Baku Tsunoda (28) and Naomichi Tanaka (31) have been working together as the Rainstick Orchestra since 2001. They met when they were both DJing in a club in Tokyo and, as they lived near to each other, they began hanging out and trying to improve their musical skills by working together.

By day, Baku is an Editorial Designer and Naomichi is a Systems Engineer. But it’s music that drives them both. While Naomichi cites an early love of the music of Manchester as a formative influence as well as time playing in punk bands, Baku started out playing guitar and piano in both a Yellow Magic Orchestra covers band and a session group who played in the style of Maceo Parker and Funkadelic.

What they create together, using guitars, piano, bass & sequencers, is a delicate ‘systems music’ that gives a nod to the minimalism of Cage and Reich as well as echoing forms such as techno and jazz. Unsurprisingly, they both subscribe to the idea that music is “borderless”.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.