aus | Artists | Lo Recordings

With a passion for rediscovering and reinventing the very nature of sounds around him, inspiration is acquired from all corners of his mind: captured movie images; stumbled upon words or conversations; nomadic dreams; long lost memories; and indefinable inner feelings.

Being born and bred in Tokyo, the city is an indisputable reflection of the loud-and-quiet dynamics that permeate Fukuzono’s sound. The city is noisy, carved with canyons of commerce and sonic chaos. But a step away from the main thoroughfares lies a warren of residential lanes painted in semi-silence.
Fukuzono tends toward such spaces in his music, where he plays with the sweetness and pathos inherent in the sonic landscape he inhabits.
It’s a quality that may have been imbibed as a child as Fukuzono’s mother is a teacher of both ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) and shodō (calligraphy); two aesthetic pursuits that require equal attention to what is there and what is not. With this sensibility and a myriad of other elements firing his musical mind, music laced with charisma and intrigue naturally follows.

As well as his commercial compositions, Fukuzono also creates sound design for exhibitions; works on music production for experimental cinema; and as label owner at the FLAU imprint – which Pitchfork described as “the nation’s premier label for hushed music” – has released a multitude of artists from both within and outside Japan.

Having released his first album proper back in the mid-2000s, it was the second long player (Lang) that garnered attention for Fukuzono, in Japan, it becoming one of the best-selling electronic albums of the new century. However, it is with the new album Everis (Lo224) that aus really demonstrates his ability to discern and manipulate the sonic minutiae of daily routine, providing loudness when necessary and fragility when not.