Matsuo Ohno

The man who created the sounds of the future, legendary sound designer Matuo Ohno, most famous for his work on the 1963 animated TV show Astro Boy.

"Part travelogue, part performance, 100% head-spinning" - Worlds of Cinema Electronic music pioneer Matsuo Ohno's art-film/documentary chronicling the Japanese experimental music ensemble's 1971-1972 worldwide expedition. Led by Fluxus member Takehisa Kosugi, the Taj Maj Mahal Travellers elevate university crowds and concert halls, follow tortoises through the Iranian desert, jam with Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society in a geodesic dome in Stockholm, explore Grecian ruins, improvise on Afghan steppes, serenade the waves at Cape Manazuru Beach, Japan and make the pilgrimage to their ivory-white namesake -- making music anywhere and with anything along the way.

Fluxus artist and composer Takehisa Kosugi assembled a crew of young musicians and hit the road in a VW bus from Rotterdam to the Taj Mahal, playing a series of shows along the way in which the band used traditional instruments run through a series of electronic effects to create long sheets of drone both pulsing and timeless. Filmed by Takehisa Kosugi's mentor Matsu Ohno (perhaps best known in the States for his sound effects/score work on the television series Astro-Boy), the film moves at the same pace as the music itself, a pastoral road movie following a band far more likely to play temples than clubs.

An early experimental film by Toshio Matsumoto. Produced as part of the student riots in Japan at the start of the 1960s, Matsumoto uses collage, archival footage, and impassioned narration to create an expressive, visceral criticism of the US-Japan Security Treaty.