KLINGER — HORST

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Taken from Klinger’s Persona project, which sees the composer creating a series of musical portraits, this one looks at Horst — 76-year-old proprietor of Crazy Horst, a once lively pub in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district. Used to closing up shop for just one day a year prior to 2020, the pandemic has hit hard.

Accordingly Klinger’s piano paints a touching vignette, the music weighed down in the middle by heavy notes of slow, stifling despair. But there is a sense of continuity, which lies in a certain bounce to the notes, an almost galloping, heartbeat-esque rhythm, as the piece ends with hope hanging like a haze in the air.

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• 🔔 Check out Klinger’s Persona project here, and watch the video featuring ‘Horst’ himself here.

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MASAYOSHI FUJITA — BIRD AMBIENCE

⌾ LISTEN TO BIRD AMBIENCE BY MASAYOSHI FUJITA ⌾

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The natural world. That’s the overriding force at work in ‘Bird Ambience’ by Berlin-based vibraphonist and composer Masayoshi Fujita. But that — signalled by the track’s robust percussion, tumbling marimba and keen ceramic reverberations — is only half of the story here. For all of its organically glossy and glomping collisions of beater against solid object, there’s a smattering of inorganic glitch, sharp and harsh, zooming around within; an ancient computer of some forgotten century still whirring brokenly amidst vast trees and choking vines. And all around, ghosts — the nebulous vocals of singer Hatis Noit cooing through the canopy.

The sheer space between each knock, each tap, hit and plonk — and the constrasting soft, sheafing ambience of each successive contact — gives Fujita's ‘Bird Ambience’ an empty-yet-full feeling: Navigating the voidsome depths of woods, its trees and the heavy air between the trunks and branches. There’s an essence of kankyō ongaku or “environmental music” here, with textural elements reminiscent of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s ‘Time After Time’. There's less in the way of melody, of rigidity, Fujita's track instead creeping along almost at random, solidly and yet as if it were mist.

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• 🔔 This track is taken from Masayoshi Fujita's upcoming album Bird Ambience, scheduled for release on Erased Tapes on 28th May. You can pre-order it from Bandcamp digitally, as a CD or limited edition 2LP.

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CHIHIRO ONO — HACHIREN

⌾ LISTEN TO HACHIREN BY CHIHIRO ONO ⌾

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A bell rings three times, announcing the apparition of Chihiro Ono’s suite. Ono, a violinist and violist born in Chiba, Japan, but now living in London, based these four short movements chiefly on the music (and life) of pianist and composer Rentaro Taki. She calls it "super Romantico Classical music" not classical nor experimental, and certainly not pop.

Born in 1979, Taki attentended Leipzig Conservatory in 1901 as the third Japanese musician to study in Europe. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and travelled back to Oita, Japan in 1902, where he died in 1903. He is perhaps most famous for ‘Kojo no Tsuki’ (Ruined Castle by Moonlight) appropriately inspired by the ruins of Oka Castle in Oita, and with lyrics penned by poet Bansui Doi (1871-1952). "His musical life had many Western influences, yet he never lost the strong core of his nation in his heart, which I can relate to," says Ono. "Doi’s words and Rentarou’s music resonate strongly with me."

‘Kojo no Tsuki’ is fairly well known and has been given renditions throughout the years. For one example, it was jazzed up (literally), albeit without its title, by Theolonius Monk as ‘Japanese Folk Song’.

It’s Taki’s song that works its way through Chihiro Ono’s HachiRen, particularly in ‘Kojo’ (Ruined castle), strings crooning smooth in lament, harsh chords scrape into the air, the whisper of the bow falling silent. That whispering, like a dry brush stroke, flecks of sound colour against the void, feel characteristic of the suite as a whole, particularly in final track ‘Ren’ — a poignant, if melancholic, reflection on mujō (無常) or impermanence, and a fitting coda to the all-too-short life of Rentaro Taki himself.

Violin is the main component of the suite, of course, but that doesn’t stop other elements from making an appearance. What sounds like a steam locomotive appears in ‘8 (Hachi)’ — the first movement, signifying Taki’s summertime birth (24th August); strings appear ghostly and agitated, taking inspiration from Niccolò Paganini’s turbulent playing. Japan’s summers are humid and stifling, the air so crammed with the untethered scream of cicadas that it feels the sky could break open, and worthy of the addled sound Ono has portrayed them with.

On the subject of summer and Paganini (sort of: “La Campanella”) are the bells. In Japan, their clear sound is supposed to inspire cooling thoughts during the heat of summer. At the same time, fūrin (most often glass wind chimes) are symbolic of keeping evil at bay. With HachiRen concerned mostly with ghosts — of Taki, of Oka Castle, and even in the analogical “death” of cherry blossom falling to the ground in pale pink whirlwinds (in ‘SakuraFubuki’) — it makes sense that chimes punctuate the suite, marking a delicate boundary between inspiration, memory, intangible things, and the music itself.

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• 🔔 HachiRen is out today (9th April) on London label nonclassical. You can stream and download it from Chihiro Ono's Bandcamp.
• 🔔 Here's a recording of 'Kojo no Tsuki' by tenor singer Yoshie Fujiwara — the first person to record a version of the song. It's from 1925, and definitely has that '20s feel.

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JUHAN ONGBRIAN — SAIL ON

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⌾ LISTEN TO JUHAN ONGBRIAN, SAIL ON ⌾

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‘Sail On’ is an apt title for jazz guitarist Juhan Ongbrian’s masterful piece of music. Not only does this song seem to travel effortlessly on gentle waves of sound, like a heavenly sailboat, but it seems to be a spiritual and sonic successor to ‘Albatross’ by Fleetwood Mac.

For sailors, to kill an albatross while at sea was considered a bad omen; so the equally oceanic ‘Sail On’, perhaps, is the sequel here — in the timeline that no albatrosses were harmed, at least.

While the bass guitar (Austin Smith) creates a gloopy groove of stepping notes, like the sturdy materials of a seagoing vessel, or the shape of waves; the slow, calculated drums (Adrian Michael) represent the rhythm of the sea itself, the gentle tick of water lapping against the hull. Ongbrian’s guitar — dropping in at 1:38 — is expansive, a veritable sky of sound, exuding endless possibilities and a moment of bliss all at once.

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• 🔔 You can stream or download Juhan Ongbrian's 'Sail On' from whichever service on this list is your absolute favourite.

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YMIR — MAGMA OCEAN

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We always have time for Ymir. This time, the ambient artist is carving out the slow, aching sounds of molten rock in ‘Magma Ocean’. Starting quiet and thin, the ebb and flow of synth in this track soon rises above its initial glassy waves, seeming to summon the Earth itself in the thick, textured triumphs of sound.

Keeping it harsh around the edges, Ymir still allows a crystalline gleam to shine through like the glow of magma itself, while piling on a beautiful, billion-year-old breadth to the billowing swells of his music, showing a complexity at work in the depths of the seemingly simple track. Vast but very minute.

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• 🔔 Check out more of Ymir's unreleased electronic work on his SoundCloud.

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