Shiga Prefecture-based musician Erik Luebs, who works under the moniker Magical Mistakes, wanted to record the majority of sounds on his new album, "Everything Uncertain," by himself. Save for a few vocal snippets and 808 bass drums, his newest full-length leans heavily on natural sounds from the world around him.
"I try to create a canvas on which the actual music takes place," Luebs says. "For me, that canvas is trying to occupy a physical space that we can hear, feel, touch and see. The palette that I chose was organic sounds."
This approach — which includes weaving in recordings of plants, papers and coins into the tracks, or in one instance, using a shōchū liquor box for percussion — makes "Everything Uncertain" stand out within Osaka's electronic-music scene (though it's something that Tokyo-based beatmaker Yosi Horikawa also does very well). Released on Day Tripper Records, Luebs says he was trying to use less hip-hop-inspired beats, which many electronic artists in Kansai currently gravitate toward.