Sonic Memories
->Devon Turnbull

In his book about reggae sound systems, Sonic Bodies, author Julian Henriques describes the difference between hearing and listening: “Listening is a mental, social, and cultural process, a distinctive technique that has to be distinguished from the physiological facility of hearing. It is a relationship of the body as a whole.” This notion of embodied listening is well understood by Devon Turnbull, who builds bespoke audio equipment under the name OJAS. Whether in the form of single speakers or entire sculptural systems, Turnbull has spent two decades focused on natural sound that allows for such pure listening experiences.

Turnbull developed OJAS in the background of his work as an audio engineer and clothing designer (he co-founded the influential Nom de Guerre in 2003). His early custom builds were personal passion projects until the ACE Hotel commissioned a few pieces. Though initially hesitant to commercialize OJAS, Turnbull began to see long-term benefits. “It allowed me to work on a scale that I otherwise couldn’t,” he explains. “I love the process of designing this stuff, making it with my hands. It’s one of the things I live for.”

Turnbull describes the OJAS sound as “musical,” one that looks beyond the extreme frequency ranges of bass and treble to reproduce natural-sounding instrumentation. “The human voice, wind instruments, acoustic drums, and almost all string instruments live in what most people consider mid-bass to mid-range,” he describes. “The music lives there, and that's really where I put the majority of my attention.”

Turnbull applied this approach to his Terminal 27 commission, an OJAS A9 system built with life-like sound and versatility for events. For this project and others, Turnbull draws from experiences with peers and legends in the audio and architecture worlds. “The significance of my memories in this space is more cultural than technical,” he says. “And I'm working on a couple of projects that really fuse architecture and sound design, to the point where the sound system will penetrate the architecture.”

To celebrate the new pieces arriving at Terminal 27, we asked him to share two vivid, transportive experiences that shaped him and the work he does with OJAS.

La Maison de l'Audiophile

Paris, France

“While Japan is really the place that birthed the audio culture I'm interested in, it has become a worldwide underground phenomenon. One of the first times I heard a system with this approach to audio was at a store outside of Paris, La Maison de l'Audiophile. There was a guy there, William Walther, who produced a single-ended 300B amplifier, which is the best-known triode. The amps I'm interested in use a type of tube called a triode, and the 300B is the main reference tube in a lot of ways.

“I had read about this guy in Paris, who built these kinds of amps and actually had a storefront. There was nothing I could do at the time except just go there. So I looked it up on MapQuest, printed out a map, and figured out how to take the train from Paris. I just showed up, and it was a really cool place. Half of it was a record store but not in the way we have today; it was more DIY and had records piled up in milk crates. The other side of the room had mismatched shelving and tons of vintage audio gear, as well as handmade pieces he was producing. These were fairly well-known in Japan. I've seen them advertised in late '80s and early '90s Japanese audio magazines.

“So he had a worldwide following, but he was really just one guy with an eccentric, handmade sound system in his storefront. He spoke very little English, but he welcomed me in, sat me down, and played me records as he went about his work for a couple of hours. It was a very eye-opening experience, both sonically and culturally. You're welcomed in, and there's not even much of an effort to sell you anything. It's a sharing experience. It’s inspired me to communicate more about what I'm doing with audio to promote it as a culture and a hobby, which includes me introducing DIY kits and things like that. I’m trying to encourage people to look at audio as something that can be a much bigger part of their lives than just buying some stuff, putting it on a shelf, and looking at it. You can be much more active and intentional about the process of listening to music.”

Unnamed Sound

Museum in Japan

“There's an area in Tokyo called Akihabara. If you're in Tokyo, and you're going to Akihabara, you'll see signs in English that say, “electronic city.” Akihabara was the mecca for early radio technology. The extreme audio field in Japan and other places grew out of post-war radio sets and receivers. That transitioned directly into Hi-Fi globally, but very much so in Japan.

“If you need parts for building a Hi-Fi tube amp or anything like that, Akihabara is where you go. I had a lot of important experiences just by wandering around and finding parts stores and showrooms, even if it was just for five minutes. As I started building my own gear, I established a relationship with a guy named Koji who spoke pretty good English and was a big trader of Japanese parts to the rest of the world. I had never met him in person; we had only corresponded by email. He told me that he was building a vintage audio museum up in the mountains, much further from Tokyo than I realized at the time. He invited me to go there and visit him.

“So, I went to Japan for my fashion work with a plan to see the museum at the tail end of the trip. It took me a full day of travel to get there. This guy had bought a giant building in a really beautiful location, right on the edge of a crater lake on top of a volcanic mountain. It’s really just the biggest collection, so much large-scale vintage gear, new gear, important design, circuitry — you name it. For me, it was a playground. If you want to experience it, this guy's got it.

“As soon as I got there, I realized that Koji had a level of dedication to the craft that I didn't know existed. It was really inspirational. Very few hobbyists in the U.S. dedicate themselves like that, besides maybe in Harley culture. I wanted to bring the same kind of commitment into my practice. Even though my vision for my studio was a very clean, minimal presentation with just a few pieces of gear, I felt that I needed to acquire as much as possible to take things apart, experiment, and learn.”