Bajune Tobeta - After the Silence (feat. Christian Fennesz) (Croix Healing) [Ambient Electronic]

Bajune Tobeta is a new artist to me, but I'm happy to make his sonic acquaintance. He's a Japanese composer, producer, pianist, sound environment designer, video game soundtracker and acoustic researcher who shamelessly flirts with modern classical, ambient electronica, downtempo and throws in a bit of Brazilian music for good measure. He's also a keen collaborator, working with artists as diverse as Arto Lindsay, Joyce Moreno, and on this, his new single, the electronic producers' electronic producer, Christian Fennesz.

He's also got a new album coming out on August 14th, and "After the Silence" is here to tell us that it might just be worth putting the date in your diary. The album is enticingly entitled, Anechoic, after the chamber of the same name that is designed to absorb all sound, making for a rare, and by all accounts, after a while uncomfortable experience.

Oddly "After the Silence" doesn't refer to the initial moments after the chamber door has been opened but actually refers to the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who both Fennesz and Tobeta were acquainted, and also worked with. To realise the collaboration files were bounced between Tokyo and Vienna, the distance certainly not affecting the obvious synergy.

The track is a fond commemoration of Sakomoto, and seemingly focusses on the great man's legacy that still reverberates through time and space, across oceans and through the air, and via the musicians he inspired; accentuating the positives rather than dwelling on the loss, resulting in a suitably shimmering, twinkling, stately but spritely slice of ambient electronica that somehow straddles modern classical, new age, ambient and quietly experimental electronic music worlds; floating serenely into the listening space, brightening rooms, lifting moods and soothing the distressed. Now where's that album?

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Playlist Companion

Find them in the Slowtronic Playlist.