Hiroyuki Nagashima, the core member of the Japanese experimental electronic project Dowser, discusses his latest release, Schema 1+2. 

Nagashima has been a vital force in the Japanese avant-garde scene since the late 1980s. Beyond Dowser, he is a celebrated composer and sound designer whose filmography includes scoring Sogo Ishii’s The Master of Shiatsu and the 1991 cult cyberpunk horror 964 Pinocchio—the soundtrack of which actually served as Dowser’s debut release. When he isn’t composing, Nagashima shares his expertise as a professor of sound design at the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Schema 1+2 is arriving 20 years after his last official label release, 2006’s AA+, and 12 years since his last self-released physical album. Rooted heavily in experimental electronic noise, the album consists of cosmic collages that seamlessly weave together raw field recordings, white noise, and vintage modular synthesizers like the EMS and Buchla.

In this interview, Nagashima dives into his creative discipline, collaborating with avant-garde legend Phew, composing for film and games, and navigating the modern Japanese underground art scene.

The following interview occurred in person following Nagashima’s performance at an All Horned Animals event in Shinjuku.

Sound as a daily function: The origins of Schema 1 + 2 

JP ALT : You’ve been uploading tracks to SoundCloud almost daily. Now, you’ve released Schema 1+2 as a physical 2-CD set. Why choose a physical format, and do you prefer releasing directly via digital platforms?

Nagashima: I’ve been uploading almost every day for about 15 years, starting on YouTube before moving to SoundCloud. But I don’t consider those daily uploads to be finished “works of art.” They are fragments. Creating sound every day is just a part of my life—a process as natural as eating, working, or going to the bathroom. Schema 1+2 is a package born from editing those fragments. I stitched together these 40-minute stories from randomly selected tracks spanning those 15 years. It’s an edited sound diary.

JP ALT: Is it difficult to create music every single day?

Nagashima: It is not. I do it every day. Dowser actually consists of three people: myself, Terai, and Miyagawa (who handles graphics). Terai lives in Nara, and he sends me sound data every single day. I wake up, listen to what he sent, edit it, and add my own synthesizers. That’s the usual pattern, though sometimes I release things I made entirely on my own.

JP ALT: You force yourself to finish editing Terai’s data, adding your own performance, and combining it with Miyagawa’s artwork all within a strict two-hour window. Why impose such strict rules on yourself?

Nagashima: It’s a form of discipline, or training. You have to train yourself.

Technology and collaboration 

JP ALT: You’ve mentioned before that virtual instruments are missing unpredictability that make analog instruments feel alive. Do you think unpredictability is exclusive to analog, or can digital reproduce that friction?

Nagashima: It depends on where digital technology is heading and what it wants to achieve. Right now, it hasn’t really moved in the direction of what I need. But maybe a new innovator in virtual instruments will do what I have in mind.

JP ALT: The spatial atmosphere of Schema 1+2 sounds like another world. How did you achieve this?

Nagashima: I don’t feel like I did anything particularly unusual. The environment is very minimal. If it sounds special, it’s probably because it reflects the deep accumulation of musical memories that Terai, Miyagawa, and I share.

JP ALT: You frequently collaborate with your wife the avant-garde legend Phew. When working together, how do you manage the dynamics? Do you assign roles, or clash ideas?

Nagashima: It’s all about communication. When Phew makes a solo album, she creates everything on her digital audio workstation (DAW) and sends the data to me. I edit it or add synthesizers. Sometimes her initial ideas take crazy directions! But the rule is: she always throws the first ball. I don’t make suggestions about what kind of ball she should throw. Whatever she sends, my job is to catch it first and accept it.

Film scores, the industry and surviving the modern world 

JP ALTI: Schema 1+2 is dedicated to the late underground film director Shozin Fukui. Was that the intention from the beginning?

Nagashima: It ended up being a dedication. The truth is, I just really wanted him to hear this album, but unfortunately, he passed away. So, dedicating it to him was just the natural result of that.

JP ALT: Speaking of films, is your mindset different when scoring a film versus creating Dowser music? What about game music?

Nagashima: The mindset is exactly the same, although film scores require making “ordinary” music that Dowser wouldn’t normally make.

JP ALT: You made music for games previously as well.

Nagashima: Game music is a completely different beast. Film is linear—the length is fixed. Games are interactive, so the length isn’t fixed. It changes what the client needs completely.

JP ALT: Recently, Japanese underground music has gained attention overseas. Why is it still difficult for independent Japanese music to truly cross borders and connect with global listeners?

Nagashima: It’s a difficult issue. I work in film too, and while Japanese art films might get acclaimed at places like Cannes, business is a totally different story. It rarely makes money. The same goes for music. Japanese artists have unique, artistically advanced things to offer, but monetizing it in the modern streaming era is very hard. It’s a societal issue affecting both filmmakers and musicians today.

JP ALT: Finally, what do you want listeners to feel when they hear Schema 1+2?

Nagashima: I don’t really have a specific message for them. The world is going crazy right now, and we are just putting this music out into it. If someone feels something from it, a new story is born—whether good or bad. What I will say is: I just want everyone to survive. Also, 20th-century humanism might be fading, but you still have to go out and meet people. Humans can’t live without meeting others.

Schema 1+2: Review

“Schema 1+2” is the latest work from Dowser, consisting of Hiroyuki Nagashima, Masateru Terai, and the illustrator Takashi Miyagawa. Schema 1+2 spans over 2 discs, each disc hosting an unbroken 40 minute track. On the surface, this album seems like a very long endeavour into different sound patterns, constantly changing and overlapping. An untrained ear could hear chaos. But, in reality, Schema 1+2 is one of the most harmonious albums to release in a long time. 

The title “Schema” —an organized mental framework, or the lens in which we view the world– encapsulates the nature of this album perfectly. The project is the bizarre love child, created by th framework that organised the experience of creating this album for the members of Dowser. As Nagashima would explain in his interview with JP ALT on his habits of uploading music daily for 15 years, 

“ They are fragments. […]Schema 1+2 is a package born from editing those fragments. I stitched together these 40-minute stories from randomly selected tracks spanning those 15 years.

Those fragments in themselves would dissolve. Created in a disciplined and almost bordering on a ritualistic practice, ‘Schema 1+2 is the result of obsessive and meticulous collaboration. 

Two hours per day accumulated into fifteen years— what we imagine would be hours and terabytes of audio was traded between the Dowser members. This fragmented and intensive collaboration style, alongside Nagashima’s extensive Soundcloud portfolio, would shape into the fragments that pull Schema 1+2 into its core, as the trio gives these distorted pieces of a larger picture a new life.

Miyagawa’s visual contribution is another key component of Dowser’s puzzle. His automatic drawings are unplanned works of art, produced without conscious intent. They provide a visual container for music that is built on the same principle— art as a schematic, intrinsic task, without monstrous effort and planning. As Mr. Nagashima stated, it is a part of his daily routine, no different from eating or sleeping. Dowser even describes themselves as an “Unconscious Electronic Sound Collective”, which is accurate;all those daily fragments bypass the calculating mind and are intrinsically produced on this album.

Members Nagashima, Terai and Miyagawa work the same roles on the same rhythm every day, akin to the  same organism being distributed across three different bodies. Schema 1 + 2 is that organism looking in the mirror whilst presenting us with the group’s daily lives. 

‘Schema 1’ opens the album in motion, with a kinetic sound shifting between melodic electronica and bursts of noise that carry this almost ludic quality. The listener’s duty here is navigation rather than passive observation of the soundscapes. Upon opening, there is a barrage of different noises and melodies  flying your way that you need to walk through this world  on its terms,  trying your best to acknowledge every sound that comes. 

There is something in the noisier, more energetic passages that recalls game music; it’s like the sound is organised around the idea of moving through space. This all sits alongside the quieter, occasionally acoustic fragments, arriving without warning and dissolving even faster, sometimes without the listener noticing. Thanks to this contiguity of differing states and the fluidity of them changing or disappearing, the piece sounds like it’s refusing to settle and is in constant movement. 

‘Schema 2’ is quieter and stranger. The first disc’s stratagem is movement, and the second track  simply lingers. It also changes a lot, yes, but at a less hurried pace. ‘Schema 2’ also incorporates vocals frequently; or rather, recognisable fragments of speech, courtesy of Masateru Terai. His voice is suspended in the electronic environment as another layer of the album.The inclusion of these vocals brings a sense of intimacy to the album. These vocals aren’t exactly natural, since his voice is still distorted and is a part of the electronic plain, but intimate. It is, after all, the voice of a human speaking human language. 

Schema 1 + 2  is dedicated to Shozin Fukui, the Japanese filmmaker who passed away in April earlier this year, before he could hear the album. This dedication is best understood quietly, not as a statement about influence, but rather as a message to a friend. A statement of wanting someone to hear something and finding out that the time has run out on the final stretch of the album’s creation. 

It was an immense pleasure to listen to this album, as it does something truly rare. Schema 1+2  is a document of practice rather than a product of one. It feels like the members of Dowser are giving us the accumulated time of these 15-year daily rituals in the form of an 80-minute album. The music here is extracted from life itself and creates a microcosm of fragments that were “unfinished works of art”, that came to life in a practice as mundane as eating or walking. The result is extraordinary, the 15-year schema has at last become audible, and it’s wonderful.

Special thanks to All Horned Animals label for allowing us to interview Mr. Nagashima.

Words by Seb and Artem