Archival scans of the rare sci-fi graphic novel included with Haruomi Hosono’s Making of Non-Standard Music.

Included with the complete package of Haruomi Hosono’s Making of Non-Standard Music 12” release is the short Japanese print graphic novel GLOBULE. The brightly colored and text heavy manga style comic book focuses primarily on the fictional character GLOBULE, a green anthropomorphic orb “inspired by Monadology on the earth and on fractal geometry… GLOBULE looks as a creature or machinery, yet it is not. It exists in the middle of everything, in a very ambiguous zone.”

The book’s 170 or so pages contain a number of contributions from various Japanese artists and science fiction writers as well as a manifesto from Hosono himself describing the themes of music he refers to; “GLOBULE”, “NON-STANDARD” and “Sightseeing Music”. We’ve included a few rough scans from the book below:

If you’re interested in learning more about the intention behind Hosono’s work during this era, we highly recommend checking out Terre Thaemlitz’s 2003 essay “GLOBULE of NON-STANDARD: An Attempted Clarification Of Globular Identity Politics In Japanese Electronic ‘Sightseeing Music.’” The essay contains a transcription of Hosono’s manifesto which we’ve included below.

GLOBULE (Statement of Purpose)

Haruomi Hosono has started a new label ‘NON-STANDARD’, ‘MONAD’.

This ‘Making of NON-STANDARD Music’ is a pre-compilation for this label and is produced as the pre-first edition. NON-STANDARD BOOKS [GLOBULE] is not added as an appendix, this has been planned as an independent media for the idea and the expression of Haruomi Hosono, and of the other artists produced by him, and this will be coming out regularly.

A word ‘NON-STANDARD’ is derived from NON-STANDARD ANALYSIS in modern mathematics. As represented in Fractal Geometry, modern mathematics or modern science suggests a means to converse with Nature not disorganizing it to construct culture as has been happening up to the present. Haruomi Hosono implies in the word ‘NON-STANDARD’ not a conventional science but a spirit of new science. In other words it can be another naturalism (SHIRAKABA-HA in Japan) in this hi-technology society. NON-STANDARD therefore includes various ideas and expressions. Haruomi Hosono is at present under-taking ‘Sightseeing Music’ and this is one of the expression. NON-STANDARD also develops the ambient music started by Brian Eno to a global level and to converse with and respond to a dispatch from the earth. This is part of the idea.

Now we would like to comment on this publication, GLOBULE. Firstly, a title of this book; a word, GLOBULE came into his mind inspired by monadology on the earth and on fractal, and he has given it a characteristic element. GLOBULE looks as a creature or machinery, yet it is not. It exists in the middle of everything, in a very ambiguous zone. That is, GLOBULE has become part of a character of NON-STANDARD. Various types of Japanese talented creators, comix/artists and SF writers contribute to this publication over this mysterious ‘existence’. Some of the contributors expressed in the form of comix, a diagram of GLOBULE, its history of evolution and when and where it had encountered the mankind. It also includes a document on mankind’s close encounter with GLOBULE.

Haruomi Hosono also called GLOBULE ‘seeds of stars’. It will grow and stay within a mind of Japanese hi-tech kids and it will be the real NON-STANDARD mankind that will try to dialogue with the earth.

(Hosono 1984: 175-176.)

Read Thaemlitz’s full essay: https://www.comatonse.com/writings/organisedsound_8_1.html