“I'll be in the middle of doing an air check, and my mom would turn on a light switch in the other room, and the tape would pick up that buzzing sound.”
Kojima described his musical initiation in the analog era: as a child he did not have money for records, so his window onto music was the radio — FM in particular, also AM and shortwave — and his tape recorder. He made air checks: buying the magazine that listed programming to know which album would play, getting into position and nailing the moment to press REC — FM programmes often played an entire album within an hour and only named the artist at the end. A mistimed start would ruin the recording, and it could not be edited (with two decks one could dub, but the copy lost quality). He recalled the occupational hazard of being in the middle of an air check and his mother turning a light switch in another room so the tape picked up an electrical buzzing.
“I didn't have a lot of money because I was a kid. So I listened to the radio. […] There were a lot of FM music programmes and I would do air checks. […] you have to nail the timing just right. […] my mom would turn on a light switch in the other room, and the tape would pick up that buzzing sound.”