Chris Mosdell

Christopher John Mosdell (born 9 November 1949) is a British lyricist, poet, author, composer, vocalist and illustrator based in Tokyo, Japan, and New York City, United States.

He has collaborated with an extensive array of musicians and artists, though he is especially known for his work with Yellow Magic Orchestra and the poet Shuntarō Tanikawa. His interactive audio-visual album Equasian, featuring an experimentation with "VISIC" (visual music), melded his scientific background into a musical framework, and his Oracles of Distraction, a set of poetic cards set to musical coordinates, further expanded his lyrical idiom. co-written lyrics with Michael Jackson, and wrote the verse dance drama Amaterasu, the Resurrection of Radiance, that was performed with the City Ballet of London at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (2001). The documentary bills him as the "Lafcadio Hearn of Lyrics", Long term collaborator Ryuichi Sakamoto describes his interpretation of how Mosdell creates his varied works; "When I read his lyrics, I see him in a high school chemistry laboratory, making Molotov cocktails – his eyes lucid, blue and very clear."

In 2023 he was the recipient of Japan’s Classics Day Cultural Foundation Prize, an award “honouring individuals who have contributed to the dissemination and enlightenment of Japanese classical culture” ––an award presided over by Her Imperial Princess Akiko of Mikasa.

Biography

Early lyrical life Mosdell was born in Gainsborough, England and grew up in North Wales. He moved to Tokyo in 1976 after completing a BSc (specialising in microbiology) from the University of Nottingham and withdrawing from a master's degree in pathology at the University of Exeter They helped pioneer synthpop and ambient house, anticipated the beats and sounds of electro music, laid the foundations for contemporary J-pop, and contributed to the development of house, techno, and hip hop.

The Michael Jackson version of the song "Behind The Mask" got its official release on 10 December 2010, as the ninth track on the posthumous album, Michael. It was described by Time magazine as "Michael's finest moment" and by NME as "something remarkable... an absolute revelation... actually brilliant."

The Mosdell-Sakamoto-Jackson version was later picked up by Jackson's keyboardist Greg Phillinganes for his 1984 album Pulse, and by Eric Clapton, for his August album, released in 1986.

"Sticky Music", was another international chart success for Mosdell, performed by Sandii and the Sunsetz, as it rose to Number 3 on the Australian Top 40 pop chart in 1983. His lyrics to date were published in Ink Music: The Collected Lyrics of Chris Mosdell.

His popularity as a Tokyo-based English writer also led him to write for numerous Japanese television commercials, often collaborating with former Sadistic Mika Band lead vocalist and guitarist Kazuhiko Katō.

During this time he again teamed up with Yukihiro Takahashi to write songs for the albums Ego (1988) and Broadcast from Heaven (1990).

In 2003 Sarah Brightman recorded the song When Firebirds Sing, an operatic opus set in ancient Japan and included on her album Harem. The song was commissioned for the popular PlayStation 2 game Tengai Makyo III (2004). The lyrics themselves depict the tale of lovers from the Land of Curved Fire and the Sea of Desires, who are symbolised by firebirds, their wings intertwined, that circle immortally in a celestial orbit.

In 2008 Chris teamed up with long-time collaborator Kazuhiko Katō for a new glam-rock band, Vitamin Q, releasing one album 'Vitamin Q featuring ANZA'. Chris Mosdell opened the show for their debut live performance at Shibuya AX.

In 2009 Mosdell travelled to Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, Peru, to visit locations adjoined to his Fingerprints of the Gods installation soundtrack, and onward to Santiago, Chile to meet the German composer Uwe Schmidt (Atom™), who had covered several of Mosdell's songs on his Senor Coconut Yellow Fever! album. The meeting led to a collaboration on Schmidt and Masaki Sakamoto's album Alien Symphony (2010) with the lyricist penning the song 5.17 Minutes with Miss Eternity.

In 2010 Mosdell began working with the photographer Yuriko Takagi on an adaption of the 10th-century Japanese poetry anthology Hyakunin Isshu (One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets), producing a new "Shibuya version". Based on the original anthology's conversion in the 15th century into a card game, traditionally played in Japan on New Year Day's, this new bilingual photographic/verse edition selected one hundred citizens from the streets of Shibuya with Mosdell transcribing the voices of these "contemporary poets" into a modern idiom.

The song was released as a single on 21 February 2011, with the music video released on 14 June. The PV features a collection of hundreds of fan messages singing the track Chris originally wrote with the Yellow Magic Orchestra.

In 2012 he wrote Swan Song for Coppe's Rays USB and CD box set release, Cinderella City for female rock guitarist Risu's Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed album, and Our Children's Rainsong for the singer/composer Akino Arai – a song especially commissioned to document the atmospheric radiation contamination after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

In 2014, continuing his long song writing partnership with guitarist Makoto Ayukawa of Sheena & The Rokkets, Mosdell wrote the title track to the group's latest album Rokket Ride, together with the song Rock Fox. He also worked once again with Uwe Schmidt (Atom™) to write Beethoven in Antennae, a song for Coppe's upcoming album.

To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Mosdell was commissioned to write the poetic treatment and scenario for the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival 2014. Performed by the ensemble Enso Watt, and composed and conducted by the Yannick Paget of the Kansai City Philharmonic Orchestra, a "Rite of Summer" and "Rite of Autumn" were held in Kyoto's Urban Guild. To complete the cycle of rites, two additional performances are scheduled for 2015.

November 18, 2022 ushered in the release of both Michael Jackson's anticipated Thriller 40, featuring the Mosdell co-authored demo recording of "Behind the Mask", as well as an independently-produced spoken word recording in collaboration with E23, entitled Consumed By Ecstatic Cargoes.

Alternative lyrical landscapes Mosdell words were used in alternative forms when he wrote the lyrics to Shake the Whole World to Its Foundations, a work that has evolved from a mixed Japanese-Western orchestral setting to an electronic techno version. It was eventually published in its entirety in book form in 2001 (Shichosha), together with the work of the experimental calligraphy artist Joichi Yoshikawa. Its first version, however, was written to reflect the rhythmical influence of the African continent and recorded by the West African kora player Toumani Diabate in 1992 for the album "Shake the Whole World to Its Foundations". Mosdell wrote a series of chants (eventually numbering one thousand) based on the oral poetry of the Ainu whereby, instead of having a fixed lyrical base to a song, he could dip into a pool of "chants" and select those favoured for the composition—this eventually leading to infinite lyrical variations within a fixed musical format.

Continuing this method of lyrical composition, Mosdell started the solo project, Squawk: The Song of the Violinnet, though following the financial decline of the Smokey Studios in Ginza, none of the recorded songs was ever distributed. However the effort did result in Mosdell's collaboration with the American artists Jore Park and Wylci Fables, who produced enormous "birdhead boys" depicting the characters. Using a painting technique similar to batik but on waxed Japanese washi paper, vast stained-glass-like art pieces were created—a method that would be used in Mosdell's next project. In 1988 Mosdell collaborated with the poet Shuntarō Tanikawa on a deck of 77 cards in the omikuji fortune-telling tradition of Shinto shrines.

In 1989 Writing the Riot Act in the Illiterate Hour: New and Selected Lyrics (Shichosha) was published––an edition including additional poems from five Japanese poets (Shuntarō Tanikawa, Yoshimasu Gozo, Kazuko Shiraishi, Hiromi Ito and Makoto Oka) who gave their own personal poetic interpretations of Mosdell's lyrics.

He was also commissioned

Installation and live performance In 1999 Mosdell was asked by producer Shozo Tsurumoto to convey through sound the prehistorical view set forth by Graham Hancock in his book Fingerprints of the Gods.

By the next year Mosdell relocated his secondary home from Paris to Boulder, Colorado, and began a series of spoken word performances that resulted in his being awarded the Grand Prize for Poetry at the Colorado Festival of Literature,

Returning to Tokyo, Mosdell was one of a hundred local artists invited to contribute artefacts to the Millennium Time Capsule, an event held at the Laforet Museum, Harajuku. Titled The Sun Goddess: The Resurrection of Radiance, the masked dance drama was performed as part of the "Japan Year in Britain" celebration, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane from 26–28 May 2001.

Ink Music: The Movie A film about Chris Mosdell's life, titled "Ink Music: In the Land of the Hundred-Tongued Lyricist" was released in 2009. In Search of the Holey Whale won Gold Prize Winner of the Moonbeam Children's Book Award for Poetry. The Yuki Hayashi-Newkirk Poetry Prize, 1987 Gold Prize Winner of the Moonbeam Children's Book Award for Poetry, 2008 Winner of the USA Book News "Best Books 2010" Award for Humor Winner of the 2023 Japan’s Classic Day Cultural Foundation Prize