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Japanese electronic music-making twins Satoshi and Makoto rose to prominence in 2017 when they released an album of electronica composed entirely on a Casio CZ-5000 digital synthesizer, and their low-key, minimalist jams have proved to be a popular musical choice for specialty cafés around the world.

We spoke to the twins about playground loudspeaker jingles, how to follow one’s own path to creativity, and what a sonic expression of coffee might sound like.

Standart: I have read that neither of you were brought up on music; your parents weren’t musical and neither of you studied music formally outside of primary school. Nevertheless, were there early musical models or influences, or even aural ones, that you can trace back to your childhood and upbringing?

Satoshi: There was nothing special about me, I was just an ordinary child singing the theme songs of TV programmes. Our parents were not musicians, but there was a record player and audio equipment in the house, and we were allowed to listen to children’s music such as children’s songs when we were young.

Makoto: I was not influenced by music until I was much older, but I am grateful to my parents for bringing me up in an environment with music from an early age.

Standart: What is the most beautiful sound produced by the natural world?

Satoshi: I had never thought about it. But if I were to choose now, I’d say birdsong, murmuring rivers and the sound of the wind, to name a few. I also enjoy the sound of rain and the heavy bass of thunder somewhere in my mind.

Makoto: I have never thought about it either. I think that what people find beautiful is subjective and depends on the sensitivity of the person who receives the sound or music. Therefore, any sound in the world can be ‘beautiful’. ‘Beauty vs ugliness’ and ‘likes vs dislikes’ are two different things. It may be beautiful, but there are many sounds that I don't like, car horns, for example.

Standart: What images spring to mind most frequently when you play or compose your music? What is the connection between the visual and the auditory in your creative process?

Satoshi: We do not create music based on any image in advance. Our music was originally not made for others to listen to, but for our own healing. For example, when I was graduating, I was worried about finding a job. That was when I concentrated on creating sounds and songs with the CZ-5000. Perhaps I wanted to escape from reality by immersing myself in something, because the CZ-5000 was an old piece of equipment that did not have a drum sound source, and because I had always liked abstract music, I created tones that I was comfortable listening to, applied external effectors (machines that add echoes and other sound effects) and created phrases. I would create a phrase, record it on cassette tape, erase the data and start again with a different tone. At that time, it was not easy to save data on tones and songs, so there are many recordings of phrases and loops that cannot be called songs, just sketches of ideas. However, I didn't often listen back to these recordings myself, so I think that the creative process itself was a pleasure and a healing experience for me.

The method is rather primitive and is not an outpouring of passion resulting from inspiration, like that of so-called artistic geniuses. It is more like an accidental, experimental thing that arises within the constraints of limited equipment and is more akin to a jam session.

Makoto: We get a lot of different impressions from the people who listen to our music, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s a very subjective experience.

Standart: Was there a particular impression you received from a listener that was unexpected?

Makoto: From the feedback we received from the listeners, what I found unexpected was that some said it helped them fall asleep, and other people said exactly the opposite, that it stimulated them so much that they couldn't fall asleep. That confirm my belief that the experience is very subjective. However, the feedback we receive does not influence our music.

Standart: At the earliest point of composition, i.e. the moment when the first throb of inspiration hits you, where are you most likely to be and what doing? And what does the moment feel like?

Satoshi: I operate familiar equipment such as synthesizers and let things happen as they happen, developing from sound to music. In particular I sometimes get carried away and work for a long time because I enjoy the coincidental nature of creating music.

Standart: What does a particularly lengthy session look like?

Satoshi: Sometimes a whole day would pass with a few hours of sound creation on the CZ-5000, a few hours of sequence input and arrangement using those sounds, and then back to sound creation again. When a good sound or a good loop phrase is created, there is a lot of time to keep playing it and listening to it and thinking about how to develop it next. Strangely enough, you can create phrases that you don't get tired of listening to for a long time, and I have even fallen asleep while listening to them.

Standart: Is your music a sort of response to the sound? I.e. that you are somehow trying to extrapolate the essence of a sound out into something musical or melodious?

Satoshi: When good or interesting sounds are produced, there is a unique sense of achievement at the same time as making the music, which is oriented towards the music that matches the sound. Generally, as soon as I have a tone that I like, I play it by hand and try to find a phrase that makes use of it, often typing it into the sequencer as if I were making a memo. Depending on the tone, I may listen to it through an external effects device and repeat the process of further processing the tone.

Makoto: I think these days it’s when I’m actually working with the equipment, and other times when I’m reading a book. However, because the current music production environment is so poor, there are many frustrating cases where I can’t seem to scratch the itch. We don't even have a studio like professional musicians, and we have to ‘motivate’ ourselves to pull out the gear we usually keep in our storage room at home to even make a sound. I am ashamed to say that I don't even have a monitor amp at the moment.

Standart: Electronic music was often used in television adverts and for film soundtracks. Why do you think this is? Because it somehow aligns with the visual so well? Because the visual provides a context for a somewhat abstract sound? If we agree that the sound is an abstract composition, how does the experience of it differ when listening to it without visual accompaniment?

Satoshi: I didn’t really think that electronic music was excellently used for soundtracks. Rather, I feel that music using real orchestras is still the mainstream for film music. I think that the reason why there are so many electronic music systems in advertising is that they are not used in line with the requirements of the industry, such as cost reduction and efficiency, as it has become possible to produce a good quality product in a short time with a relatively small number of people. In other words, it has evolved in this way from the requirements of the field.

Makoto: When you experience the same music, not only electronic music but also other music, with and without images, the impression of the music with images is fixed to a certain extent. This may narrow the interpretation of the music, but I think it can have the effect of amplifying the impression far more than if the music were experienced separately. On the other hand, when listening to music alone, without images, the impression is linked to the listener’s own personal image and feelings. This is a crucial point that cannot be used without permission, because we believe that even the most realistic three-dimensional computer graphics cannot exceed the image that the listener associates with it in his or her mind. Our music is very simple and unoriginal, with a poor signal-to-noise ratio, but I think that this makes it easier for the listener to connect with his or her own memories and images to complement the impression, thus creating a richer impression. This means that we may be able to empathise, but we will never be able to see the same thing as the listener who is feeling it most. That’s why I think it’s so very, very important.

Standart: Synth music in Japan is everywhere and becomes rooted in childhood memories, adding to its nostalgic force. My favourite example of this is in the music that is played at 5 p.m. to alert children that it is time to go home. I’ve heard that every prefecture has its own melody. Can you remember your local tunes, and can you describe them?

Satoshi: Indeed, in Japan, there is a time signal that is played in the town in the evening. In the junior high school where we went to school, I remember that ‘Silk Road Theme’ by Kitaro was played every morning at the appointed time. This may be because of the old digital synthesisers we use, but many people seem to feel nostalgic for the old videogame music. I think that’s probably why we are using an old digital synthesizer.

Makoto: I’m not sure if it was our local music since we, as a family, moved quite a lot, but I think Dvorak’s ‘From the New World’ was the standard. When I listen to it, the image of children playing in a school playground or park in the light of a setting sun comes to mind. This is clearly imprinted on me through various media.

Standart: There is not much information about you available on the Internet. Would you therefore briefly tell us who you are, how you met and came to compose music together, and who is responsible for what in your creative duo?

Satoshi: We started creating music after Makoto bought the CZ-5000, and because we were brothers we were always in close proximity and inevitably began to make music with the same equipment as each other. We also write our own music, so there is no clear division of labour.

Makoto: We usually work in other jobs that have nothing to do with music, and although it is not our intention, as a result our activities are limited and there is not much information about music on the internet. Recently, I, Makoto, have been managing Satoshi & Makoto in general.

Standart: If you both have day jobs, is music therefore more of a pleasant escape than it might be if it were your sole profession?

Makoto: I have never aspired to be a musician. Since I can get bored pretty fast, if I were to make music my career, it would be hard and difficult to continue. That’s why I do it as a side project so that I don't have to hate it.

Standart: What sort of personality would your clones need to have to be able and inspired to create similar music to yours?

Satoshi: We ourselves do not know our own music objectively, so it is difficult to set conditions. Is it a mindset to enjoy making music within functional constraints?

Makoto: A sensitivity that finds pleasure in trivial things.

Standart: Many people are now buying analogue synths and trying to create music. Much of it is bad, so in the interest of bringing more beauty into the world and less rubbish, do you have any advice for these people?

Satoshi: It is not always the case that highly acclaimed music is regarded as a masterpiece from the outset, and there is a good chance that works that are currently branded as bad will one day be re-evaluated. In fact, there are many such works. The Shaggs’ ‘Philosophy of the World’ is one example that immediately springs to mind: the three sisters’ poor band playing and singing shocked the world in later years, and was praised by many famous musicians. The story of the three sisters and their family has been performed as a musical off-Broadway and is still loved today. Their works show that music is not all about skilful performances, precise arrangements and incredible voices, etc., and I feel freedom and depth of music from them. In the end, as mentioned earlier, the evaluation of music is entirely subjective to the listener. The only difference is whether it is the majority or the minority. Our music may be a masterpiece for some people and a bad piece of music for others. For some, it’s a masterpiece; for others, it’s a piece of crap.

Makoto: I agree with Satoshi. I think we need to define what ‘beauty’ is in this case first. In my case, I now think of beauty as “something that impresses one and positively exceeds one’s expectations”. I feel that in the case of music, this ‘beauty’ can often not be noticed after just one listen.

Satoshi: I think it is a thing or a state that the person concerned is moved by and finds favourable. I don't think it matters what other people think of it.

Standart: Do you seek and find inspiration in everyday occurrences? Can you give us some examples of this and how such a moment of inspiration is translated in your mind into a sound or patch (sequence)?

Satoshi: Sometimes a phrase for a piece of music comes out of the blue when we are doing something completely different from music, like when I’m on a train or listening to the radio, and sometimes it is born accidentally in a ‘session’ with the equipment. In our case, it is often the latter.

Makoto: I also use the method of building up the music in the process of actually dealing with the equipment.

Standart: Are there times when one of you finds a piece of beauty during a session with the equipment that the other doesn’t like? Do you look for unanimity of taste in a certain sound or patch before bothering to continue to work on it?

Satoshi: We work separately and rarely work together, but we have different opinions on what each of us considers to be a good phrase or a good song. I tend to create a lot of songs to give shape to my ideas, while Makoto tends to work towards the completion of a song, towards the goal, so there is a difference in compositional attitude.

Makoto: We basically each work on a song alone from start to finish, as I don't particularly like to have any input into the arrangement of a song during production. The last song on our second album, ‘Silence’, is a rare example of a song that we wrote and arranged together.

Standart: Your and other electronic music is increasingly popular in specialty cafés. What about your music do you think suits the café space and why might café lurkers enjoy it?

Satoshi: We get a lot of feedback from people who listen to our music. Some listen to it when they go to sleep, some listen to it in their rooms on their record players, and one DJ said that he often uses it at the end of his set to ease off the intensity of dance music. Since many of the songs are not rhythm-based, I feel that they are often listened to as background music.

Makoto: However, there is no demand to the listener that we want our music to be listened to in this way or that we have trouble if they don’t listen to it in this way. Our priority is that listeners enjoy themselves while listening to our music.

Standart: When composing music, do you have an ideal audience in mind (even if it is yourself)? What are they like?

Satoshi: I don’t have the audience in mind when I compose. I just want to make something that feels good to me.

Makoto: I think that from now on we have to be more or less conscious of our audience. But as we haven’t been able to identify the reasons why our music has been so well received, we are very concerned that our future work might disappoint our audience. For this reason, like Satoshi, we have recently been trying to make our music in the same way as before, without being conscious of them.

Standart: Who are the greatest musicians of all time? And, differently, who are your favourites who are not necessarily the greatest? In other words, do you differentiate between art that you recognise as great and art that you simply like?

Satoshi: I don’t make any distinction and I don’t care whether they are great or not. I like many artists who are not used to working in this field. I like many artists. I have revamped the audio system in my home and I listen to music via streaming services, choosing gentle sounds that blend in with the air in the room. Recently, I have enjoyed listening to Kimijima Ozora’s ‘The World Turns Here’, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s album ‘12’, Ichiko Aoba’s catalogue, Masayoshi Fujita’s vibraphone works, etc.

Makoto: Same as Satoshi. In my case, I still feel very sympathetic to the work of some Japanese indie techno labels from the early 90s, such as Transonic Records and Syzygy labels. At the time, talented young people of the same generation as us were simultaneously releasing great work on CD and vinyl. Listening to them, I became a fan of their individual works, as if I were watching an ensemble drama. Around the same time, techno music started to emerge and become a movement in Europe, and I was impressed by the originality and expressiveness of the works of the Japanese techno labels, which were not copies of those labels.

Standart: Do you try to create an ideal scenario for composing music? If so, what is it?

Satoshi: The work environment is very important. I think it’s good to have an environment where you can relax and do what you want to do. Unfortunately, we are currently limited in terms of equipment and space, so I would like to improve it little by little. I don't have any particular rituals. As for the production environment, I'm not really thinking about adding more equipment; I'd like to create a space where I can work comfortably and easily and produce relatively loud sounds, with chairs and sofas that are comfortable.

Makoto: I am the same as Satoshi. I think it’s important to have things that are born out of limited constraints. There is nothing ritualistic about it, but when I make music, I don’t watch or listen to TV, radio or YouTube, which can reduce my concentration. As for the kind of production environment I want to improve, I'm currently looking for a studio that is not too big and not too small, where I can relax, record and edit efficiently and produce a certain amount of volume.

Standart: Do you enjoy playing live? Why or why not? What are the best and worst things about doing so?

Satoshi: I like live performances. The reason is that you can directly feel the audience’s reaction, which is a strong point, but at the same time it can be a weak point because only those who are in the same space can experience the atmosphere of the place. Online viewing is also becoming more popular, but I think there are still many issues compared to on-site participation. I think online viewing at the moment is still one-sided, while at live performances we can share the emotion, excitement and tension of the moment with fellow audience members. I think we are almost ready to communicate through chat and other forms of text, so we just need to find a way to share the “atmosphere of the experience” with the online audience.

Makoto: I agree with Satoshi. In addition, if the benefits of on-demand viewing for both the distributors and listeners are further enhanced in the future, I think and hope that the possibilities of live broadcasting will expand. VR is the first thing that comes to mind as one element to be able to share the atmosphere of the venue. But VR at the moment is not easy at all, so it may be a long way off. I think smell and temperature are also factors that contribute to the impression of a place.

Standart: Describe to us a scene of pure beauty.

Satoshi: I have never thought about it. I can’t think of anything. I suppose any scene in which I am surrounded by those I love and who love me and we are all happy.

Makoto: That’s a tough question. I guess it’s about greeting and being greeted by the dead with gratitude and laughter.

Standart: Describe to us a scene of ideal happiness.

Satoshi: It’s nice to see people enjoying our music.

Makoto: A difficult question. Is it being able to spend time with your family without any worries or inconvenience?

Standart: In the liner notes to your first album, Makoto, you write about how you sent a letter to your parents asking them to buy you your first CZ-5000, promising that in exchange you would work hard on your studies. Well, did you work hard after that, or was all your time spent creating music?

Makoto: I wrote a letter to my father saying that I wanted to buy a musical instrument because I was going to study hard. He said he would buy it for me if I achieved a certain grade (top of the class? My memory is a bit fuzzy). So I studied hard for the first time in my life, and I remember that I was at the bottom of the class but became No. 1 in my grade. However, after I was bought a CZ-5000, I spent all my time playing with it, so my grades soon dropped.

Standart: Tell us, what were your first encounters like with the CZ-5000? I mean emotionally, as a moment? How did you feel? What sort of day was it and where in your life were you at that point?

Makoto: I went to the music shop many times to see and touch the CZ-5000 on display before I got it, so when it arrived at home, I was extremely pleased.

Satoshi: I was 15 years old and in an impressionable period, and I felt as if I had the super ability to make any kind of music with this equipment.

Standart: You have stated that one of the main attractions to the CZ-5000 is that it has a built-in sequencer. What, for the layman, does this mean? And what does it allow you to do?

Makoto: This should explain the situation around synthesisers in the 1980s. At that time, synthesiser music was heard more and more on TV and radio, and electronic instruments were rapidly becoming popular. It was also around this time that the ‘sequencer’, a machine that automatically and accurately plays proportional to the inputted notes information, became active. However, there were no PCs yet and most of them were specialised machines and expensive. In such a situation, the CZ-5000 was the first sequencer. The CZ-5000 was equipped with a function that allowed the sequencer to store different performance phrases in up to eight lanes at the same time. This meant that a song could be completed using just the CZ-5000. At the time, this was very ground-breaking.

Standart: Presumably, in choosing to compose so much of your music on one instrument, you introduce severe technical constraints. In other creative fields, constraints are often recognised as providing more scope for creativity. Do you agree with this and is it your experience with the CZ-5000?

Satoshi: Yes, I think that’s right. I think that having certain restrictions and rules decreases in some ways the breadth of expression, so you naturally are inclined to increase the depth of expression.

Makoto: I agree with Satoshi.

Standart: Would you consider giving the CZ-5000 up in favour of a new instrument, with new constraints and which therefore presents more technical problems for you to solve musically? Perhaps modular?

Satoshi: Modular synths are also good. But we ourselves still want to continue exploring the CZ-5000. We are nowhere near exhausting its potential.

Makoto: Basically, I get bored of doing the same thing over and over again, so every time I create a new piece of music there is always something new to do. I think the CZ-5000 is just one of those tools. Therefore, we would like to introduce new equipment and methods in the future. However, works that do not use the CZ-5000 at all may be presented under a different artist name.

Standart: What is your favourite-ever piece of visual art (painting, photograph, film, etc.) and one which you would love to compose a soundscape for?

Satoshi: Whenever I see a painting or photograph by a friend or acquaintance, I feel that it is wonderful and cannot be copied. It’s too difficult to create a song to match the work, but I feel like choosing a song and adding background music.

Standart: Is there a major city, anywhere in the world, for which you would like to compose a soundtrack?

Satoshi: New York comes to mind. I think it was because I had in mind the film “Ear to the Ground”, in which a percussionist called David Van Tieghem plays rhythm by hitting various objects on the streets of New York with mallets. However, I have never been to New York and am not familiar with the city, so I don't have a concrete musical image of it.

Standart: Sportspeople often report being awoken from sleep by dreaming of a ball coming at them and leaping out of bed to catch it. Do you dream in sounds? What sort of worlds do you occupy in your sleep?

Satoshi: This is the first time I have heard of this episode. Unfortunately, I don’t have this kind of experience.

Makoto: I’m sure I’ve had dreams, but I don’t remember many of them.

Standart: Well, we have to ask, do you drink coffee? Does it aid in creativity? What does coffee ‘sound’ like to you?

Satoshi: Neither of us knows much about coffee, but we both like the smell of freshly brewed coffee and drink it often. Warm coffee is very relaxing. We are very happy and grateful if our music helps people to enjoy their coffee time!

Standart: What is your reaction when you hear your own music being played in a place like a café? And how would you begin to write music to the theme of ‘coffee’?

Satoshi: I have no actual experience of hearing our music like this at a café, but if I were to encounter such a situation, I would be happy and at the same time surprised that there’s someone who thinks our music fits a café-like setting, and would be impressed by that person’s taste in music if it suited the space. If I were to make music with coffee as a theme, I would aim for a slow but delightful sound that would suit a relaxing time. But in the process of production, it might somehow turn into a coffee-coloured monochrome drone sound.

Makoto: For us, it's difficult to make music about something, not just coffee. As I mentioned earlier, we make music by chance, like in a session, so if there is a theme, we end up asking ourselves, “Does this really go with the coffee?” I would keep on denying it and suffer from not being able to make it into a satisfactory form.