Baiyon

Tomohisa Kuramitsu, performing and recording as Baiyon, participates in Osaka’s freewheeling noise and electronica communities by staging shows and contributing tracks to compilations alongside Melt Banana and Satanicpornocultshop. His own pieces, assembled from field recordings combined with eight-bit textures and reworked video-game chips, shift fluidly between gentle whimsy and abrasive intensity, distinguishing them from those other acts. Kuramitsu began both painting and composing in 1998. Several years afterward he launched the Brain Escape Sandwich Recordings imprint, releasing a run of EPs that included Mixed Waste and the Hans Fjellestad collaboration Jusco Punk. Fjellestad later placed one of Baiyon’s pieces on the soundtrack to his 2004 documentary Moog. Working visually under the alias Wet Side, Kuramitsu brought his organic, squiggly sensibility to paintings, posters, T-shirts, underwear, and sets of copyright-free graphics.