Conceived as a commissioned work for Japanese integrated art brand WARA, Hiroshima-based composer Meitei created SHITSURAI as music to embody the collective’s ideology centered around age-old Japanese traditions and sensibilities. Meitei, whose real name is Daisuke Fujita, and WARA’s artistic director Eri searched for a new dialog with sounds reflecting the Japanese aesthetics of 24 sekki that mark nature’s perpetual cycle of ever-changing seasons. Meitei’s entrancing ode to the 24 sekki expresses Japanese lyricism through minimal piano, environmental and electronic sounds. 

In Japan, each of the four seasons of the year is experienced in six phases and all have their own distinct characters. Unveiling a reverence for the Japanese passage of time, the 4-track EP explores the ebb and flow through the twenty-four seasons of Japan as nature awakens, blossoms, matures and settles into a slum from the beginning of spring (Risshun), the first day of summer (Rikka), the first day of autumn (Risshū) to the beginning of winter (Rittō). 

Symbolizing the Japanese concept of shitsurai (to arrange) with an emphasis on ma (the sound of silence), the compositions were designed as a collage of delicate piano sounds that the composer played, recorded and subsequently meticulously cut and rearranged. The piano serves as a metaphor for the artist’s individual existence in the shifting landscape of time throughout the record. With each passing season, surrounded by new environments and colors, various textures were drawn with subtle glitchy electronics embedded within natural sounds, gradually unfolding as the album unravels. Transient, sparse and boundless at once, for fifteen minutes, the four tracks cycle through small variations, the album paradoxically, expands with each listening loop: it’s one that can be listened to endlessly.

With this album, Meitei’s unique sound universe is observed from yet another new perspective, as the artist has demonstrated in prior albums. SHITSURAI exemplifies Meitei’s brilliance with motifs, minimalism and movement as he seeks to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism in his never-ending quest to reinterpret and recapture lost Japanese moods.

Meitei releases SHITSURAI at the beginning of spring, 4 February 2023, on all digital formats. Gen Tanabe mastered this record at Studio Camel House in Japan.

Meitei - Risshun (SHITSURAI, 2023)

FREE DOWNLOAD

Smany - Himitsu

Night Tourist

In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory, invited to create Onsen (hot spring) music commemorating the city’s 100th anniversary through sound. Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which weave together vanished eras with the ambient residue of the past, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched near the bay.

Over two weeks, Meitei listened to steam, stone, and history. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the spirit of onsen culture. Like water seeking its path, the music unfolded with natural inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep reverence for place. Equipped with a microphone, he ventured into Beppu’s famed sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou — capturing bubbling earth, hissing vents, wind over bamboo, and the voices of regular visitors. These field recordings became the bones of the composition, an attempt to sonify even the rising mist and subtle temperature shifts felt on the skin.

Sen’nyū unfolds as a single, continuous piece. Meitei’s score moves like fog through sulfur and stone, traversing the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral hum of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the voices and atmosphere of Takegawara Onsen. At its heart is a gesture of quiet reverence — for water’s patience, for the land’s memory, and for the hands that have bathed here across generations.

Meitei has always expressed his own views on things and events that are self-evident to the Japanese people but are now perceived as subtle impressions. On this occasion, however, he does not create music based on his own unique themes of Japan. Instead, he launches music into the world that has been created in actual places of Japan, music that can be felt with the hands.

During the project, Meitei also conceived a two-day public sound installation at Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance on the final day. Bathers immersed themselves in hot spring water while listening to the piece through speakers embedded inside the bathhouse — a ritual fusion of body, place, and sound.

The album marks Meitei’s first work centered entirely on onsen, and also introduces a new phase of his Lost Japan project under the title “失日本百景” (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan) — a series focused on existing places of longing, still breathing within contemporary Japan. Alongside the album, Meitei will release his first-ever photo book, a visual documentation of this journey. A new layer is added to the world he has built through sound alone until now.

Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.

The album will be released on 25 July 2025 on 180g LP and CD, with mastering by Stephan Mathieu.


Sen'nyū - Go-no-yu

nekomusume「sora!」
2014/9/14 release

リリース特設サイト
http://nekomusume-sora.tumblr.com/

track list
1.sora!
2.sora! (kneeeeee remix)
3.sora! (acoustic ver.)

sora! (kneeeeee remix)

Gentle textural soundscapes trace the quiet shift in season, evoking warmth, stillness, and the beauty of impermanence. A sonic reflection on the passage of time, memory, and the subtle charm of change.

Christoph Vogel (Ghostloop) about his album: “It’s a collection of nine ambient pieces — soundscapes shaped by personal moments and quiet shifts I experienced over the past year, many of them spent in nature.

I worked with field recordings I captured during that time, letting them carry traces of place and memory. While writing, I also began building my Eurorack modular system, slowly integrating its sounds into the tracks as they took shape.

'Almost Autumn' reflects a quiet cycle of the year — the slow transitions, inner stillness, and changing atmosphere that come with time passing”.

Christoph Vogel, known as Ghostloop (Germany), weaves immersive soundscapes shaped by the serene rhythms of nature. Drawing from the ambient textures of field recordings and grounding them with deep, fluid basslines, his compositions echo the quiet moods of Northern Germany and the Baltic Sea coast. Rooted in a deep sense of place, Ghostloop’s music invites listeners to pause, drift, and sink into gentle, emotive layers of sound.

Produced and mixed by Christoph Vogel (Ghostloop)
Mastered by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Cover picture and design by Dionis Afonichev

Sen'nyū - Go-no-yu

KITCHEN. LABEL

Recent comments

No Mates Ensemble

Related tracks