Jun 7, 2020
(haruka nakamura)
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from Maldives
seen from United States
seen from United States
(haruka nakamura)
It’s been a long time coming and I’m almost finished with this painting. The soundtrack to this morning’s painting session was provided by Haruka Nakamura with his latest release Curtain Call. Haruka Nakamura has irrefutably become one of my favorite contemporary pianists. Though as of late he’s abandoned his electronica-esque approach to ambient minimalist piano for a more traditional ensemble, the same ensemble he used for Twilight and Ongaku, the move closer to chamber music is just as lush and vibrant as his earlier releases on Singapore’s Kitchen-Label. The titular track is carried by two different vocal melodies that truly carry the song through troughs of sorrow lifting to peaks of heavy overwhelming hope with a texture like glossolalia (it possibly is) that sounds almost convincingly real. It honestly doesn’t bother me that each track is in some way or form Curtain Call. The second track is a minimal solo guitar composition of this LP’s namesake, track three a remix of Curtain CALL and and another Haruka Nakamura track, and track four is a solo composition for piano. It's akin to old animes like Sailor Moon in that during Usagi's times of sombre self reflection the opening theme plays on a down tempo with minimal,instrumentation.
What I love about any group is their play with dynamics and the mutual understanding that everyone doesn’t need to be playing at every given moment especially in one track. He has really perfected the placement of violin, saxophone, flute and drums to manipulate the listener into feeling the emotions of the compostion (saying “song” just doesn’t feel right). Pick this record or any of his releases up if you haven’t.
A Haruka Nakamura LP! I want this from the bottom of all my materialism!
This album right here, Charles Rendition by Fjordne, is one of my favorite albums. There are only a few albums that satisfy me as emotionally, intelligently, artistically as Charles Rendition. Shunichiro Fujimoto’s experimentation on here is incredible in how nuanced it is. All the samples and organic percussions are synchronized so well that when they drop off into sections with just piano you completely forget that they were ever even in there.
These videos haunt me.