and Rimbaud then collaborated on a track for her album, ‘Alice in Cryptoland’, including the single, ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, which also features Eve Libertine. Despite being almost 50 years and 6000 miles apart, Koko and Rimbaud’s collaboration continued to bear fruit, with the pair appearing as a single force on ‘Songs To Our Other Selves’, which then received a heavy weight double vinyl release alongside Rimbaud’s ‘Acts of Love’.

Track listing

1. Lotus Eater No.1
2. Lotus Eater No. 2
3. Lotus Eater No. 3
4. Piano in a Cage No. 1
5. Piano in a Cage No. 2
6. Piano in a Cage No. 3
7. The Garden No. 1
8. The Garden No. 2
9. The Garden No. 3
10. Fortuna No. 1
11. Fortuna No. 2
12. Fortuna No. 3
13. Fortuna Reprise