Ai Yamanoto is Japanese Melobourne-based sound artist which has collaborated with many artists such as Lawrence English, Adam Gaucci AKA Curse of Daialect, Steve Law, Ben Sharman, Ben Frost. Two years after the stunning album Going Home 帰郷 , she’s back with a new one called Pan De Sonic – Iso which is out now via Room40.
She explains: “In Melbourne, the city in which I live with my family, we faced an extended period of lockdown in 2020. During these long winter months, I recorded a lot of samples of my iso life from morning to night. As the process wore on I became quite fascinated with these sounds, some of them so familiar and domestic that I decided to turn them into music.
All the sounds of this album are made strictly from materials coming from these domestic field recordings. Even though parts are quite melodic and tonal, no instruments were used at all. It is a sound diary and one whose sounds would be familiar for many people living in Melbourne. The sounds of morning, the chatter of remote learning, the ceaseless flow of house chores, physical activity in our brief moments outside and evenings where we all just try to wind down.
Those days were all about routine, and the mundane qualities of life became a kind of daily ritual that was full of repetition and loops. These are the spark for this album and it becomes a document of this curious moment in time that will linger with us all going forward.”