Haruki "Rook" Murao
Haruki “Rook” Murao, known professionally as SRCFLP, is a Japanese American beatmaker, sound artist, and spatial sound researcher based in Okinawa, Japan.
Raised in Los Angeles, Murao’s practice grew from Hip Hop, sampling, turntablism, and beatmaking, and has developed into an exploration of live performance, audiovisual improvisation, and spatial sound. He works with samplers, drum machines, synthesizers, software, video, and sound systems as instruments for real-time performance and experimentation.
His current work investigates the relationship between human decision-making and technological systems, particularly through machine-live performance and spatial audio. At the MIT Spatial Sound Lab, he collaborates on research involving spatial sound, quadraphonic performance, audiovisual work, and the exploration of sound as a way of connecting people, environments, and cultural contexts. Alongside his artistic and research practice, Murao teaches beatmaking and creative production through his studio-based Beat Lab in Okinawa.
Selected works / projects
MIT Spatial Sound Lab — Spatial Sound & Audiovisual Research
Murao works with the MIT Spatial Sound Lab on experiments and research involving spatial audio, quadraphonic sound, audiovisual performance, and listening environments. His work explores how physical sound systems and spatial relationships can become part of the creative process itself, rather than simply serving as a means of playback.
Through hands-on experimentation with multichannel sound, performance systems, and audiovisual material, the work examines how human decisions, musical gesture, and technological constraints interact in real time.
Sound and the Unseen: Resonances between Okinawa and New England
A collaborative research project exploring connections between Okinawa and New England through sound, ecology, listening, and place.
The project considers how environmental and cultural materials can be recorded, sampled, transformed, and spatialized, using sound as a way to investigate relationships between different places and communities.
SRCFLP — Machine-Live Performance
SRCFLP’s performance practice centers on real-time interaction with machines. Using samplers, drum machines, synthesizers, turntables, effects, and software, Murao builds performances through live sampling, sequencing, manipulation, and improvisation.
The practice explores how human decisions and technological constraints shape music in real time.
Beats’n’Bass
Beats’n’Bass is a music genre coined by SRCFLP, expanding beyond conventional Hip Hop and rap to embrace a wider range of sounds, rhythms, and influences.
Rooted in Hip Hop’s experimental origins, it brings together bass music, minimal techno, Brazilian rhythm, footwork, dub, and other forms of electronic music to create an evolving, hybrid dance music.
Selected audiovisual / spatial sound works
Invocation — São Paulo Bienal, 2025
OIST Going Modular
Kyoto Jinpu-an
Naha Immersive Art Night
Tida no Hikari
Space Invader
Links
Primary
Research
https://www.srcflp.com/mitssl.html
Work