On July 8th, 2008, Jon Nice and Jon Wilks, then responsible for the short-lived TADA Music website/web-label, set off on a train heading out of Fukuoka towards Karatsu City, Japan. They got off the train at Niji No Matsubara, a forested area along the track (the name translates as the Forest of Rainbows) and walked until they felt well and truly immersed in woodland. Once they were happy with the obscurity of their location, they unloaded a small amount of recording equipment and several rucksacks full of musical instruments.
Over the next four hours, whatever came to them in inspiration went down on tape. Some of it is beautiful - ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ (which has since become a minor Last.fm hit) was entirely improvised by Jon Wilks while Jon Nice went for a pee, and taped in one attempt as soon as he returned. Some of it is hardly worth mentioning at all.
What it does very well is record the humidity and stifling heat of a Japanese summer, somehow, in sound, the cicadas providing a wonderful wall of chorus. On the way back to Fukuoka, Jon Wilks suggested they use the tapes and work off them towards something more interesting. Jon Nice, ever the avant gardener, persuaded him that they had some worth in their current state, and so the pair released them under the name Full Ten Sound (which came from a Japanese friend’s bungled attempt at describing the music he wanted to make) via Last.fm. The collection takes its name from the recording location: 'Niji No Matsubara'.
‘Time to Say Goodbye’ has since become one of the most popular tracks Tada Music released.
