Meitei Komachi

Vinyl LP pressing. Debut album from Japanese composter Meitei. Meitei considers himself an old soul, often preoccupied with the customs and rituals of the past. Recently Meitei lost his beloved 99-year-old grandmother, a woman who he considered to be one of the last remaining people to have experience and understanding of traditional Japanese ambience. His music and art is driven by a desire to cast light on an era and aesthetic that he believes is drifting out of the collective Japanese consciousness with each passing generation, what he calls "the lost Japanese mood". Haunting and delicate, distant and timeless, Komachi is awash with white noise, complex field recordings and the hypnotic sounds of flowing water. Composed as individual sonic dioramas, each of the twelve tracks have been crafted to not only evoke feelings of nostalgia but to also explore the dichotomy of ancient and new in modern Japanese society. This pervasive narrative runs throughout, calling to mind the work of authors Yasunari Kawabata and Natsume Soseki, as well as the films of Yasujiro Ozu and Hayao Miyazaki, artists similarly fascinated by the reflective tranquillity that permeated traditional Japanese domestic life.