"I think people come to my shows to hear a 'nostalgic' sound, something that they might have otherwise forgotten," says Hideki Matsutake, who has been at the forefront of Japan's electronic music scene since its beginnings.
Fans of Yellow Magic Orchestra may know Matsutake as the band's "fourth member," so-called for his sound-engineering work for the Japanese supergroup during their main period of activity between 1978 and 1983. Others might know of him for his solo project Logic System, formed in 1982, as well as for being the man who essentially popularized the synthesizer in Japan — an instrument for which Matsutake now finds himself acting as an ambassador of sorts.
"I heard my first synthesizer in Osaka in the 1970s, and then a couple of years later I bought one of my own, a Moog 3-C, which cost me ¥12 million, about two-thirds of which was a tax on what the government deemed 'luxury items,' " laughs Matsutake, perhaps disputing the idea that the instrument that defined his career was at all a luxury. Certainly, at the better part of $450,000 (converted roughly into modern rates), it's a fair bit more expensive than the MacBook Pro that your budding electronic producer can get by with nowadays.