Toiret Status - OTOHIME (2020)

Toiret Status is Isamu Yorichika from Yamaguchi, Japan. His new work Otohime is his first vinyl record and his second album on Orange Milk following ◎omaru◎ in 2016. Otohime includes collaborations with Co La, and Yoshitaka Hikawa. He has also released music on the labels Noumenal Loom, Plus 100 Records, Pedicure Records, Wasabi Tapes, and Slagwerk.

Isamu began making music as a drummer for noise and hardcore bands which led to his first solo recordings in 2015. As Toiret Status he has said that he wants to create work resembling the idea of food going through digestion, excretion, and then flushing. This cycle is like the regurgitation of sounds sampled from his daily life: movies, video games, and field recordings. The sources are digested and then flushed back out as a different color.

I watched a Toiret Status performance in Fukuoka Japan in a shrine on top of a sumo ring. The show promoters were serving Japanese BBQ (Yakiniku / Yakitori) with a distinct common Japanese BBQ sauce and Heinz yellow mustard, and it was possibly some of the best food I have ever had. While I was eating I watched Isamu aggressively move around the sumo rink using a nintendo controller as a midi device, triggering intense bursts of sound. The first two steps in his goal - consumption and digestion - were happening to me when I first met him. The dedication Japanese people often display in art was also apparent while watching his performance; it felt like a congealing of "Japanese-ness" with the sumo rink, shrine, food, joyful and absurd music all meshing together in a quick burst.

Isamu’s new Toiret Status record Otohime is named after a fairy tale queen (with magical powers?) who lives undersea and entertains travelers by giving out gifts like jewelry. In Japanese this title could be an apt pun for - sound queen. However, Isamu stated that the title is a wishful statement about how his music would be utilized in the future. When people flush a toilet, he hopes his music might play and become a funny reminder of the Japanese emphasis on politeness and social tact. He likes the idea of turning something awkward into something fun. Toiret Status uses romaji (English letters written in Japanese phonetics to describe a foreign or new idea that is not in the Japanese tradition) for his album title, to hint at a pun and imply the desired function of the music while simultaneously alluding to Japanese folklore - a queen who makes music.