Label: Room40

同レーベルに2007年に残した名作[Totemo Aimasho = とてもあいましょう]の新装版がリリースされた日本のポップユニット"テニスコーツ"。本作はそれと同タイミングにて出版された、2009年オーストラリアはホバートでの録音を収録したカセット[Tasmania Bootleg]。Lawrence English自身がフィールドレコーディング・スタイルで記録した生々しいテクスチャーで統一、意図的にブートレグ的感触を全面に出した心地良いラフさが魅力の高内容。タスマニアで撮影された写真を掲載したJカードのデザインが非常に美しい。





Embossed matte laminate jacket, three panel monochome print insert, polycarb case. Also includes a special digital photobook shot during Tenniscoats time in Tasmania.

When I was preparing the 15th anniversary re-issue of Totemo Aimasho I spent a few days doing a deep dive through the room40 archive. There’s a hell of a lot of material that has been collected over the years, and truth be told I don’t exactly remember a lot of it.

About a day into this search, I came across this recording.

Tasmania Bootleg was recorded on Sunday the 15th of February 2009, at The Brisbane Hotel in Hobart. The visit to Hobart came about pretty last minute, so my email chain from the time seems to suggest.

I’d invited Tenniscoats down to Australia to help celebrate the finale of the Fabrique seres I was curating at Brisbane Powerhouse. Some folks from Hobart reached out once the other tour dates were announced and then before we knew it, we were headed there.

As part of the Hobart visit we recorded a suite of material using the same ‘field recording’ style we used to create Temporacha in Tokyo the previous year. We also took the chance to record the show at The Brisbane Hotel.

This recording is 100% bootleg territory. I must confess to being a huge fan of this style of recording. I was an enormous cassette trader back in my teen years and I put down a lot of my interests in texture and noise to the quality of duplicated bootlegs I listened to back then.

This recording was made in the audience by a friendly local and is an entirely faithful capture of the atmosphere that surrounded Tenniscoats during this time. You can literally hear the audience becoming completely entranced by Saya and Ueno’s performance. I was honoured to play alongside them for this show. It’s not something I talk about much, but my first life in music was as a drummer and a flicker of that life is captured here.

The edition also comes with a digital phonebook, containing photos in 110 and other formats, that were captured in Tasmania during that time.