Olympia Music History Project

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Kento Oiwa

Interviewed by Markly Morrison

Recorded at TownePlace Suites, Olympia, WA 

March 9, 2025

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Markly Morrison

This is Markly Morrison for the Olympia Music History Project. Today is March 9th, 2025, and I am in Olympia, Washington with Kento Oiwa. Kento, would you like to introduce yourself? 

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Kento Oiwa 

Hi, Kento Oiwa here.

Markly Morrison

So, you lived in Olympia during what time period? 

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Kento Oiwa 

I came here in the summer of 1990, and then I left in the fall of ‘99, just before it got to the 10 year mark, I got out, yeah. 

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Markly Morrison

Okay, why did you move to Olympia and from where? 

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Kento Oiwa

I initially came to Olympia for the Evergreen State College- from Japan, a town called Chiba, right next to Tokyo. That was a long time ago. 

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Markly Morrison

How did you hear about Evergreen? 

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Kento Oiwa

My memory is kind of hazy. But I knew- I met a gentleman, this older guy, back in Tokyo.

I don't even remember his name. I think he was a retired professor from the University of Washington. We hit it off and I think we were actually friends. I can't remember his name anymore. But I was thinking about going to school in the States. At the time, there was a whole interdisciplinary study thing. It was a buzz thing. You don't have to pick a major, you can study whatever you want, you can design your own studies. That sounded really attractive to me. So, he gave me some recommendations. Hampshire, I think Reed has some of those programs too.

Then Evergreen State College was the only state college that I could afford. And I had no idea about any of the music scene and all that, you know. I came to Evergreen and it was all hippies around me. I went and dove straight into that. That, I still remember. 

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Markly Morrison

Were you involved in music in Japan?

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, I had a couple bands when I was a teenager. My first gig, I was in a Beatles cover band. I still have a cassette tape of that. 

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Markly Morrison

Which Beatle were you? 

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Kento Oiwa

I was George. Barely sang, but mostly guitar. Always George.

Markly Morrison

So how did you get involved in Olympia's music scene once you were a student here?

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah, well, I think it was  ‘90 or ‘91, a very exciting time [in the] Northwest. Just the beginning of grunge, what you call it. So being in evergreen, we had a lot of parties and shows, it's true. My favorite story is seeing Nirvana at a MODS party… do they still call that MODS? Those duplexes back in the day?

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, the sort of dorms back there. 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, Nirvana party at the MODS. That was the first time I saw them. I was like, “Oh my god…” people had all the windows open, and they were hanging from the window pane so that they [wouldn’t] fall. I mean, it's on the ground floor. That was jam packed. That was the first. And then a lot of good bands played. And there was a Nirvana show at the library, too. I think that was in 91. That was also a good one. And a bunch of other bands, and North Shore Surf Club… that was all happening. I missed International Pop Underground  because it happened in the summertime. I think I was back in Japan for that. So that was the beginning. And then I think it was 92 or 93, I had a local band with my college friends and all that, playing at house parties and stuff. 

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Markly Morrison

Do you remember the name?

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Kento Oiwa

Yes, Chrome Mary… Because we lived in this house on the west side- we called it Florida, ‘cause on the front lawn we had lots of those yard ornaments, like pink flamingos and all this crazy stuff. And we had a Virgin Mary statue, and one drunken night somebody spray painted it silver. So that was the band name Chrome Mary. It was fun. We played a lot, did some X covers and stuff. Through doing that, I think I met this gentleman named Jeffrey Bartone. He was a technical director for the OFS [Olympia Film Society]. Then, they were just starting to have backstage shows and [he was looking for an] assistant to do front of house sound. And I had some experience in working on sound before. So it's like, all right, perfect. And that's how I got involved in the whole downtown music art scene, through OFS. That was when all the Olympia bands- you know, Unwound, Karp, Lync- all of those guys were starting up and they all played the backstage. That's how we all met. 

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Markly Morrison

And how long did you continue [doing sound] at the backstage? 

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Kento Oiwa

I think I did that from when they started doing it up until ‘97 or so, and my band started touring more. So I was never here in Olympia more than a few months at a time. But every time I was back I would, I remember doing it. There were some good shows there. 

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Markly Morrison

So I know that you were heavily involved in the beginnings of YoYo A Go Go. What was your “in” there? Who was your contact? 

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Kento Oiwa 

Well, I knew Pat Maley… he had YoYo studio up in the Capitol Theater. So back then, how YoYo Recordings worked was touring in bands play in Olympia- and a lot of them did. It was between Seattle and Portland. Usually they’d play Friday night or Saturday night, or Sunday night. And then Sunday afternoon, Pat would record them for free, because he had a studio and everything, “snake” and everything set up from that studio upstairs. And they were just playing the stage they played the night before. So I started being his assistant, helping out with the recording, putting out a bunch of those YoYo compilations. I wasn't involved in the first one, But the one after that, I think, Throw- the blue one- is when I started helping him record stuff.

Then he came up with the idea of doing a festival. Like, “Hey, that's great, let's do it.” And then he got together with Michelle Noel. She was a promoter back then. She used to put on a bunch of shows backstage, and that's how I knew her. And in the beginning, it was just three of us.

And then the first YoYo A Go Go, We met Pat Castaldo. He was a volunteer and helped us, doing the ticket booth and everything and all that. And that's, when we became four of us. He just kept coming back to us and, I think he ended up taking a much bigger role for the second YoYo A Go Go in ‘97. I was mostly involved in ‘94, but in ‘97 I was already doing my band and all that. I still was a part of it, but didn't do much of the booking part except all those Japanese bands who’d come to Olympia. Naturally, I helped them out. They were staying at my house. Then ‘99  YoYo A Go Go, I was pretty much out of it. My band played, so that was that. I think we were in the middle of a tour. We were on the road for pretty much a whole year. So I remember coming back here in the summertime and playing YoYo A Go Go so I wasn't really part of the planning part of the 99. ‘94 was my favorite though, because back then, there was no such thing- you know, there was Lollapalooza just starting to happen, right? But that was more like a traveling group of bands. But this sort of multi-day… all these bands, I think every show was five bucks. No band got paid more than five hundred bucks, I still remember that. Yeah, Beck got $500. $500 for Yo La Tengo. That's pretty crazy, right? $500 for Rancid.

That's crazy, right? Even at the time, that was crazy.

Markly Morrison

Yeah, I was talking with Pat Maley yesterday, a he was just telling me how incredible it was that you were bringing in talent from Japan into Olympia. Like, just all of a sudden you bridge that gap. Can you talk a little bit about who you brought over here and what those experiences were like working with them?

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Kento Oiwa 

There was definitely this Olympia-Japan connection that started around the mid nineties. The one key person that I have to give credit to is this guy Shigeki Nishimura. And he went by Nissi. He had a small indie label in Tokyo called RBF- Rebel Beat Factory. He himself was a musician back in the 80s in a very successful Tokyo indie rock band. But by then [the mid ‘90s] he was managing bands. And then the first two Japanese bands who came to Olympia [were] Bloodthirsty Butchers and Copass Grinderz. And Nissi managed both of them. And Nissi and Calvin go way back to the ‘80s, the first time and only time Beat Happening went to Japan. The infamous story, I don't know if you heard…

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Markly Morrison

Please. 

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Kento Oiwa

Beat Happening played… their only show in Tokyo was in high school. They met some Japanese high school girls [who] invited [them to] their school to play, this private all girls school. But what they didn't know was it was totally unofficial. So these girls, they met them outside the school and smuggled them into the school. This is after all the classes are done. And they had to hide from teachers, and quietly go into the one classroom, and there was all these girls in uniforms sitting there and waiting for them. And in front of them, Calvin and Heather played. And through that tour, Calvin met Nissi. That's how they struck a friendship and they kept in touch. And right before YoYo A Go Go, I was at the Bulldog News on 4th Avenue. Maybe it was before your time, huh? There's- you know the weird taxidermy shop? 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. 

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah, I think that used to be the Bulldog News. It was a little newsstand. And I remember, I was just reading some magazine there, and that's when Calvin came up and said, “Hey. We have some Japanese bands coming over here. Do you want to help?” So it's like, okay. And that was those two bands. But it was pre YoYo A Go Go, I think they came to do some shows here and Seattle. That's when I met Nissi. So when we were doing a YoYo A Go Go, I said, “Oh, we're going to bring them back.” And that's how they came back. And then they did more recording. I think they had a single out on K. Bloodthirsty Butchers and Copass Grinderz too. I think maybe it was a split. It was a yellow cover. [IPU048] And they had friends in Seattle too, so I would drive them to Seattle to a few shows in Seattle. And I think in general for the indie rock punk scene, Japan was sort of like… everyone was checking out what was going on there at the time, right? There's all these other  Japanese noise bands, like Boredoms and all that. People were really getting into it. So, in Seattle, there was a museum called COCA. Center of Contemporary Art. They had this event called Japanorama. Between ‘94, the first YoYo and the second YoYo [‘97], this Japanorama thing happened. I think it was four bands from Tokyo came- not through K.not through Nissi or me, and the bands were Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, and Kirihito, another one I can't remember, and then Boris, who has become very successful now. That was the mid-90s. I helped at that show when I met them. So when we did the ‘97 YoYo A Go Go we brought them all back again. That's sort of how we started growing. Yeah, it was crazy. They would all stay at my house- [laughing] up on the hill, just past the Olympian newspaper. We called it the Hilltop House. We had a basement, that's where we used to practice. It's a beautiful house. 

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Markly Morrison

Did your house host concerts as well?

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Kento Oiwa

Not shows… we might have done it once, but we did more of a DJ party. ‘Cause I had turntables and a sound system, so we would just throw kind of a house rave, I guess… we would sell drinks and pay the rent.

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. That's the way to go. 

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah. Do they still do that? Do they still have house parties?

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Markly Morrison

 Yeah, they still have house parties. I haven't been to one where they were charging at the door to cover rent. But it's really not a bad idea. It's something that they could definitely bring back.

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Kento Oiwa 

No, I don't think we [charged a] cover at the door. It was just drinks. We would sell beers and all that, totally illegal… but anyway, the Japanese bands, that's how that started. And then Nissi lived in Tokyo, so he knew all these bands anyway- Boris and Kirihito and all these other bands from just being in the Tokyo scene. So that's how sort of a network grew, and that's when he started bringing Olympia bands to Japan. So all the K bands who did a Japan tour- it was a thing to do a Japan tour. Like, everybody went to Japan just because of this guy Nissi helping out. I think Dub Narcotic must have gone a couple times. Karp did, Unwound did. Right now Vivienne [Lumière] is over there, and for some reason her band didn't go. I thought they did. I thought Behead the Prophet must have gone to Japan, but I guess they didn't. Are you familiar with the band? 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, Behead the Prophet No Lord Shall Live.

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Kento Oiwa

Great, great, great band. Yeah. Yeah. 

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Markly Morrison

So, you were a DJ around town. A fairly popular DJ.

Kento Oiwa 

I don't know what consists of being popular. 

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Markly Morrison

Well-revered in the community. People have told me personally that they've really enjoyed your DJ sets, your mixtapes…

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Kento Oiwa

That's great. I appreciate that. Yeah, I did, back then because we had a little club here called Thekla. I don't know what it is now. Is the building still there? 

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Markly Morrison

I think right now it's a gym. 

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Kento Oiwa

Oh, it's a gym. Yeah. I mean, the whole business moved to Brotherhood, basically. I mean, it's the same owner. But yeah, Thekla, I think, was the first DJ club. I got my first job after college as a janitor in Thekla. That was my first job, like, steady paying gig. I did that for a while. And then there was an opening for Tuesday nights. So that's when I started doing an acid jazz night, jazz and funk night. 

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Markly Morrison

And that was weekly? 

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Kento Oiwa

Weekly. Every Tuesday. 

Markly Morrison

Did that turn into a lucrative situation for you?

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Kento Oiwa 

I don't remember, but I think back then, we never made money. Know what I mean? 

Markly Morrison

You didn't really need a lot of money. 

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Kento Oiwa

No, no, no. I remember my rent was 150 bucks. I lived at the Track house. That's all burned out, right? 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, a couple years ago. 

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Kento Oiwa

My rent was 150 bucks. Making money was never in anybody's mind. It's just a fun thing to do for free beer. If you get 20 bucks, 30 bucks, it's great. At least at the time, people I knew- everyone seemed to go out every night. There was always something happening every night. And that's around the time when the term trip-hop and the downbeat thing started happening. And I think Seattle promoter guys, called the Tasty Show- they started having nights here in Olympia, at Thekla, with DJ Riz. He's a KEXP DJ now. So I started hanging out with those guys and somehow I started moving toward doing an all drum'n'bass thing. We had a little crew called ODB, as in Olympia drum'n'bass. And we used to throw parties sometimes in my house. Sometimes I’d get on Backstage at the Capitol Theater. Yeah, fun times.

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Markly Morrison

Did you DJ on the radio at all? 

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Kento Oiwa

KAOS, yes. I had a short time. I don't totally remember how it came about. It was really late at night. I think I did it for less than a year. Way less than that. I think one quarter in the school, or something. I remember just playing a bunch of what you call shoegazer music now- but in real-time, around 1990, 91. So when My Bloody Valentine and all that was [happening], just doing it in real time. And I was really into that. There were too many people here quite caught up on it, you know? Because I think grunge was happening and it was just going too strong. Every time I find somebody who even knew who My Bloody Valentine was, we would have an immediate bonding thing, you know? So I think it was on a weeknight, probably like a midnight show or something, and I would just play those on the radio for a few hours.

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Markly Morrison

Who trained you? 

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Kento Oiwa

I don't remember. I think it was Don. Don was still there. What's his name? Don Yates? The old KAOS director, right? It's all hazy now. But I still do remember, sitting on the board an old looking turntable and some old looking mixing board, and their library of music. Pretty much, that was the reason why I wanted to do it, to have access to that, you know? 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. It's a gold mine. 

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Kento Oiwa

I know. You know, I used to borrow the CDs from KAOS so I could tape it and bring it back. And also grow my tape collection.

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Markly Morrison

You have mentioned briefly in passing your band, but we haven't- I think that's a good thing to come up to, the forming of IQU. How did that group come to be?

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Kento Oiwa

It originally started mid-90s, ‘96, ‘97. Around the same time I was doing DJing and I was running sound at the Capitol Theater, I got myself a little 12 channel Mackie portable mixer. That's when I started getting into dub like Mad Professor and Lee "Scratch" Perry and all that. Delays and reverb and all that stuff. So my initial idea was using a mixing board as an instrument with a delay. So everything would come in there so I could send it to delay and reverb and control it like an instrument, right? So I started playing in the house parties with- I think originally it was a guy, Van Stevens. An Olympia guy, he played bass. I think at one time we had some horn player, too, at some live jam. Just different people. Me and Van doing it, just playing some sampled beat or something. Just loop it. And then Van played the bass line. And then I would just add some sound from the turntable and stuff on top of it. Random things, all improvised. And at the parties, everyone's drinking, everyone's all dancing, and that was the sort of beginning of it. Then at some point I think it started forming to be more like a band, and so when I lived in the Hilltop house, across the street was this typewriter shop, and above that, an apartment, was where Michiko [Swiggs] lived with Kanako [Pooknyw], who started Dumpster Values. The original Dumpster Values. I was friends with Kanako, and one night we were supposed to go to happy hour, and she didn't feel right, so she cancelled on me. When I went to pick her up, she's like, “I don't feel like going.” And that's when Michiko was like, “I can go.”

And that was the first time I hung out with her. We started talking music and we just went deep. All the electronic music and jazz stuff I liked, she was all about it, all into it too. It's like, “holy shit, where the fuck where have you been all my life?” And we immediately became really good friends. We started hanging out. And then we took a trip to Japan, maybe in the following year, ‘97. That's like when it really solidified- our friendship. And then also seeing all these cool Japanese bands- because I knew all these indie rock kids from coming to YoYo A Go Go and all that, so they would take us to all these cool shows. Very creative, different, you know? There was so many bands experimenting with like a sample beats, electronic stuff with punk rock ethos, when the term electronica was still not quite there yet. So that was really fresh.... The thing I remember about me doing it, y’know, back then we called it ICU.

Intensive Care Unit, but just ICU. And I’m like, “So, you wanna do it?” and she’s like, “yeah, let's do it!” And I guess that's when we became "ee-koo" as it is now. And we didn't even have that much equipment. All I had was this, like, Roland portable toy sampler, bit sampled, I think, up to 20 seconds? [laughter]

Yeah. The little button, called the MS1… sample a beat and loop it, play through the big speaker, and it sounded good, you know? And then we start laying down instruments on it. At the time, my roommate was Aaron Hartman. And that, you know, he had Old Time Relijun, I think, around the same time. He was starting to play with Arrington. And it's really cool, man, the standup bass, right? Like, “Huh, what if you play with us with a stand up bass?” And we started playing and then it sort of clicked. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. Definitely defined the sound of that era. 

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah, it was different… we were different. And then I had a theremin too… You add the sampled beat and then put a stand up bass and then Theremin. Of course, people are like, “Wow, these guys are weird. This is different.

Markly Morrison 

So there wasn't a whole lot of bands in Olympia with a theremin? 

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Kento Oiwa

I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so.

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Markly Morrison

You were primarily studying electronic music at Evergreen? 

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Kento Oiwa

I wouldn't say I was studying, because it's Evergreen, right? ...there was a teacher, Peter Randlette. I took his class, just like everybody in Olympia. Anybody who wanted to do studio work, they all studied from Peter, and that was very inspirational. And I took a couple music classes, but, you know, it didn't mean that much. Peter was great. The whole studio time at Evergreen, I did a lot. But all the music classes at Evergreen were kind of boring.

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Markly Morrison

Right. I think for a lot of people, Evergreen is about what you do with your own personal time, like your independent study.

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Kento Oiwa 

That's really what it was, the media checkout 'Cause you, you get your hands on the equipment. That's the best part.

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Markly Morrison

So Theremin, how did that come up? When did you develop an interest in that? 

Kento Oiwa

That question has come up many times over years... In mid nineties there was this quarterly publication called RE/Search Magazine. That was a very cool magazine, each issue had some theme with all these different writers and doing a piece. And thennone publication was called the Incredibly Strange Music. It was all about Different music. And then there was a whole piece about theremin there. That's the first time I learned it. And then, I saw a music video of the Osaka band, Boredoms- a crazy noise rock band. In the video, the singer, Eye Yamatsuka, is holding this little box with an antenna. And it's this little portable theremin they made in Japan at the time. Ishibashi made it, and making that noise. I remember thinking “That's the thing! That's the thing!” So I still remember, ‘94 YoYo A Go Go when Nissi was coming with Copass and Bloodthirsty Butchers, I asked him to get one of those little toys for me. Yeah. And then he did, and that was the beginning. 

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Markly Morrison

Oh, wow.

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah. And then- oh, now it's coming back to me. I got two of them! It was because a friend of mine, Sarah Lorimer- at the time she was dating Pat Maley. Very, very cool woman. She was reading the RE/Search magazine too, so we both knew about the theremin. So she says, “I want one too!” So we got two. Nissi brought two back for me. One for me and one for Sarah. And after YoYo A Go Go, shortly after, the movie came out called Theremin: A Sound Odyssey. Great film, by the way. It played at OFS. So we turned into an event that Sarah and I, after the movie, did a Theremin duet concert. We called our band called Rockmore, named after that theremin player Clara Rockmore. That was a fun time. So that was the whole beginning. Then I think the movie helped to revive interest, so Moog started producing the theremin again.

So I was able to get the real theremin with the two antennas, and that was that. Since then I've met the filmmaker of that movie, Stephen Martin- very nice guy. He used to come to our shows… he lives in LA and we became really good friends.

He actually was an actor- Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the twins in that movie, he's one of them. The whole subculture of the theremin is crazy… hard instrument to play, but somehow that has become my thing. 

Markly Morrison: Yeah. Right. I mean there was the symposium- 10 theremins at Disney Concert Hall.

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Kento Oiwa 

Oh, wow. You did your study. It was a Russian theme event.

And then, the headlining act was the 10 Theremin Orchestra, which they tried to do back in the [1920s] in Carnegie Hall, at the original theremin time, but they didn't think too much into the technical side of it, so it just ended up in huge chaos. Everyone's magnetic field interacting and interfering with each other.

So somebody had an idea to do that [with a] more well-thought-out plan, way bigger stage, and then reached out to Disney Hall. I remember, I was living in the area at the time. I remember hearing about it on the radio. I said, “oh, that sounds good.” And then that day I got a call. Somebody found out about me. And they said, “Hey, you want to join?” All these thereminists flew in from all over. New York, some from Austria, Boston, San Francisco. They had sent us the music sheet to practice. We all had our part. We had one day to rehearse at the Disney Hall, and then we had a show. And Disney is very strict about any recording of anything, so we weren't supposed to. But there is one video on YouTube you can find- probably like three minutes of what we're doing, covering Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations.” The sound quality is pretty good, and you can see me in there. The visuals are all grainy. Some audience [member] took it with a cell phone- You know, cell phone in 2008. But it's still there. If you type in “21st century theremin orchestra, Disney Hall” or something like that, it pops up. 

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Markly Morrison

What a historic event. 

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Kento Oiwa

I know. It really was. Since then, the woman from New York- Dorit Chrysler is her name- she has become a prominent theremin figure. She has a thing called the New York Theremin Society, and then she does a theremin workshop regularly with kids and grown ups. She's the one who had this idea of doing Disney Hall. And then another guy from New York, Rob Schwimmer- this jazz piano guy, New York jazz guy, but amazing theremin player- he was a theremin player for Simon and Garfunkel on their reunion tour in the 90s.

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Markly Morrison

Oh wow, I didn't know that was in the band… back to IQU. So, the trio- you, Michiko, and Aaron- how did that go in Olympia? Who are you playing with? What kind of venues?

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Kento Oiwa

I know we played some backstage shows. Really, we got it going when Unwound took us on tour. We didn't have any records out. We just had a little cassette tape of our demo songs. It's just like, “Hey, you want to tour with us?” It's like, “Okay.”  “But only part of it, only Florida and the east coast.” So we had to make our way to Florida. So we drove straight, and our first show out of the northwest was in Memphis. I remember that. We drove straight to Memphis, played a show, and a couple more shows around there, and then met up with them in Florida. We did a whole around Florida thing, and then we’d go up the east coast all the way to New York, and I think we did Boston too. And Unwound was pretty big by then, so we'd be playing in front of a few hundred people everywhere we go, you know? So that was great. And that's how, in a New York show, we met a booking agent by the name of Robin Taylor, an ex-Seattle woman. And she was booking Modest Mouse at the time. She was looking for more Northwest bands, and she liked what we had. So that was a big push. So we had a booking agent even before the first record came out.

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Markly Morrison

Wow, that's great. And so, you've come back from tour, and you've got sort of a fresh body of work that you've been polishing up. Do you want to talk about the recording of the first album? Where was it recorded?

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Kento Oiwa 

We did that at Dub Narcotic studio. It was Calvin Johnson’s studio, the upstairs of the old K building, so where Ilk Lodge is right now. 

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Markly Morrison

That's the Cherry loft. 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, so K's office part was in the front part, that little Spanish stucco looking cute building. In the back was the warehouse where all the records were. And then above that was this gigantic hall. And that's where K Records’ studio [was]. That's why we recorded like a band, instead of  going straight into the ProTools. We would just use his old mixing board. We would record a sample of drums onto magnetic tape. And then Aaron put bass and I would start tracking my guitar and all that. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. So, electronic music primarily, but no computers. 

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Kento Oiwa

No computer editing, none of that. I think there was a magic to that, yeah.

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, I feel like you guys were probably pioneering in the field of electro-acoustic, in the punk scene anyway. 

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Kento Oiwa 

I guess so, yeah. With a little Roland MS 1 four-second sampler. 

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Markly Morrison

What followed the first record? What happened? What was the reaction?

What did you see as a result of that?

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Kento Oiwa

The record did very well, especially on the West Coast. We did a lot of tours. I think we were unique in that many of our friends or other bands would hear about us, and then they’d want to take us on the road because we are compact. We didn't have a drummer. So, it's easier to have us on as an opener because there's no extra drums on the stage. So we're pretty compact, just three of us, and usually we’d bring somebody as a roadie. Four of us in a van, drove around everywhere. And having Robin Taylor as booking was also helpful because she has her own van. So she can come up with a tour within giving us a spot. And one tour was good. And then we toured with a Seattle band called Hovercraft, a sort of instrumental, psychedelic rock band. That was a really fun tour too. And then when we’d go on- I think it was a Hovercraft tour in Texas, we split off for a little bit and then we played with Fugazi for a couple of nights. I think Calvin must have helped to book the show. And then when we played with Fugazi in Oklahoma City, in the audience was Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and [Flaming Lips drummer] Steve Drozd, and they really liked us. So they reached out to Robin Taylor to put us on the bill. It was the spring of ‘99, I think- or fall of ‘99, around that time. They had this thing called Music Against Brain Degeneration. So it was them, Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock, Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, and Cornelius from Japan. And then us, doing this revue. The whole idea was they would broadcast live through FM radio. So people can get a portable radio at the show, they can rent it. They don't have to pay. They give a portable radio to every single audience [member] so they can listen to it in their ears while they are watching the band. And they can go to the bathroom, they can go outside, and the music will follow you. That was sort of their idea. 

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Markly Morrison

That's very Flaming Lips.

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Kento Oiwa

It is. Because they already had done the whole Parking Lot Experiment thing by then, and the CD Zaireeka!- the four CDs playing at the same time- was already out, so this was their next situation for that. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. They were all about happenings. 

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Kento Oiwa

All about happenings, yeah. But that was really the highlight of our band, and the tour was so much fun.

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Markly Morrison

And Aaron eventually left the group? 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, so that's the end of the tour, but also this is like two years of constant touring. I think we put a lot of strain on the relationship as you can imagine, you know. I think it got to the point we had to split. There are many different versions of the story, so I'm not getting into that. But it was a heartbreaker. And that's also when we all wanted to get out of Olympia. And me and Michiko wanted to go north, Aaron wanted to go south to Portland. All of that was part of this band coming to the point of ceasing to exist. But Michiko and I kept going. As you can imagine, Aaron didn't like that. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, and then you kept performing live too. 

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Kento Oiwa

We did, yeah.

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Markly Morrison

Different rotating members? 

Kento Oiwa 

Rotating members. We tried a different bass player from LA., Sheri Ozeki. We did one tour with her. That was fun but she didn't want to keep doing the band. She's now on the call doing the music sound post production for lots of movies. Very successful. So we moved to Seattle, we became two piece for a while, and then we started experimenting with live drummers, and that was so much fun. Then, our music had evolved quite a bit. We became a lot more electronic, I would say, than our first album. 

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Markly Morrison

Right. The first one is very- leaning more into dub. 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, dub, and there's definitely more of a lo-fi feel to it, the way it was recorded too, right? In Seattle, I got more heavily involved in the DJ part of it.

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Markly Morrison

How did you record the second one [Sun Q]? How different was that experience? 

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Kento Oiwa

That was very different. ‘Cause by then, the way of- [we were] more deep into that desktop software recording. So we had Pro Tools and Ableton Live and all that stuff. So just track by track, we did it on our computers, pretty much.

And the guitar and all that, we would just mic in our house. Just in our living room or Michiko's apartment. And we just tracked all those, and then went down to Portland to mix, and I'm spacing out on his name. 

[from Sun Q liner notes: Mixed by Tony Lash at Mandible Studio, Portland, OR] 

He did a bunch of Eliott Smith records, and he had his own home studio. And through people we met him, so we went to Portland, stayed there for a week, took the mix down. We did all our shows and then we started talking to different labels and there's a whole up and down thing about that, that side of music business, right? Like, there are different labels who are interested in it. Then comes business talk and contracts and fine print and all that. You know, we got really burnt out. So, we ended up with- a friend of ours in the local- Seattle’s got Sonic Boom Records. At the time, there was a,- there's still a record store in Seattle called Sonic Boom, but it's a whole different owner now. But the original Sonic Boom also had a small record label. I think there’s some Death Cab stuff [on that label] too. They wanted to put it out and, and so that's what we did.

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Markly Morrison

How did you find, your relationship to the city of Olympia, as far as fostering you as an artist, as a creative person in the ‘90s? Was it hospitable? 

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah, I think so. I think it was a really good time. I mean, I feel like that was the best time of my life in that nine years here. I think it's all a combination of personally where I was, and then also what was going on around in the town. And I think it really comes down to affordability, right?

And Evergreen is a big part of it. A lot of creative people come from all over the world, right? Just to gather in this little town. And having the Capitol Theatre or OFS as a cultural hub in town, right? It’s small enough, if you do something creative, soon enough, you know pretty much everybody who's doing that stuff. And it's constant inspiration from each other. Yeah, so that is, I think, the best part of Olympia. If you want to do it, just do it. You want to play in a bar? Play in a bar. You want to DJ? DJ. Put on a show, put on a show. Teenage kids putting on this punk rock show. Right? Anything was possible. You are a spoken word artist, it's a spoken word night. You know? I don't know if there was any other small town like that. Still, I don't know. You know, this is pre internet, right? So yeah, it was very welcoming 

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Markly Morrison

As an immigrant, were you informed by any of the socio-political climate? 

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Kento Oiwa 

Well, let's see, 1990, coming to Evergreen, “home of environmental terrorists,” right? It was when the whole Gulf War was happening. The big thing was Gulf War, all the candle vigils,

demonstrations, anti-Bush. What else was that? Oh, Salman Rushdie thing was a big topic. So, I mean, it's still going on. It’s that whole… diversity, equity, and freedom of speech. All of that fun stuff, you know? The awareness of social issues- and pretty much everyone around us were all liberal, surrounded by this Republican part of Washington. And we have this like little dot of- Seattle and Olympia have this little cocoon of liberal minded people.

Those are always in mind. And then the whole AIDS prevention thing was really big too, in the 90s. There was… this non profit called Olympia Needle Exchange. It was really…

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Markly Morrison

It was groundbreaking. Yeah.  

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Kento Oiwa 

Right, Long Hair David. I was just thinking of him yesterday. He was always, always working really hard to promote awareness, free condoms, a needle exchange.

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Markly Morrison

Long Hair Dave… did a lot of good work for the community. 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, he did.

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Markly Morrison

Did you experience much racism in the community or adjacent to the community, that you were aware of?

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Kento Oiwa

I don't think so. It's hard to tell because when you think about it, yes, Olympia, the scene, talking about scene… outside Olympia, yeah, of course, there's a bunch of those hicks around here. Redneck- Kill All Redneck Pricks, right? But even in the scene, I do feel, now that I'm a little older, when I look back and stuff, this is definitely a Caucasian Central scene. And when you're non Caucasian, not that it sticks out, but you can count them. You can count Asians, you can count African Americans, you know. But I don't think there was anything negative or hostile toward us, or at least toward me. But you know, sometimes those- I don't want to use the word racism, but those awareness can be very subtle and subversive.

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Markly Morrison

Or maybe like kind of ignorant. Insensitive. 

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Kento Oiwa

So I think I personally did feel a little bit out of it. Even though I was in the middle of the scene. I just never felt like part of the clique. So, I know that could be me, my personality, and there was no incident that I can remember giving me the reason to feel alienated, but I still did.

It's because there was no Asian community within that Olympia music scene. 

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Markly Morrison [a little late]

That was your band! 

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Kento Oiwa

And I think it's part of what reason why I bonded here with Micko, right? I mean, I guess Tae was here with Kicking Giant, but Tae, he's like an angel. So that man is like so above everything and so nice. So as much as I was a part of this Olympia music scene or whatever, I felt I wasn't part of it. You know what I'm saying? 

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Markly Morrison

You were. You were involved. 

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Kento Oiwa

I was involved. 

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Markly Morrison

But you were doing your thing. 

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Kento Oiwa

And I was very good friends with key people. Like Pat Maley, Calvin Johnson, OFS.

There was an OFS director at the time named Patty Kovax who played a very big role in all this. I was friends with them, but as the scene goes, to me, yeah, it didn't feel like it was home to me. So that's why when we decided to leave Olympia, we didn't really miss it.

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Markly Morrison

You did that, and it was time to move on. Have you stayed in Seattle ever since? 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah, well, I had a little detour in L. A. for a few years. 

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Markly Morrison

Right, you mentioned that. 

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Kento Oiwa 

But yeah, mostly.

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Markly Morrison

Pat Maley recommended I bring up an event that falls within our timeline, [IQU] playing at Safeco Field right after the Mariners lost a playoff game to the Yankees, days after 9/11. 

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Kento Oiwa 

Yeah, that's days after 9/11? It was that time, too, huh? I do remember that. Yeah. I think  people in Seattle were organizing this Mariners party because they were going to the playoffs, right? It was supposed to be a victory party, a big party they were. And they wanted a musical act and I think they reached out to Pat, if he knew of any Japan themed or Japanese affiliated bands. So, he recommended us and then we got a call saying we want to play this party. We said, “Yeah, sure.” And it was really weird. This event producing company, not very nice people, but they paid us. And when we were like, “Okay, we get to meet each other, great.” But then, they lost that game. And that was it. I think it was a tiebreaker, and then they ended up losing it big time. So none of the players came. It was all just a Mariners employee party. They're all sad and just getting drunk. It was a terrible, terrible gig.

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Markly Morrison

What a vibe. 

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Kento Oiwa

Yeah. But I still have that sticker on my guitar from Safeco. Also, we have so many of those weird gigs. And it's always that- that theremin is a big hit. It's like, what is that thing? 

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Markly Morrison

What part of Olympia sticks with you, if anything? 

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Kento Oiwa 

I think it really is what we just talked about. It was a magical time in the Olympia- harnessing creativity and that feeling of “just do it.” You can do it. You, you want to do it, do it, and then there's enough support and all that, whatever that is. Yeah, that was a perfect place to be… Right place to be in the right time of my life. In my twenties. I would love my kid to go to Evergreen. I'm trying not to say too much because if I do it, she won't.  

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Markly Morrison 

Yeah, don't want to be overbearing about your influence. Maybe just a quick visit someday.

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Kento Oiwa

I know now they are trying to shut it down, right? Anyway, it was a good time.

And I really appreciate your project of putting this on the record. All of this has to be told. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, your voice is such a welcome contribution. That was lovely. And, yeah. Thanks again, Kento. 

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Kento Oiwa

All right. Thank you. 

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