Ippei Matsui handled the design and artwork. He also plays guitar on “Scene 4. Stranger.” According to him, “This wasn’t music created specifically for a solo exhibition; it was simply something I made on a whim because I thought it would be fun to suddenly start making a cassette.” Below is a comment we received directly from him.

“The jacket is a multicolor risograph print, and the tapes weren’t mass-produced by a manufacturer—instead, I had them duplicated in small batches by a friend. The tracks are mostly small sketches I’d been recording over time, but there’s one song featuring Matsui’s guitar, to which I added vocals and mixed.” The same song is on both Side A and Side B, so it’s designed to play on a loop.”
“As for the title ‘Stranger in the Night,’ I’ve composed most of my songs to date on a Drimatone (a trademark of Kawai’s electronic organ) that my parents bought for me 40 years ago, but but just as I was working on this project, I came across the delivery slip and instruction manual from exactly 40 years ago when I first bought it. The practice piece listed in that instruction manual was Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night.’ I remembered that I used to enjoy playing that song back when I first bought the instrument. Since “strangers” carries a strong connotation of “lovers,” I changed the title to “Stranger,” and coincidentally, it fit the character Matsui drew for this project perfectly.”

I live in the same era as these two people who play music and paint in this way. (Original Japanese text by Saito)