Haruka Nakamura - Twilight
Country: SingaporeLabel: Kitchen
Released: 17 July 2010
Genre: Pop / Ambient / Downtempo / Electronica
Details:
* Packaging Notes:
Artbook is professionally offset printed on special matt paper. Featuring polaroids & words by haruka nakamura, the pages are bound to a hardcover with CD enclosed in an
envelope attached to the inner back cover. As time passes, the material quality of the paper itself will wear gently with use and age.
An emerging talent on the Japanese independent music scene, haruka nakamura’s second solo outing refines the lyrical, pastoral imagery that inspired his first album “grace”. Recorded in a studio overlooking the ocean as a tribute to the sight of the expiring sun falling slowly over the horizon at dusk, “twilight” is a sustained reverie that mirrors the dwindling rays of light at day’s end with its subtle variations in timbre and texture.
The brassy shimmer of ARAKI Shin’s sax opens the first track “Yuube no Inori” (Evening Prayer, M1), swelling languidly as the orchestra slowly unfurls around it like a resplendent sunset. Throughout the album, haruka nakamura coaxes a startling range of tonal color out of piano phrases that twinkle, patter and shuffle through a variety of compositions and tempos – the gentle march of “harmonie du soir”(M2); the somnolent haze of “On the Verandah” (M6) punctuated by drowsy stutters and cicadas muttering all around you; the reverberations of your languishing pulse as night starts to fall in “faraway”(M7). isao saito’s sensitive percussion offers subdued but confident support throughout – dwindling to a hush as the fading rays of the sun dissipate in the crisp night air.
The middle of the album – “Koukei” (Sight, M8) and “dialogo”(M9), in particular – wanders off on a short jaunt into looser, ethereal territory. The furtive meandering of the soprano saxophone by akira uchida, roving itinerant chords, airy percussion and carefully-spaced
sustain and release of the pedal are reminiscent of acoustic ambient jazz of ECM. Closing the album, however, are two melody-driven vocal tracks: “twilight”, a gentle flicker of a ballad that rises and ebbs with April Lee’s (aspidistrafly) fluttering, half-whispered vocals, and Janis crunch’s acoustic arpeggio-driven elegy in tribute to the dwindling of “The Light”.
For fans of “The Melody at Night, With You” – Keith Jarrett, Ryuichi Sakamoto / Akira Kosemura / Olafur Arnaulds / Peter Broderick.
produced by haruka nakamura
haruka nakamura (piano, guitar), ARAKI shin (saxophone, horns, flute), akira uchida (saxophone), April Lee (vocals), isao saito (percussions), Janis crunch (vocals), toshiaki hamada (bass), ryodo yamamoto (piano), rie nemoto (violins). mastered by Ricks Ang (Kitchen. Label)
Tracklisting:
01 夕べの祈り
02 harmonie du so
03 彼方
04 窓辺
05 memoria
06 ベランダにて
07 faraway
08 光景
09 dialogo
10 音楽のある風景
11 twilight
12 カーテンコール
13 The Light
haruka nakamura – harmonie du soir【Official Video】 from Kitchen. Label on Vimeo.
