Masaki Batoh

Masaki Batoh is best known as one of the founding members of Japan's mysterious and long-running experimental rock band Ghost. Formed in 1984, Ghost gave Batoh a platform for his skills as a guitarist and improviser, as well as his mastery of a number of Japanese folk instruments. Ghost's sound was rooted in psychedelia, vintage rock, and progressive/Krautrock sounds, and Batoh was widely regarded as their spiritual leader; he was also the person who decided to disband the group in 2014. Dividing his time between his musical projects and his practice as a doctor of acupuncture who operates his own clinic, Batoh's work outside Ghost has been eclectic, encompassing collaborative efforts with cellist Helena Espvall (2009's Overloaded Ark), his psychedelic quintet the Silence (2016's Nine Suns, One Morning), a set of recordings created with a device that transforms brain waves into audio (2012's Brain Pulse Music), and solo sets informed by spiritual themes (2019's Nowhere and 2020's Smile Jesus Loves You!). Masaki Batoh was born in Kyoto and attended a private school there. It was during his school years that he first encountered the music of Japanese bands such as Taj Mahal Travellers and Flower Travellin' Band; through them, he discovered the Velvet Underground, Can, Faust, and numerous other freewheeling psych and hard rock groups. He co-founded Ghost in 1984; the band lived a nomadic existence for nearly a decade before settling near Tokyo. Ghost were still active and productive when Batoh brought out his first solo recordings. 1995's Ghost from Darkened Sea delivered a sparser take on his band's sound, while 1996's Kikaokubeshi dabbled in elements of electro-acoustic ambience. The two were later compiled by Drag City as Collected Works 1995-1996. Batoh didn't record on his own again until he collaborated with Espers' Helena Espvall on a jointly eponymous album for Drag City in 2008; a second album from the pair, Overloaded Ark, followed in 2009. After his two albums with Espvall, Batoh spent much of his time running his own acupuncture clinic in Tokyo and researching a way of making music with "extracted brain waves." To this end, he commissioned a company called MKC Inc. to develop a machine to record waves from the brain's parietal and frontal lobes, then converting them into radio waves and sending them back. There, they are converted into wave "pulses" that yield actual sounds. According to Batoh, this technique can record "the second-by-second reflection of our mental state [that] renders itself as sound and we hear it instantaneously." Batoh's goal in creating such a machine was to "aid the anxieties of those all around him" and interconnect body and soul with music as equal parts of a single universe. While Batoh's original concept was to record an entire album of music made directly from his mind, in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, he treated people who had experienced severe trauma. His idea for the album shifted to one where he could create music that aided in calming the mind. Using traditional Japanese stringed instruments, pipes, flutes, and wood blocks alongside the sounds produced by his Brain Pulse Machine, he created the seven-track Brain Pulse Music, which was issued in early 2012. In 2014, Batoh announced that he was disbanding Ghost after more than 30 years. Shortly thereafter, he formed a new group called the Silence with two former bandmates, drummer Okano Futoshi and producer, arranger, and keyboardist Kazuo Ogino; the lineup also featured bassist Jan Stigter and saxophonist/flutist Ryuichi Yoshida. Their self-titled debut album was released by Drag City in 2015, followed in quick succession by Hark the Silence (2015) and Nine Suns, One Morning (2016). In 2019, Batoh issued another solo date entitled Nowhere, delivered with folk singer's approach. He started these recordings with a basic live performance of guitar with vocal, and only two mikes. If other elements were deemed necessary, they were added later. The album's lyrics were related in English, Japanese, and Latin, referencing spiritual pursuits and his younger days as a world traveler. (The Silence also issued a fourth album that year, Metaphysical Feedback.) 2020 brought another eclectic and spiritually themed solo set, Smile Jesus Loves You! The album included solo tracks as well as sessions cut with members of the Silence and drummer Hiroyuki Usui.
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