With his debut-album “Translations” the 33 year-old producer and turntablist presents himself and his musical atmospheres – always authentic and organic, concentrated and relaxed. Inspired by Jazz, alive and living in Hip Hop, all the while with the grasp of the instinctive composer and the intuitive storyteller, Samon Kawamura, who was raised in Tokyo and lives in Berlin, Germany, successfully squares the circle: “Translations” is elegant but with rough edges, devoid of a message but very me... Read more >>

With his debut-album “Translations” the 33 year-old producer and turntablist presents himself and his musical atmospheres – always authentic and organic, concentrated and relaxed. Inspired by Jazz, alive and living in Hip Hop, all the while with the grasp of the instinctive composer and the intuitive storyteller, Samon Kawamura, who was raised in Tokyo and lives in Berlin, Germany, successfully squares the circle: “Translations” is elegant but with rough edges, devoid of a message but very meaningful; the music operates discreetly but insistingly, is comprehensible and profound, while spanning and connecting in short, concise episodes from Pete Rock to Pharoah Sanders, from Madlib to Marvin Gaye or Moondog, from J Dilla to Debussy. The qualities Samon Kawamura has refined behind artists as diverse as Marsmobil, Till Brönner, Lychee Lassi, Uri Caine, Joy Denalane, Max Herre or Nylon, now yield extremely individual and personal fruit. “If one should hear my music blindfolded, it would stand for itself”, Samon Kawamura notes in his shy, quiet manner. “It is definitely something to be taken seriously – my first calling card.” Samon Kawamura was born in the German city of Heilbronn in 1973. His father, a Japanese graphic-designer and artist, met his German mother on Iceland, where she was working as a goldsmith. Samon was only one years old when the family moved to Tokyo. As a trilingual “hafu” (“half”), he experienced a perfect blend of Japanese, American and German lifestyles, studying at the German school in Omori and hanging with his friends from the nearby American school. As a fan of Black Music he starts learning to play the drums at the age of eleven, playing favourites by Brothers Johnson or Earth, Wind & Fire, until he discovers and devours DJ-culture just a few years later. Inspired by the DMC-championships and influenced by Hip Hop-icons like Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr or De La Soul, while always keeping an open ear to Prince, Michael Jackson and even Madonna (“Back then in Japan music wasn’t as strictly categorized.”), he deejays at school-balls and private parties. At 21, having enjoyed his first release on a club-compilation for Victor BMG Japan, Samon Kawamura buys a sampler and moves to Germany –to study Japanology, officially, but actually to supply the local scene with his beats. In 1995 alerady he is asked to join the band “be” as their DJ. “That was my apprenticeship”, states Samon, who toured for almost five years with “be” across Europe – from festivals like “Rock Am Ring” to opening gigs for “Jazzmatazz”. In 2000 he began work on beats and tracks for Jazz trumpeter Till Brönner’s album “Blue Eyed Soul”. Hardly a year after the international success of this mainly instrumental NuSoul/Jazz-album, having played yet more live appearances from Japan to most European Jazz festivals, Samon joins Roberto Di Gioia’s “marsmobil”. The second album by this “Future Sound of Jazz”-band, which was produced by Peter Kruder und Christian Prommer for Compost records in 2006, once again features Samon’s sampling sensibilities in every imaginable live-situation. Now, Samon Kawamura has produced his own debut-album “Translations” for Nesola, the label of German Hip Hop-hero Max Herre (with whom Samon enjoys a steady and fruitful relationship). „It was really time to release my own stuff“, emphasizes Samon Kawamura. “I worked on this music for three years in the studio, whenever my enjoyable duties as a father and househusband allowed for it. I originally started out with the intention of producing a few interludes, just short musical episodes, very much like those Pete Rock likes to conclude his tracks with. Highly atmospherical, tight and multi-layered, mainly instrumental, but every now and then with a few spoken or sung elements as well.” Samon initiates his music, quite classically, on the piano. “I play a few chords, just a short progression”, he explains. “When it’s good, I immediately hear a beat to it. Then, if I should think that the track is missing a certain live-element, I send it on to my good friend Roberto Di Gioia. Most of the time he will send his Fender Rhodes- or Bass-overdubs back to me within an hour. At the end, last but not least, I turntablize some samples over the whole thing.” The golden rule: Everything has to happen in one take, live to the track, definitely not quantised and as analog as humanly possible in the age of digital. Roughly 180 tracks came to life that way, out of which Samon now chose the twenty-one that make up the fascinating flow of his debut-album. “Translations” translates feelings and thoughts into music, clearly and vicariously. It is up to each and every listener to make something out of these relaxed and exciting 62 minutes, to think his or her very individual and definitely cinematic thoughts along to it. “If we listen to the beat, the wheels start turning in our heads”, as the voice says in “Destination Blue”. Of course, every track works on its own as well, from the elegantly choppy choirs in the “Intro” via the dirty beats of “Unu” or “Astral”, the jazzy-spherical hommage to Pharoah Sanders and Lonnie Liston Smith, all the way to the headnoddin’ “Timeless Space” or the slap bass- and flute-sensuality of “How Long?”. “I’m not a friend of excess lengths”, says Samon, whose longest track clocks in at 4:44. “There definitely is music out there that needs eight minutes. But I prefer it, if the same thing can be said in two. Just like at a live-show: Always leave them wanting more.” That this reduction actually enhances many a mood, maybe even helps it unfold, because nothing is exhausted, is just one of the many qualities of Samon Kawamura’s “Translations”. In every little detail and as a whole this music leaves its mark, as distinctly sound as individually interpretable. It is athmospheric, which fits a “non-lingual person” like Samon Kawamura perfectly. “When I was a boy I already liked to drive through the city at night, whether it was on the subway or in a car, watching the lights and observing the many different people, looking at the reflections in a rear-view mirror, feeling the city around me. That is and was always a somewhat cinematic experience for me”, he explains. “I am a city-person through and through. And that is just what I wanted to put on record with my music. Literally I just wanted to create a soundtrack to my city experiences.” “Translations” is this eventful and moving Instrumental Hip Hop-soundtrack – earthy, honestly, finally