Shigeo Sekito, Electone
B-side
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Shigeo Sekito approached electronic keyboards from an unusual direction. Trained in piano and composition, he became fascinated by Yamaha’s Electone and won Japan’s National Electone Competition in 1967. Between 1975 and 1977 he recorded four volumes of the Special Sound Series for Nippon Columbia, using the instrument less as a substitute for an orchestra than as a sound world of its own.
His music sits awkwardly — and interestingly — between categories. There are jazz harmonies, easy-listening arrangements, psychedelic textures and electronic timbres, but none fully defines it. That ambiguity is what makes Sekito sound so unusual today.
ELECTONE / SPECIAL SOUND SERIES
The Electone allowed Sekito to layer organ tones, rhythm patterns and orchestral colours within a single instrument. On Special Sound Series Vol. 2 he uses that palette on standards such as Yesterday, A Whiter Shade of Pale and This Masquerade, but the most distinctive moments are his own The Word I and The Word II.
The Word II later acquired a completely separate life outside its original context, becoming widely known through Mac DeMarco’s Chamber of Reflection and subsequent sampling in hip-hop. The strange part is how contemporary the original still sounds: soft, synthetic and slightly unreal, somewhere between lounge music, jazz and early electronic psychedelia.
SELECTED RECORDS
Special Sound Series Vol. 2: The Word — 1975
The record moves constantly between the familiar and the uncanny. Sekito takes recognisable melodies and rebuilds them through artificial strings, organ tones, electronic rhythm and heavily coloured keyboard textures. At times it sounds almost domestic and reassuring; a few seconds later the same palette becomes strangely detached and dreamlike.
For me, The Word II reveals the album most clearly. A simple melodic figure repeats over an electronic pulse while the Electone seems to hover between organ, synthesizer and something harder to identify. It is precisely that artificial quality that gives the recording its character.
LISTEN / THE WORD II
Shigeo Sekito — Electone, arrangements
Original issue: Nippon Columbia, GS-7012
Released: January 25, 1975
Shigeo Sekito approached electronic keyboards from an unusual direction. Trained in piano and composition, he became fascinated by Yamaha’s Electone and won Japan’s National Electone Competition in 1967. Between 1975 and 1977 he recorded four volumes of the Special Sound Series for Nippon Columbia, using the instrument less as a substitute for an orchestra than as a sound world of its own.
His music sits awkwardly — and interestingly — between categories. There are jazz harmonies, easy-listening arrangements, psychedelic textures and electronic timbres, but none fully defines it. That ambiguity is what makes Sekito sound so unusual today.
ELECTONE / SPECIAL SOUND SERIES
The Electone allowed Sekito to layer organ tones, rhythm patterns and orchestral colours within a single instrument. On Special Sound Series Vol. 2 he uses that palette on standards such as Yesterday, A Whiter Shade of Pale and This Masquerade, but the most distinctive moments are his own The Word I and The Word II.
The Word II later acquired a completely separate life outside its original context, becoming widely known through Mac DeMarco’s Chamber of Reflection and subsequent sampling in hip-hop. The strange part is how contemporary the original still sounds: soft, synthetic and slightly unreal, somewhere between lounge music, jazz and early electronic psychedelia.
SELECTED RECORDS
Special Sound Series Vol. 2: The Word — 1975
The record moves constantly between the familiar and the uncanny. Sekito takes recognisable melodies and rebuilds them through artificial strings, organ tones, electronic rhythm and heavily coloured keyboard textures. At times it sounds almost domestic and reassuring; a few seconds later the same palette becomes strangely detached and dreamlike.
For me, The Word II reveals the album most clearly. A simple melodic figure repeats over an electronic pulse while the Electone seems to hover between organ, synthesizer and something harder to identify. It is precisely that artificial quality that gives the recording its character.
LISTEN / THE WORD II
Shigeo Sekito — Electone, arrangements
Original issue: Nippon Columbia, GS-7012
Released: January 25, 1975
