this is the kind of song i'd listen to before a huge snowstorm :) lovely as always

love how you can actually hear the fingers hit the keys! shows how expensive the equipment is

"The End Isn't the End" in which the tapestry woven by the arpeggio of the guitar spreads in the space like a constellation, this song was commissioned by The New York Times and was made for the documentary film below. 

nyti.ms/2pAesVo
https://vimeo.com/298466006

Motohiro Nakashima hails from Fukuyama, a city near Hiroshima. Noted for his fingerstyle guitar, and an experimental, ambient approach to making music, Nakashima debuted from Lo Recordings (Thurston Moore, Susumu Yokota, Luke Vibert) and has three albums from several labels.
Gathering The Light is his most personal work to date. Combining fingerstyle guitar and ambient instrumentation for emotive minimalist soundscapes, the album illustrates the universal search for light in the darkness, beauty in melancholy.

Motohiro Nakashima - The End Isn't the End

https://flau.jp/releases/wind-letter/

Machinone, an enigmatic artist who composes music based on "town (Machi)" in the broad sense of the word, will release his third album.  Acoustic guitar and small piano are spun in a simple and gentle manner.
On top of variously designed instruments and objects, a faintly imaginary world rises up and opens a new door.

Following the 1st album Tokyo, which depicts the west side of Tokyo, and Pieni, which expresses the compassion for the towns and small things in our memories, Machinone's third album is an imaginary wind letter that has arrived in our time. Using the title "Wind Letter" and the melody of the title track as a clue, Wind Letter was constructed with a slightly sci-fi story in mind. In addition to the gut guitars, small pianos, banjos, and prepared guitars that characterize Machinone's music, this album also features triangular analog string synthesizers, cheap keyboards, triangles, and denden taiko (Japanese pellet drum). The result is a varied and, in some songs, magical ensemble. From the keywords that influenced the album, such as Draisine, Chacun cherche son chat (Cédric Klapisch), Niewinni Czarodzieje (Andrzej Wajda) and Frank Patterson's Cycling Eutopia, as well as the stories brought by the various invisible forms of wind indicated in the song titles, may give you a sense of longing for the near future and the past that does not exist, and a soft look at contemporary society. The world changed dramatically during the making of this album, and the songs that were created to dispel this change are a collection of small pieces that have a hint of brightness and comicality, and give a sense of a new swing for Machinone as a musician.

Machinone - Kazeyoubi 風曜日

Release Date:
25 Feb 2022

Ⓟ & © 2022 KITCHEN. LABEL

ASPIDISTRAFLY, the Singaporean duo comprising April Lee and Ricks Ang, return with 'Altar of Dreams', their first studio album in a decade. 

While their last album 'A Little Fable' introduced the world to their bucolic and wispy brand of folk songwriting, 'Altar of Dreams' sees the duo – also the founders of KITCHEN. LABEL – harness their experiences over the past decade to create a wholly new and inspired vision. In this new and third album, they drew upon a rich palette of shapes, sounds and movement: straddling between the visionary photography of Serge Lutens and Dora Maar, 80s Japanese female ambient pop, musique concrete and the mournful strings of Béla Bartók. 

The world in which ASPIDISTRAFLY once inhabited was foggy and awash in faded memory. A feeling of being suspended in time felt inescapable with each listen. In 'Altar of Dreams', the fog is clearing up. At nine songs under 35 minutes, the album possesses all the defining hallmarks of ASPIDISTRAFLY – poetic lyricism, cosmic introspection, lush strings, surrealism, tenderness and texture. But what was once seemingly inscrutable has now been explored with astounding clarity, the duo maneuvering through a space-time continuum with delicate leaps.

‘How To Find A Marblewing’, the opening track, is a heady sound collage of early internet sounds, film, anime, and chopped-and-screwed 90s J-pop. It’s a presence deeply embedded throughout the record, a method Lee describes as “a form of environmental/tape treatment”. 

The compositions glimmer with sincerity, addressing all at once destruction, mystery, uncertainty, hopes and dreams. The resulting music is backed by an opulence only possible with a line-up of guest musicians. ‘The Voice of Flowers’ is stirring in its balance of flute, clarinet, tenor saxophone and piano, bolstered by a string quartet. KITCHEN. LABEL artist haruka nakamura features on the track alongside Kyo Ichinose (who arranged the strings for the album) and wind instrumentalist ARAKI Shin.

‘Interlude: Chrysalises and Larvae’ takes the heavy path downward, adopting its name from the 1973 surrealist odyssey The Hourglass Sanatorium. It leads into ‘Companion to Owls’, a gothic pop paean to mortality inspired by the Book of Job. 

Before the namesake centrepiece of the album, another interlude arrives in ‘A Ceremonial Ode’, both of which were stirred by a series of regal Shiseido ads from the 1980s starring model Sayoko Yamaguchi. ‘Altar of Dreams’ is haunted by the lucid dreams that once provided escapism for Lee. Its tranquility belies a simmering tension, just as how a lucid dream would offer control in the face of the unknown. “In one of them, I was floating in a vast darkness safe and secure, and then I fell into a turbulent mirage where I willingly allowed myself to be swept away further and further from reality, hoping that I would never wake up,” she says. “Needless to say I did, and ended up writing this song on one of these dead nights.” 

If the title track replicates the feeling of falling deep into that spiral, ‘Silk and Satins’ is a direct analysis of the phenomenon. Warped frequencies collide with nature and television sound effects – the latter sourced from 80s Singaporean horror series Mystery – within an inter-dimensional music world. The track was made with featured artist SUGAI KEN, whose own work is an endless scroll of intoxicating found sounds. 

‘Quintessence’, the sweeping closing track, distills all the elements scattered across the album into a coda that beautifully refuses to resolve. At first an exercise in guitar looping, the song was then written without a beginning and end in mind. “I’d like to think of it as poetry that’s sung,” says Lee.

In 'Altar of Dreams', ASPIDISTRAFLY are renewed and hopeful. They’ve emerged from a decade spent reframing the world they see through vivid dreams and memories. Now, it’s all yours to experience.

Altar of Dreams

ASPIDISTRAFLY - The Voice of Flowers (Altar of Dreams, 2022)

Nothing Left Behind

Mistletoe

taken from the album 'Tokyo'
www.flau.jp/releases/43.html

Harutsugedori／春告鳥（With Federico Durand）

Songwriting and recording : Nolika
Mix and mastering : Antoine Van Lierde

Get Bedroom Songs EP on Bandcamp : http://nolika.bandcamp.com

Out since March 2017

All The Birds Hide Away

Download

every little moment (piano version)

https://flau.bandcamp.com/album/cocoon

I recorded during the spring storm.　Although it is being distributed at various places, unintentional noise during mastering is included. If you are a noise mania, there.This will be the original version.

Emma gatrill／Cocoon（Machinone Remix）

Music for Museum Gift Shops

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prelude for a single snowflake under a streetlight, falling like a star (piano version)

木漏れ日の在りかを記した地図
Komorebi／木漏れ日＝sunlight filtering through trees

Taken from the new album 'Pieni'　flau.jp/releases/pieni/
Bandcamp     https://flau.bandcamp.com/album/pieni
取り扱い店　machinone.blogspot.com/2019/03/pieni-3-6.html

Komorebi Map／木漏れ日地図

fly me away, where I will find rest
the end of my invisible journey
the beginning of yet another chapter
I seek a new bed
and I will lay me down to sleep

[acoustic piano + xylophones + violin bow + processing]


pollen

miniature melodies for everyday moments

contact:
hello(at)lullatone(dot)com

prelude for a single snowflake under a streetlight, falling like a star (piano version)

LULLATONE

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