Thank you, Asutenki / ありがとう、 天気予報。
Short Introduction: Asutenki is a Japanese Vaporwave producer (specifically Weatherwave, Signalwave, Sound Collage and Plunderphonics), previously known as Hitonatsukashi (2013-2023) created on 2017. They had probably about 20 albums released on Bandcamp. As for 2023, they had completed their project and all the work was delisted from the their page. "それでは、おやすみなさい。私の存在を忘れてください。" (EN: "Now, good night, forget I exist.") is the message listed on their Bandcamp now.
I'll tell you why I shouldn't forget.
Despite knowing that inevitably anyone could have taken this place, Asutenki was the person who was somewhat responsible for what I am now. Really. It was a important gate to me as a person and me as an artist, everything slowly but surely have changed. It's sad to see everything goes down the water just like that, despite the fact that it's probably not the end for this person (I hope so).
Asutenki's songs were mostly (what I can assume to be) short recordings of old Japanese radio consistently looped, some of them having catchy music with a radio voice-over, jingles, sometimes just looped noise. But it's not even about the music itself. There is little production on the songs, barely any sound quality there. I'm not saying there was little work being done though, I would imagine a lot of work to research archives of hours long streams of radio in order to get those things in the first place, and they used to always release albums, most of them being medium to large size.
The biggest reason I was obsessed with this artist is that they show off a really different philosophy of what art is. The whole reason of what this art came to be and what it "wants". The whole nature of plunderphonics by itself is a poignant contrast amongst what I once thrive to be. Everybody has a different understanding of art. I had mine understanding before, but the clash that occurred with Asutenki's art and my art was mind-shattering.
My expectations were blown out of the water and I could not say no more if I actually understood art. However, I didn't feel any discomfort. I was just so confused, perplexed of how it could be. But, at what degree of importance understanding art lives, if you can just make it what it feels right?
Unfortunately, I was very pretentious before. It was my nature before to prioritize growing popularity as an artist, to be somewhat popular producer and to play mainstream content for many people, and to be competitive as the entry bar gets lower and lower. This is what I was taught to be initially, by my friends, by bigger artists, all the people around me considered this path "successful". They're not wrong, as being popular it's almost equivalent to money those days, which is considered successful. To fulfill yourself as an creator, naturally you will find a way to receive remuneration with what you (presumably) love to create, and this is no different from any artist, it's just the way you got to this place that matters.
However, this path clashed with my core values as a person, becoming more and more apparent as I was maturing and growing older. I was discouraged to follow it because, to this day, I just wanna create my thing and don't give a second thought in gaining something from it; although back in the day I was kinda desperate and I was following the pretentious path anyways. To fill the gap, I branched my alias to create music that I thought no one would listen to, known today as "marte sábita".
When I discovered Asutenki, I was struck by what it felt like a piece of art, created by an actual artist from my epoch. Suddenly I was in intense confusion. Gradually, I stopped listening to the advises people were giving me as a defense mechanism. When once I felt like I was getting better each time, now I fell into a sudden stagnation and under-performance at times while I was figuring what to do next.
Listening to them was unique, nostalgic; comfy and serene, like if I had just woke up and started my morning listening to the radio, hearing the forecast for the week, while I was pouring hot water out of the kettle into my coffee cup in a cloudy day, just before droplets of water starts falling on my window, gradually getting more intense just as the cold wind invading my resting room. It made me imagine how would that feel like, how would I feel in this scenario that I've created inside my head even though nothing in the artwork was directly pointing to this. Though this interpretation may sound a little bit corny, it made me picture something in my head that doesn't exactly exist yet; it made me feel something, something different that I wasn't familiar with. Just for the record, I was familiar with Vaporwave before because of Macintosh Plus (Vektroid), so this is not my first time with the genre.
Curiosity started to build on my head. I was discovering new music on many different genres that I didn't knew before. Many of them being as artistic and expressive as the other. Notably father2006. I bought their 4-CD box with came with some of my favorite works that I ever come to know. For a whole year, I was in a complete breakdown. Completely clueless, I didn't know what to with myself. I was doubting my competence as an artist, I couldn't even tell I was actually an artist. However, discovering a lot of new unique, expressive, artistic pieces of art in sequence, both the old and the modern, guided me to start appreciating art even more, and before I even knew, I was in an entirely new place.
I could go further, but that's not important for this post. This whole thing was only possible because I found Asutenki's contradictory, clashing philosophy of what art is, and amazing music (and cover arts), without never saying a word in regards to art. As I said before, if it wasn't Asutenki, another artist would show me the way, but it was Asutenki and specially grateful for it for existing and compiling the world around them into pieces of art.
Thank you, Asutenki / Hitonatsukashi (2013-2023).
ありがとう、 天気予報 / Hitonatsukashi (2013-2023)。