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77

77 is a nickname and musical alias of Nana Futagawa, daughter of Junko Futagawa, manager of Boredoms and Yamatsuka Eye's acquaintance. Nana was an infant in 1998 when her parents and EYE decided to feature her on a split-single Super 77 / Super Sky with Boredoms. Junco recorded Nana's voice, baby talk and gargling noises as Super 77 on the A-side. Boredoms composed Super Sky for the flipside, dedication to Electric Light Orchestra's song 'Mr. Blue Sky' which inspired Eye in high school, rendered as an early version of Go!!!!!, an hour-long composition released on Super Roots 5 CD in Dec '95. The idea that electronic music, especially soothing, ambient-like pieces can be just as beneficial for infants (particularly their sleep) as classical music is quite old, dating back to the earliest days of electronica. Perhaps, the best-known and most comprehensive study of this possibility was done in the mid-sixties by American electronic/synth pioneer Raymond Scott, who produced a 'Soothing Sounds For Baby' mono LP series in three Volumes for Epic label, featuring tracks specifically composed for babies 1 to 6/ 6 to 12/ 12 to 18 months old. This early ambient collection became a cult classic and was thoroughly reissued as Soothing Sounds For Baby 3xCD/LP boxset by Basta in 1999. Artists from the experimental camp also recognized infants as a potential target audience for abstract and ambient sounds, at the same time contemplating Raymond Scott's pioneering role in 'baby music' (see 2001 Soothing Sounds For Raymond CD humorous tribute collection, issued by Badaboom Gramophone magazine and featuring dedications and reshuffles by Cex, Bogdan Raczynski, Marumari, Arovane, Casino Versus Japan and other prominent electronic artists), and embarking on their own projects: Childish Music CD compilation released in 2005 by Staubgold presented tracks specifically composed for 0+ audience by Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Lawrence, Yuichiro Fujimoto, Guido Möbius, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Oren Ambarchi, Asa-Chang & Junray, Nobukazu Takemura, Takagi Masakatsu and other international innovators and radical sound artists. Being one of the first in this somewhat unconventional league of 'newborn composers,' Nana '77' Futagawa was closely followed by Elise De Waard (b. 1999), a daughter of Frans de Waard and Miriam De Waard. Elise was welcomed into our world with a soothing lullaby/suite Voor Elise (An Electronic Welcome) composed by her mother with the help of FdW and Roel Meelkop and had her first appearance on Modal mini CD-R with screams and other involuntary vocal contributions in July 2000. At the age of three, Elise played a variety of instruments and non-musical objects (metal sheets, paper, sticks, plastic, and other junk) amplified with contact microphones for Freiband's album Leise. In 2005, Yoshio Machida's Tokyo-based label Amorfon produced Kindermusik: Improvised Music By Babies CD, a compilation of 10 tracks with field recordings, accidental music, and some more or less conscious sound-making attempts by infants and recently born babies of Andrew Deutsch, Vlad Dobrovolski, Felix Kubin, Shigeru Sato and other label's artists, with all participants being under 1.5 years old at the time of recording (2003-2005). Elise De Waard continued her career and recorded micro-album of field recordings Geluidjesmuziek (literally 'Sound music' in Dutch), released on business card CD-R by one of FdW's labels in 2007, which received a favorable review by Vital Weekly. In 1999, Nana '77' Futagawa appeared on the front cover of Vision Creation Newsun CD released by WEA Japan and Birdman Records in the United States.

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