kita kouhei - 北航平 - Idealism Ⅲ (Neuf)

The Slow Music Movement
Aug 16
2 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's August 10th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

This is the album cover for kita kouhei's, 北航平 / Idealism Ⅲ album. It's an abstract design with teal, black, and white rectangles, intersecting lines. Text reads "idealismIII kitakouhei." Minimalist and calm mood.

Some artists and labels are like old mates, they just keep knocking on your door and even after a long absence it’s like they were never away, those years of shared experiences having cemented a special place in your heart despite the odd falling out along the way. But as most music diggers will tell you there’s a special buzz when you stumble across a new artist who you immediately hit it off with, and alongside Olli Aarni, Kita Kouhei is another new discovery who I’ve immediately bonded with this week.

Kouhei is a percussionist, sound artist and Array mbira player (don’t worry I had to look it up too). He started releasing music about ten years ago and this is album number fifteen - he’s not hanging about. He also seems to be mellowing with age, dispensing with his early glitchier, beatsier and chunkier approach for a lighter, more textural vibe.

kita kouhei in sunglasses and a bowler hat looking down, with a cat on his shoulders. Black and white abstract overlay creates a textured, faded, dreamy effect.

The album will sound great twinkling, twittering, shaking, rattling and very occasionally thumping along in the background of whatever you’re doing, but I would really recommend taking some quality time out to sit in a stereo triangle with your speakers or put your headphones on, surely the doom scrolling and post-truth economy can do without you for forty minutes? The other half, kids or your boss might be another matter, but at least try.

Beside being another new discovery there are other parallels to the Olli Arni LP in that it’s a soundscape where the space matters as much as the precision placed notes and microsounds. Although Kouhei naturally uses a more acoustic, percussive sound palette of mini-rattles, quick shakes and one hit wonders, the compositions are equally as far-out, a state of affairs accentuated by his discerning use of field recordings, machine noises and sound warping effects, culminating in a soundscape ideally suited to parallel-dimension contemplation and spirit world communing. Headphones on, or listening room lights low for this one please.