Matching expansive ambience with environmental sound, Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album continues Field Records’ exploration of Japan and the Netherland’s shared approach to water management. As with SUGAI KEN’s 2020 album Tone River, a specific project becomes Hatakeyama’s area of focus - in this case the Hachirōgata Lake in Akita Prefecture. 

Previously the second largest body of water in Japan, the government ordered extensive drainage work of Hachirōgata Lake after the second world war with the help of Dutch engineers Pieter Jansen and Adriaan Volker. After the project was completed in 1977, reclaimed land took up eighty percent of Hachirōgata Lake’s total size. As a result, a new ecosystem was established as plants spread from surrounding areas, bringing with them a wider variety of birds and other wildlife. 

Hatakeyama’s approach to this unique subject matter took in field recordings from particular locations around the lake - the drainage channels, the Ogata bridge, grassland conservation reserves and other key areas. The aquatic subject matter and sonic material is a natural fit for Hatakeyama’s accomplished sound, which has featured on numerous solo works for labels including Kranky, Room40 and his self-run White Paddy Mountain. 

From the intimate intricacies of the sampled material to the glacial expanses of droning synthesis and languid guitar, Hatakeyama creates a tangible environment which at once reflects the settings around Hachirōgata Lake, while offering the listener any number of imagined scenes to observe in their mind’s eye.

This project is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tokyo, Japan.

Bandcamp

Chihei Hatakeyama - Water And Birds

It Would Be Giving Up

An Evening, Elsewhere

boo_screen life (softer cell mix)

feening

Upon the arc of constellations: 
Tensed between bodies
Dance between our fingers 
Ember, that lingers

Already innate—

Abides what dwells, mesh of our hands 
Brush softly the wheels of what it craves

Beneath the tremors of unseen tides 
Burns with the heat of dust and rush

Aloft in the quiet rhythm of luminaries, through the metaphysical: echoes waltz beneath the currents and between darkened domes. A weightless rhythm carried slow, where horizon loosens its hold upon the threshold for it is out of reach.

Based in Texas, USA, Field Designer is the creative force behind Language Instinct & Glacial Anatomy. Ventures across the essence of tension-elements like: the raw, unpredictable nature of distortion within serenity and intensity, that is both expansive and constrained.

Amulet of Tears

Aesthetic Limitations

Field Designer - The days get shorter

I pull at the drawer and it resists me for a moment, the way things do when they've settled into themselves over time. There is that particular sound—wood sliding against wood—and then suddenly it gives way, revealing its contents with a quiet rattle. Morning light streams over each object; items that have rested in darkness since the last time I visited, their colors now vivid and startling. It is as if the drawer itself has been safeguarding small treasures meant only for me.


Mastering by Inner Most

Album artwork by Salka Rosinkranz
https://www.salkarosinkranz.com/

@serpuline @preciousmoment @powerdynamics @wardizemoth @land_scap3 @rotabega @still-life-doves @montanhadeluz @user-492249249 @yyyafffeee @dj_spur @elfani8 @philgeraldi

（ミ￣ー￣ミ）
https://freesound.org/people/inner_most_garden/packs/43520/

Drawerful

rotabega 

Gather

rotabega 🍃 soft index

farewell the past

I wish I could take it all back

Track 4 from new LP 'Earthbound' out now on Aural Canyon:

https://auralcanyonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/earthbound

Streaming everywhere.

Tidal Marrow (from new LP, 'Earthbound')

 [[tapedel] played & programmed customised Yamaha Disklavier Pro, Recorded To Nagra IVS 5"]

avril 14th, notes played backwards, not the audio.

Tujiko Noriko - Kuro (OST)
Format: LP / CD / Digital
Label: PAN (ENTOPIA)
Cat.No. PAN 89
Release Date: 26 April 2019 
Pre-order album: https://bit.ly/2TNq3yB / https://bit.ly/2F3mN9Q

Written and directed by Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko, Kuro tells the tale of Romi, a Japanese woman living in the suburbs of Paris with her paraplegic lover Milou. Tending to Milou by day and working in a karaoke bar by night, Romi reminisces about a time she and Milou once lived together in Japan with a mysterious ailing man named Mr. Ono. Weaving together personal history, anecdotes and myths, her stories soon turn ominous.

When we first decided to ‘split’ the film into what might be described as two parallel layers — the narrated story and the visual story — we found that it opened up an ‘in-between’ space, a space where what is heard and seen continually wrestle with one another. We envisaged that the true setting of the film would emerge from this friction, as something imagined and projected by the audience. After a few screenings we were struck by how some audience members would refer to scenes or events in the film that, for us, did not take place… We both thought of the music of Kuro as a score to this space in-between.

-Joji Koyama

Composed and recorded during the editing of the film in Berlin, the Kuro OST by Tujiko Noriko (with contributions from Joji Koyama, Sam Britton and Will Worsely), is a crucial and integral part of the film, acting not only as a glue to bind the layers of the film together, but along with the sonic palette of the film’s sound design, evokes it’s claustrophobic atmospheres and moments of haunting beauty.

I tried to think of the pieces in abstract terms, like moods and atmospheres. In a way, the process was quite similar to how I usually make music, in the sense that I have images in my head. Of course in this case there were actual images and a lot of them very close to me, but I didn't want to get overly conscious about them either—I didn't want to get stuck by trying to be too specific.

-Tujiko Noriko

The music, which in the film is largely heard in tandem to the narrating voice of Tujiko Noriko (who also stars as Romi), is presented and arranged here as a separate piece in its own right.

Written and produced by Tujiko Noriko. Mixed by Sam Britton and Will Worsley at Coda to Coda, London.
The album is mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin featuring photography by Joji Koyama and layout by Bill Kouligas and Johannes Schnatmann. 

ENTOPIA is the latest offshoot series from PAN seeking to amplify and redefine our ideas of what a soundtrack can be. The series will survey critical works across the spectrum from musical composers on PAN and beyond, commissioned for the worlds of film, art, performance, installation works, theatre, dance and fashion.

@tujikonoriko
www.p-a-n.org

Kuro (OST)

Tujiko Noriko - Rooftop (PAN 89)

@poshisolation
Read more: pw-magazine.com/2021/premiere-frederik-valentin-magic/

An Evening, Elsewhere

Celer

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