The theme of Salvaged Tapes 2020-2021, “In the Wilderness”, was inspired by the poet Saburo Kuroda’s work Yoru no mado (“Window of the Night”).The collection is based on the concept of using public telephones in an urban environment, in which people may feel the sense of “floating in a city,” where there is no dependency upon it,and the infrastructure of the public telephone as a motif similar to the save point in a videogame.

In the Wilderness attempts to provide a unique journey to an audience, from downloading to listening to audio tracks. This audio journey requires that the audience use actual 50-degree phone cards on public phones in order to send short texts to certain specified numbers. Upon doing so, they receive a link from that number to download the collection’s tracks. These phone cards come with the product, and can be transferred to others legally at the original owner’s discretion. In this way, listeners are able to share the same musical experience. The total number of tracks of In the Wilderness is limited to four, with each released at a different time.

The four tracks have been produced by the ambient musician and sound collage artist Jobanshi, who is known for his three-dimensional and immersive sound expression using digitally processed natural sounds recorded using binaural and ambisonic microphones, as well as other equipment. In recent years, Jobanshi has been involved in the music for the Hotel Gajoen Tokyo’s Hyakudan Staircase, a tangible cultural property designated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 2019, and the collection theme for Japanese fashion brand DRESSEDUNDRESSED from 2020. For the packaging and artwork, we have selected electronic musician NASAA, who is also active in the field of media art and sound art, and who has received the Good Design Award 2020 for the BONX mini and the VGP 2020 Award for the NUARL N6 / N6 pro as a product designer and design strategist. The teaser movie was directed by Motokazu Horikiri, who has worked with the likes of Lovely Summer-chan, Yo Irie, Haruko Tajima and Osamu Akimoto.

In the Wilderness interrogates the experience of listening to music in differing formats, such as streaming, which is now perhaps the most common way of consuming music. This Salvaged Tapes 2020–2021 collection explores more deeply the thoughts and ideas behind appropriating media, by using several different means of recording and transmitting sound.