News From Red Bull Music Academy

The Red Bull Music Academy has been around the world over the last fifteen years, and this autumn is heading to Tokyo.

Music makers of all styles, methodologies and levels of experience are invited to apply by March 18, 2014 for a two-week escapade exploring music from every angle, an experience that many alumni have described as life-changing.

To apply for the Red Bull Music Academy in Tokyo, music makers must be 20 years of age by October 12, 2014.

For all information, FAQs and to download the application form, prospective applicants should find their way to http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/apply

To gain audible insights into the goings-on at the most recent edition, take a listen to the infamous yearly compilation Various Assets - Not For Sale. It provides a snapshot of the ideas and collaborative projects that tend to spring out of Red Bull Music Academy studio sessions. The latest edition of Various Assets features 30 tracks created by participants at the Academy in New York. It includes a few solo tracks, and a whole lot of collaborations, including input from the likes of Stephen Bruner (Thundercat), Dam Funk and Patrick Pulsinger.

As time passes at the Academy, those initial inhibitions are lost, and the fun starts. One dollar pizza slices become instant inspiration - a misheard guitar lick from the next studio over, too.

And the equipment room, that trove of instruments, synths, drum machines and other mysterious circuitry, is emptied as its contents are used to populate ten bedroom-sized studios.

Various Assets - Not For Sale is available now for download on www.redbullmusicacademy.com/various-assets.

The Red Bull Music Academy takes its complement of music festivals and workshops to a new city each year, and previous stops have included NYC, Toronto, London, Madrid, Sao Paulo, Melbourne, and Cape Town. Tokyo is one of the world's most iconic cities - a place that tends to inspire mythic reimagining. This is a country that has long embraced the soul in the machine, while its composers, equipment designers and game soundtracks have had an inestimable influence on modern music.

Ever since the pioneering work of artists like Isao Tomita, YMO and Yann Tomita, the country has produced many fine purveyors of detailed, ethereal soundscapes and electronic music with elements of new wave, jazz or psychedelia.

Technology provides a constant departure point, and many of Japan's front-running electronic music artists- Daito Manabe and Ryoji Ikeda among them - have embraced the use of video art, multimedia platforms and large-scale visual installations in realising their work.

Dancehall, hip hop, garage rock, experimental music and funk and soul have variously grown into burgeoning scenes on the streets of Harajuku, in big music arenas, in grand concert halls, and in the many small but well-stocked second hand record stores that are a collector's dream.

Tokyo, the original urban jungle, with over 13 million inhabitants, is a place where the ancient past and the recently imagined future are deeply entwined, and vestiges of old Edo underlie the city's sprawl. We're excited to become part of the sonic kaleidoscope this fall.

From October 12 through November 14, 2014, the world-travelling music lab and festival will set up shop in the city for five weeks' worth of workshops, concerts, club nights, and all-round musical extravaganzas held all across the city. - via Motor Mouth Media.