Biography
Masaki Batoh first gained recognition through his role as a founding member of Ghost, the enigmatic Japanese experimental rock outfit launched in 1984. Within that group he contributed guitar work, spontaneous improvisation, and command of assorted Japanese folk instruments, while the ensemble itself drew from psychedelia, classic rock, and progressive/Krautrock currents. Widely viewed as the band’s guiding spirit, Batoh also chose to dissolve Ghost in 2014. Outside the group he balances his creative output with a career as an acupuncturist running his own clinic in Tokyo; his independent projects range from the 2009 duo album Overloaded Ark with cellist Helena Espvall, through the Silence’s 2016 release Nine Suns, One Morning, to the 2012 Brain Pulse Music recordings made with a device that turns brain waves into sound, and onward to the spiritually oriented solo albums Nowhere (2019) and Smile Jesus Loves You! (2020).
Born in Kyoto, Batoh attended a private school in the city where he first heard Japanese groups such as Taj Mahal Travellers and Flower Travellin’ Band, which in turn led him to the Velvet Underground, Can, Faust, and other exploratory psych and hard-rock acts. He helped start Ghost in 1984, and after nearly a decade of nomadic life the band settled near Tokyo. While Ghost remained active, Batoh issued his earliest solo material: 1995’s Ghost from Darkened Sea offered a leaner version of the band’s approach, and 1996’s Kikaokubeshi explored electro-acoustic textures; both later appeared together on Drag City’s Collected Works 1995-1996. No further solo recordings appeared until 2008, when he and Espers’ Helena Espvall released a self-titled album on Drag City, followed the next year by Overloaded Ark.
After those two joint efforts, Batoh devoted considerable time to his acupuncture practice and to developing a method of composing with “extracted brain waves.” He enlisted MKC Inc. to build equipment that would capture signals from the brain’s parietal and frontal lobes, convert them into radio waves, and return them as audible “pulses.” Batoh described the process as capturing “the second-by-second reflection of our mental state [that] renders itself as sound and we hear it instantaneously,” with the aim of using the resulting music to “aid the anxieties of those all around him” and to link body and spirit within a unified cosmos. Although he initially planned an album drawn entirely from his own brain activity, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami prompted him to work instead with trauma survivors; the resulting seven-track Brain Pulse Music, which combined traditional Japanese strings, pipes, flutes, and wood blocks with the machine’s output, appeared in early 2012.
In 2014 Batoh ended Ghost after more than three decades. Soon afterward he assembled the Silence with former Ghost colleagues drummer Okano Futoshi and producer-arranger-keyboardist Kazuo Ogino, plus bassist Jan Stigter and saxophonist/flutist Ryuichi Yoshida. Drag City issued the group’s self-titled debut in 2015, followed quickly by Hark the Silence (2015) and Nine Suns, One Morning (2016). Batoh returned to solo work with 2019’s Nowhere, recorded in a folk-singer style that began with a simple live guitar-and-vocal performance captured on two microphones, with additional elements overdubbed only when required. The lyrics, delivered in English, Japanese, and Latin, touch on spiritual concerns and his earlier years of travel; that same year the Silence released a fourth album, Metaphysical Feedback. Another solo collection, Smile Jesus Loves You!, arrived in 2020, mixing tracks recorded alone with sessions featuring members of the Silence and drummer Hiroyuki Usui.
Born in Kyoto, Batoh attended a private school in the city where he first heard Japanese groups such as Taj Mahal Travellers and Flower Travellin’ Band, which in turn led him to the Velvet Underground, Can, Faust, and other exploratory psych and hard-rock acts. He helped start Ghost in 1984, and after nearly a decade of nomadic life the band settled near Tokyo. While Ghost remained active, Batoh issued his earliest solo material: 1995’s Ghost from Darkened Sea offered a leaner version of the band’s approach, and 1996’s Kikaokubeshi explored electro-acoustic textures; both later appeared together on Drag City’s Collected Works 1995-1996. No further solo recordings appeared until 2008, when he and Espers’ Helena Espvall released a self-titled album on Drag City, followed the next year by Overloaded Ark.
After those two joint efforts, Batoh devoted considerable time to his acupuncture practice and to developing a method of composing with “extracted brain waves.” He enlisted MKC Inc. to build equipment that would capture signals from the brain’s parietal and frontal lobes, convert them into radio waves, and return them as audible “pulses.” Batoh described the process as capturing “the second-by-second reflection of our mental state [that] renders itself as sound and we hear it instantaneously,” with the aim of using the resulting music to “aid the anxieties of those all around him” and to link body and spirit within a unified cosmos. Although he initially planned an album drawn entirely from his own brain activity, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami prompted him to work instead with trauma survivors; the resulting seven-track Brain Pulse Music, which combined traditional Japanese strings, pipes, flutes, and wood blocks with the machine’s output, appeared in early 2012.
In 2014 Batoh ended Ghost after more than three decades. Soon afterward he assembled the Silence with former Ghost colleagues drummer Okano Futoshi and producer-arranger-keyboardist Kazuo Ogino, plus bassist Jan Stigter and saxophonist/flutist Ryuichi Yoshida. Drag City issued the group’s self-titled debut in 2015, followed quickly by Hark the Silence (2015) and Nine Suns, One Morning (2016). Batoh returned to solo work with 2019’s Nowhere, recorded in a folk-singer style that began with a simple live guitar-and-vocal performance captured on two microphones, with additional elements overdubbed only when required. The lyrics, delivered in English, Japanese, and Latin, touch on spiritual concerns and his earlier years of travel; that same year the Silence released a fourth album, Metaphysical Feedback. Another solo collection, Smile Jesus Loves You!, arrived in 2020, mixing tracks recorded alone with sessions featuring members of the Silence and drummer Hiroyuki Usui.
Albums
Smile Jesus Loves YOU
2020
Nowhere
2019
Brain Pulse Music
2012
Overloaded Ark
2009
Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh
2008
Collected Works, 1995-1996
2004
Singles
