Tomoyoshi Date + Stijn Hüwels - Tatemono (Laaps) [Ambient]

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's September 9th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

Tomoyoshi Date and Stijn Hüwels are a couple of ambient sages, who after mixing in similarly refined ambient company, finally met in 2015. With both having a fondness for quieter, electroacoustic and minimal ambient forms, they unsurprisingly hit it off. Their first album was released on Home Normal in 2019, closely followed by A Distant Fire, A Distant Cloud on Laaps - one of my go-to ambient labels (more on them at the end of the newsletter), who have also enabled their latest duet.

Stijn Hüwels

Tatemono - 建物 means building in Japanese, and each track surveys, then explores a different architectural element. I’ll leave you to decide which element you’re listening to; and please, no looking at the track titles and cheating. I can’t lie, I initially listened to the album nearer its July 9th release date, and dismissed it as a touch familiar, but wisely gave it a second chance during a quieter moment when it finally dawned on me.

Tomoyoshi Date

“門” is a quietly dramatic opening survey, its gently restless nature sprinkled with distant piano key presses, some field recordings of indeterminate origin and even a stray bass pulse. “扉“ initially leads us closer to the piano before taking a left along a poorer-lit corridor, only to be reunited minutes later on “廊下“, where the piano notes finally join hands, before again bowing to machine dominance. “窓” strays into more recognisable neoclassical form; the microphone dangled to capture the often overlooked, deeper piano resonances, before Hüwels dusts off his guitar to light-heartedly chatter with Date on “屋根“, and bring this peep through the keyhole to a twinkling conclusion.

If this slow-burning album crept up on you too, then check out andarctica's measures of the old earth album

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Playlist Companion

Find the duo in the Slow Ambient Playlist.