Past & Yoyogi Park came from two recordings made In japan. A wild track taken in Yoyogi Park in the center of Tokyo and the plodding synth line that I recorded on the OP-1 the night I had visited the park.

Both recordings has a slightly sorrowful and wistful sound that I thought I could continue with on the track. I decided to get away from synthesis and instead use a collection of instruments with sentimental value from my past. Out of all the tracks on “Made In Japan” Past & Yoyogi Features the most live recordings of real instruments because of this.

On the Track the other instruments used were an Old Melodica that my great grandmother left me, A trombone which was the first instrument I played seriously as a child and a bass guitar which was the first instrument I ever bought myself when I started to play in bands.

There were some serious problems with both the Bass Guitar and Melodica which aren’t quite in tune due to damage/age but I wanted to use them specifically for sentimental reasons. This resulted in me requiring to do some slight fixing in post to keep those instruments in tune. I also sampled the trombone and pitched it down an octave with some processing to create the Initial bass sound in the track.

At first I struggled to make something from the initial synth part as I liked it soo much. Out of all the instrumental parts from Tokyo it was the first one I attempted to use. But once I decided to use real instruments and not try to overcomplicate the track by making a repeating structure the track came together quickly.

Listening back to the track is quite transportive for me. Making me think of the parts of my life that involved me playing music but also recording these very lines in my cold studio late at night in the center of Leigh. I would often record there at night to reduce the outside noise of the busy street and was recording these in the middle of winter with only a small electric heater to keep warm. These were some of the last recordings I made in that space before I could no longer use it so it also holds those memories for me as well, making it the hardest track for me to listen to from the album.