Ivory Bunker Recordings

I am adjective to announce a new, slightly different Tomoroh Hidari project which starts today:

12 Months of Mornings.
A musical exploration of photographed morning skies. February 2024 – January 2025.

Each month starting from February 2024 one photo from my regular ”おはよオーリバー” (Ohayooliver: “good morning (from/to) Oliver”) social media posts will be chosen to form the basis for a track. By using the result of a transformation “sonification” into sound using image to sound software (image to midi if such a thing exists would also be interesting) as the first building block of the composition to work with and build on.

The selection of the pictures will initially be decided by choosing the picture with the most engagement (likes, reposts)* across both the platforms I’ve recently been posting them to, Twitter and BlueSky.  

The first month will be February 2024 with all photos from the 1^st to the 29^th being eligible. I’ll check the stats on or after March 1^st and will then create the first track. 

A bit of background story:

A bit over two years ago, if memory serves me right, I started to regularly take pictures of – mostly – the morning sky from my window and post them on SNS with the greeting おはよオーリバー (Ohayo-liba-) a portmanteau of Japanese Ohayou and my first ever name, Oliver: “Good Morning Oliver” (although you may find that auto translate is sometimes the better surrealist of us).

Sufficiently meandered -> flashback: Having never in my life been a fan of the early morning hours, unless they were experienced at the end of an Epicurean night, I learned to embrace them coming from the other side of bedtime. Inevitable, once one allows a cat to move in. (Extra points for mentioning cat.)

So, I began this smartphone-age ritual to take a photo out the window every (well, the majority) of mornings as part of my wake-up routine (espresso, cat cuddles, the usual…) and share it. It’s a friendly “hello world” in the morning, a breeze of fresh air (short in winter, where I often wait until after daybreak) and a book of days in pixels. Distant skies (or less open views) from hotel rooms when I travel, variations on a theme on a polychrome scale ranging from grey-in-grey-ish grey to more colours than a 90s SONY commercial.

Originally mostly on Instagram/fb stories, they started to also find their way to Ex-twittre and, occasionally – and from now on regularly – BlueSky. And on the latter two mostly have found their small but appreciated as well as appreciative audience and thanks to the friendly comments of one EQ-P (now officially a Muse!) the idea for this emergent project was sparked.

There may other ideas come along or develop over the next twelve months, so there’s scope for this project to evolve, but for the principle of 1 picture of each month is chosen and a track created from it the following month.

I haven’t decided yet how I will release the music and considering various options including a subscription maybe, but would also be up work with an adventurous and supportive label on this.
More tba.

*(Don’t worry, this is not going to turn into an onslaught of “vote for this month’s…” daily tweets, but I might occasionally encourage or find – hopefully entertaining – ways to keep folks engaged. I’m planning to also post about the process a bit, so do follow along for more!

So stayed tuned for the morning skies. And follow me on BlueSky or Ex-Twittre for your daily おはよオーリバー。ありがとうございます。

… before you leave: Tomorrow, February 2nd is another Bandcamp Friday. Your support, as always, means the world! Thanks!