Musical instruments from old technology from the collective "Electronicos Fantasticos"

In August 2020, a video of the Korean band "Electronicos Fantasticos" appeared on YouTube, garnering more than three million views in a few months. Such popularity is not surprising, because the band members seemed to have gone back in time to give life to the old technique and make fundamentally new musical instruments of that time out of it.

The birth of Electronicos Fantasticos

The group was born in 2015 as a small project that collected obsolete equipment on the territory of one of the districts of Tokyo. The participants quickly accumulated a lot of devices, and they came up with an unusual idea. Inspired, they began energetic work, and already in November 2015 they presented "First Ensemble Encounter Composition" - the first composition of the group. This is how the project team was formed, which called itself "Nicos Orchest-Lab".

The main idea of the team was to give old things a new life. And, of course, a new sound - after all, in their hands, even old computer mice turn into musical instruments.

Nicos Orchest-Lab do all the work themselves - its volume is impressive, because the members of the group need to work with various materials and programs. They solder, design, process metal and wood themselves.

Group development

In 2016, another team with similar ideas appeared in Hitachi, and in the same year they performed with Nicos Orchest-Lab at the KENPOKU ART 2016 art festival, dedicated to the interaction of art and science.

A year later, the group performed at the Electro-Magnetic Bon Dance festival, where they surprised fans with the scale of the work done and the colorful mixture of traditional Japanese culture motifs with electronic sound of technical devices. Their performance took place under Japan's most famous radio tower.

The group gained popularity outside of its country in 2018, when it was mentioned at Ars Electronica, one of the world's largest events dedicated to contemporary art. A year later, "Electronicos Fantasticos" has already arrived with a performance, significantly expanding the circle of connoisseurs of such unusual music.

Three years later, in August 2020, Electronicos Fantasticos reappeared on the stage of their own festival - this time the concert took place online due to restrictive measures. However, this is quite consistent with the atmosphere of the group's work. As in 2017, the concert was dedicated to the Japanese traditional Bon festival, the time of mourning for the dead. Taking folk motifs as a basis, "Electronicos Fantasticos" created a bright composition in which cosmic electronic sounds are mixed with smooth ethnic melodies. The group is not going to stop there and continues to experiment to find a new sound.

Members and Instruments

The founder of the group was a Japanese named Ei Wada, who has long been interested in unusual ways of creating music. Before joining the Electronicos Fantasticos project, since 2009 he has been creating tracks in the Open Reel Ensemble. Its participants generated music using the sounds of reel-to-reel tape recorders. It is interesting that the famous Japanese fashion designer Issei Miyake highly appreciates the musician's work - Ei Wada created music for his Paris collection eleven times in a row. Under the guidance of Ei Wada, inspired by the love of technology, works that amaze the imagination are created.

The band's instruments are truly impressive: Maiko Aoyama plays drums created from an old TV, Akira Ataka plays music on a barcode scanner, Manami Tada turns the sounds of an unnecessary alarm into a melody. In the hands of Sonosuke Yamamoto, the electric fan sounds like an electronic harp, and the voice of Kitsu Kaori makes the music even more expressive. Particularly charming is the instrument, which the musicians, by analogy with the ukulele, called "telelele". It is played by Rika Kawashima in the band.

The members of "Electronicos Fantasticos" are very inspired by the opportunity to give new life to old things and give a new sound to technology that seemed to never work again. Together they create a whole new direction in music, and inspire to see the aesthetic even where it seems there is only old rubbish.