Hiromu Yamaguchi - The City & Diurnal Modulation (Teinei) [Electronic Music]
- The Slow Music Movement
- 10 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Based in Tokyo, Hiromu Yamaguchi is a composer and sound artist who studied his craft at Nihon University before releasing his music to a wider audience. He hovers somewhere around the fragile and gently experimental end of the ambient electronic spectrum, and his pretty singular sound often finds a home in stage productions. Refreshingly, he defies easy comparison.
His latest album has found a good home on the relatively new Teinei label, set up by Tomotsugu Nakamura a couple of years ago, and apparently, "reframes urban solitude", a timeless, but oddly with our communication advances, increasingly common issue. It's actually a reimagining of sound materials that were originally created for a theatrical production, and through layering it intends to introduce a "cosmic perspective that gently envelops that sense of isolation."
A good premise, and this is one, is pointless without good music, and Yamaguchi has certainly delivered. The sound palette consists of piano, field recordings, machine sounds and creative use of distortion. The closely miked, minimal piano tones thread a sense of vague optimism at times, but more often silent resignation at the loneliness; and the distant hum of chatter and urban activity infuse that big city, "so close yet so far" feeling.
The machine noises and audio textures are abstract at best, as the album explores the melancholy, forbearance and vulnerability of the socially secluded. At worst, which isn't often, they are abrasive and piercing, the machines crying out as another weekend passes staring at those all too familiar, tiny apartment walls, once the temporary escape of Discord forums, "social" media, online games and Netflix have again failed to deliver that all-important human touch and warmth.
It's a delicate, thoughtful, quietly experimental, beautifully crafted gaze at social isolation, and a poignant electronic music reflection on a widespread, oft-disccussed issue in this age of urbanisation and technology.
Playlist Companion
Find Yamaguchi in the Slow Ambient Playlist.