About The FURICO Music Team (FMT)
The FURICO Music Team is a genre-free creative group of two members (at the moment): TI and TM.
Another musician expressed our music in language like this, which we like very much: "Funny and funky in a kind of serious way:)"
Our objective is "to create what we love to listen to but can't find anywhere."
TM says,
"Musical artists sometimes let me (or probably us) say "what is this!?" and confused. Now there are few chances like that. Fine, we want to surprise and confuse ourselves. That's the effect of innovativeness as well as the heart I hope FMT to have. "
TI often says:
"The fool can't make it, and the wise won't, either."
The Team are now creating tracks only with a five-lines notation software MuseScore and Studio One for synthesizers, samplers, and mixing. The Team consider it valuable and meaningful to compose with five-lines scores. In fact, we don’t use any instrument when composing. (For further details we explain the process in the "How are FMT creating tracks" page.)
Two of us do not have any fixed role; each composes / creates and sends a file to the other. Even though we play keyboards and drums, we have not played live for FURICO.
(TM added in March 2023: As I write many pieces and nearly complete MIDI data in the notation software, in most cases I've originally composed and produced the works so far. But these are not necessarily my fixed roles.)
Also, we both have no intention to make music by profession at all. Both are professionals in particular domains irrelevant to music.
Also, we both have no intention to make music by profession at all. Both are professionals in particular domains irrelevant to music.
The page on "The Roots of FMT's Style (FMT Classics)" shows you how it has come since FMT were founded in 2016.
According to Gary Rees, who have worked in collaboration with FMT,
"I was immediately enamored of the duo’s unique style and challenging songs. And yet, there was something about their music that just made sense at a gut level. Their music isn’t something one can easily hum along to. But it tickled a part of my brain like a puzzle I knew I could solve with some work."
"In my 20s... (Although such a phrase might worry you about how long my story lasts, it shouldn't take too long :) ) My direction shifted completely. Living in various places in the world such as Britain, Ireland and the United States as well as Japan, I loved (and do now) ballet/dance music, contemporary, modern, Romanticism, traditional folk music and ancient music. Although I have been influenced by too many artists or genres, if I name just a few examples, I would say Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovski, Sergei Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, Talking Heads, Steve Reich, Sting, Brian Eno, Japan, etc, etc.
FURICO means a pendulum in Japanese. At its start FURICO was a project for researching innovation processes and one of the findings is that innovation is very often generated through transforming the team or thinking back and forth between “latitude” and “urgency”, which is much like a pendulum moves.
That well reflects our musicality after two members (TI and TM) of the project started creating music. (That is why “Music Team” was added to the name. I (TM) imagine that other branch teams irrelevant to music would be fun and funny, like “The FURICO Football Tactical Analysis Team” for instance.)
FURICO is also the abbreviation for “Frontiers Undertake and Realise Innovation with Creativity and Optimisation”, but it was just a sort of wordplay for us.
Basically, we keep our activities on the Internet only, and we don't do any music activities other than uploading music to SoundCloud and YouTube. There are no plans for live performances. (If we do, I (TI) think it will be a completely different form of live performance than it has been.)
(TM added in 2023: we created an album of live performance in 2022 but that was all fictional but for guest musicians' play.)
We have no intention of making music into a business, and we have no desire to promote it as individuals.
We have yet to change images in this website as well as our YouTube channel. Moss will be grown there sooner or later as well.
According to Gary Rees, who have worked in collaboration with FMT,
"I was immediately enamored of the duo’s unique style and challenging songs. And yet, there was something about their music that just made sense at a gut level. Their music isn’t something one can easily hum along to. But it tickled a part of my brain like a puzzle I knew I could solve with some work."
TI: Musical Background
"My parents were a typical late 20th century Japanese office worker and housewife with no formal education in music, but they loved music and our house was full of instruments.
"Not a metaphor, but really overflowing. As a child, my classmates would say, "TI's family sleeps among their instruments.
"The only thing we didn't have at home was a drum set. But there was an Ace Tone rhythm box. There were various kinds of guitars in the house, as well as a piano and an electronic organ with Leslie speakers, a violin and cello, a wood bass, and a trumpet. There are no Leslie speakers in a typical Japanese home.
"However, since my parents had no formal music education, they wanted their children to have it, and from the age of three, I went to music school and learned strict solfege and composition along with piano and other instruments (at first in the German way*, and from junior high school onwards in the French way). However, as I wrote in my notes for "M to W" and "King Of Tokyo", I was inspired by the words of my last teacher and eventually decided to create music away from them.
As for Western classical music in Japan, the German style seems to be the mainstream.
"However, I didn't go to music college and majored in Japanese art history.
"The musicians and songs that influenced me and their backgrounds are too numerous to describe. I have written about them in the notes for each piece."
(Please also refer to "What is FMT's music? - An essay by TI.")
TM: Musical Background
"My father loved jazz and Hawaiian music and played them sometimes. Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, I learned to play the classical piano around seven to eight years old, which I didn't like very much. But that became useful for me much later.
"In my teen age years, as MTV boomed, I got suddenly mad about the British / American / Japanese electronic music at that time. My moderate piano skills made it natural that I played the synthesizers. My first one was Korg MonoPoly. I loved that.
"Also, when I first saw a drum kit in my school at the age of 14, I intuitively felt I could play it. Actually I could to some extent. Since there was shortage of drummers around my music friends, I was appointed by many bands as the drummer, rather than keyboard player. I counted them years ago, and I played it for over 50 bands during that period. I met TI at one of those. I enjoyed those a lot and studied musical theory as well as arrangement. Such experience expanded the width of my musical diversity.
"In my 20s... (Although such a phrase might worry you about how long my story lasts, it shouldn't take too long :) ) My direction shifted completely. Living in various places in the world such as Britain, Ireland and the United States as well as Japan, I loved (and do now) ballet/dance music, contemporary, modern, Romanticism, traditional folk music and ancient music. Although I have been influenced by too many artists or genres, if I name just a few examples, I would say Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovski, Sergei Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, Talking Heads, Steve Reich, Sting, Brian Eno, Japan, etc, etc.
"After that I hardly played music, but at the same time my dissatisfaction with music I heard here and there gradually became greater. Simultaneously, I often came up with innovative ideas (to me) to create music and my desire to realise them got huge. Then I got started FMT together with TI. Throughout my youth, I was thinking 'I don't want to be a player but am a creator', so I'm enormously happy and grateful for what I'm doing now."
How The FURICO Music Team got the name
FURICO means a pendulum in Japanese. At its start FURICO was a project for researching innovation processes and one of the findings is that innovation is very often generated through transforming the team or thinking back and forth between “latitude” and “urgency”, which is much like a pendulum moves.
That well reflects our musicality after two members (TI and TM) of the project started creating music. (That is why “Music Team” was added to the name. I (TM) imagine that other branch teams irrelevant to music would be fun and funny, like “The FURICO Football Tactical Analysis Team” for instance.)
FURICO is also the abbreviation for “Frontiers Undertake and Realise Innovation with Creativity and Optimisation”, but it was just a sort of wordplay for us.
The Principles of Activities
Basically, we keep our activities on the Internet only, and we don't do any music activities other than uploading music to SoundCloud and YouTube. There are no plans for live performances. (If we do, I (TI) think it will be a completely different form of live performance than it has been.)
(TM added in 2023: we created an album of live performance in 2022 but that was all fictional but for guest musicians' play.)
We have no intention of making music into a business, and we have no desire to promote it as individuals.
We have a lot of interest and willingness to collaborate with other musicians as well as artists in non-music genres.
If you could have interest in collaboration with FMT, we would be very grateful and inclined to realise it under some conditions as linked here.
Media
SoundCloud: "The FURICO Music Team - Music Works"
The main medium where FMT reveal the tracks is SoundCloud in the page of "The FURICO Music Team - Music Works", managed mainly by TI. We are so grateful that we knew various brilliant musicians all over the world each other and they and other listeners listen to our tracks there. So, we hope any listener to feel free to leave comments and send direct messages to us.
SoundCloud: "The FURICO Production"
We added another account named "The FURICO Production", where primarily TM selects and praises other artists' tracks that TM values and loves for "FURICO Playlists". The Production aims to do that for various artists not only in music.
YouTube: Notation and Rare Tracks
FMT disclose the "notation videos" on YouTube. We started to upload our tracks there almost only for ourselves; we still have no commercial purposes there. For us the notations are very important and our YouTube channel stocks the notation videos of every track. But we have some tracks that we don't have on SoundCloud and some tracks of different versions from SoundCloud as well as the playlists as listed at the bottom of this page. Anyone can view them all, anyway.
This website
We value text content, such as the notes on each track and our musical thoughts. FMT always have intentions one note by one and are enthusiastic to write them down here in this official website. You can click the notes listed on the right side anywhere in this website.
Social Networks
We post FMT's new updates on our Facebook Page (linked here), which you can receive if you press "Like." Similarly, in April 2021, we opened our X (Twitter) page and Instagram page.Music Distributors
FMT's albums, such as "Unphysical", are available via the subscription services of most of the major music distributors including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music.
(Alibaba, iHeartRadio, Napster, Saavn, Sound Exchange, TikTok, Google Play / YouTube Music, Boomplay, Claro Mùsica, NetEase, 7digital, Twitch, AMI Entertainment, Deezer, KKBox, Pandora Plus, Tencent, VK, Anghami, Facebook / Instagram, Melon Plus, Resso, Simfy Africa, Tidal, Yandex)
Unifying Images of Moss (October 2021)
(TM writes:)
We are trying to replace all FMT's images to ones of moss. Such images are already used in SoundCloud, Facebook and X (Twitter) as well as newly opened SoundCloud page, "The FURICO Production."
For example, FMT's Facebook page uses this photograph for its background.
This is the new icon in SoundCloud, Facebook and X (Twitter).
While moss, which grows in humid woods, seems quite Japanese to us, moss itself is not necessarily so. Some Buddhism temples grow moss in their gardens to signify narvana; it looks wild but is artificial in a sense. The gardens look ancient but are actually alive at the moment.
But, anyway, it is so beautiful that it does not really matter whether Japanese or not, whether wild or artificial, or whether ancient or present. I (TM) feel FMT has the ambience of moss like this.