About Aube

"Aube" -- the moniker of Japan's Akifumi Nakajima -- is a french word which can be translated in a variety of ways ("the river's name," "white cloth," "dawn," and my personal favorite, "water-turbine," to name a few.) Nakajima-san has been recording since 1980 for pleasure, and -- after composing some soundtracks using water sounds for his friends 1990 -- began officially releasing material as Aube in 1991.

Nakajima-san has no traditional musical training, but has worked as an industrial graphic designer for many years. His gorgeous hand-made cassettes -- released mainly on his own G.R.O.S.S. label, out of Japan -- are themselves evidence of his skill and inventiveness in this field. I would imagine that he has designed, or at least had a hand in the design, of many of his CD releases as well, as they are often very inventively packaged.

Aube is well-known in the noise genre for his unique concept: for each release, Nakajima-san restricts himself to specific, limited sound sources (usually just one) and crafts entire albums which explore the nuances of sound which can be garnered from the given material. Though many of Aube's releases have been extremely noisy, Nakajima-san is also known for his controlled exploration of gentler, more ambient soundscapes, especially on releases of the past five years or so.

The source materials he selects vary greatly. He is particularly well-known for using water as a sound source, but has also used glow lamps, oscillators, stones, bells, fire, the human heartbeat, synthesizers, sheet metal, the Holy Bible, and other materials.

If the year 2000 brought us Merzbow's "Merzbox" release, it also brought us the rough Aube equivalent: his "Millenium" series. The Millenium series was composed of 12 discs -- 1 release for each month of the year, with a number of tracks equal to the number of days in the given month -- and, from what I understand, made use of the four elements as source material.

Aube has kept on with further releases since the Millenium series concluded, and his discography is rapidly growing to absolutely unheard of proportions. I am certain he's put out at least 100 solo releases -- quite possibly much more. He has also collaborated with a wide variety of experimental artists and contributed to numerous noise compilations. Aube completists, especially those just discovering him -- have their work cut out for them.