Biography
Originating from Tokyo, Japan, Tetsu Inoue has built a body of work as an ambient composer whose solo releases and joint projects with Pete Namlook, Jonah Sharp, and Atom Heart stand as key recordings in the development of new-school ambient and experimental electronic music. Music entered his life during high school through guitar duties in pop and rock cover groups. From there he turned toward synthesizers and early monophonic sequencers, shaped by the mix of pop, psychedelic rock, and experimental electronics advanced by Pink Floyd, Tomita, and especially Yellow Magic Orchestra. By the middle of the 1980s he was composing scores for ballet companies and smaller dance ensembles. Around 1986 Inoue settled in New York long enough to secure an apartment, then spent an extended period in San Francisco, where he played guitar in karaoke bands and began collaborating with the local composer Naut Humon. He returned to New York shortly afterward to keep building his stock of demo material and traveled to Germany in the late 1980s, where he met Uwe Schmidt, also known as Atom Heart, and Pete Namlook. Although the trip was meant as a vacation, Inoue produced his first material intended for release while in Frankfurt, resulting in the Station Rose collaboration with Schmidt on the Cyclotron label. Back in New York he launched several projects with Namlook. At the same time he briefly explored dance styles such as techno and trance, yet his focus shifted steadily toward strictly ambient composition, and Namlook’s Fax label issued a number of his albums from the early through the mid-1990s. Among the strongest of those solo and collaborative releases are 2350 Broadway and Shades of Orion with Namlook, Electro Harmonix with Jonah Sharp, and the solo albums Ambiant Otaku, Organic Cloud, and Slow and Low. His fully formed aesthetic fuses haunting and contemplative soundscapes, layers of heavily treated samples and field recordings, and occasional sparse percussion. That approach is most clearly realized on MU, issued with Atom Heart under the name Masters of Psychedelic Ambiance, and on World Receiver.
Albums
