Mashu Hayasaka / Piano Etudes（LP） / レコード

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幽体美人やSky Mata名義での活動が知られる、北海道札幌を拠点とする奇才シンガーソングライター、マシュウ早坂による親密で内省的なローファイ・ピアノ独奏集。

日々の日記を紡ぐように静かに語りかけるピアノ・ピースは、即興的にカセットに録音され、情感を抑えたタッチで、印象派の近現代クラシックからエリック・サティ、デューク・エリントンのように、シンプルで純粋な美しさを宿しています。深く沈み込む瞑想的な響きから、エマホイ・ツェゲ=マリアム・ゲブルーを思わせるエキゾチックな旋律の試みまで、鍵盤の上を軽やかに戯れる瑞々しい音が織りなす多彩な表情。そして、宅録によるざらついた音質が、時代性を超えた普遍的な魅力を静かに醸し出しています。元々はBandcampで公開されていた音源を、英ストックポートのレコードストア/レーベルAll Night Flightがレコード化。

Absolutely beautiful LP of intimate drifting lo-fi piano nostalgia from Hokkaido’s MashuHayasaka on the store's own imprint.

Looking out from our corner of the musical landscape a certain kind of solo pianocomposition feels elemental. Satie’s miniatures invented a whole dreamtime realm of deftand delicate abstraction. And 120 years later we are still revolving slowly in the space theymapped out. This makes writing about records like this difficult. Listening feels likebreathing. The responses it provokes are so deeply programmed that attempts toconsciously discuss them produce a kind of profound blank. However when you hear it youknow it. What makes Karla Borecky totally transporting and Max Richter totally blah? Thespecifics are unknowable. But part of it is balance, it is dangerous to wake a sleepwalkerbut you need some unexpected detail and at least a little grit to keep the dream alive. Thisrecord has that quality.

The clunk of a tape recorder begins a series of wandering happy/sad piano studies thatrecall Robert Haigh in his Sema guise, John Cage’s ‘In a landscape’ and Duke Ellington’sblurred chromatic solo piano performances. Mashu leaves nowhere to hide, his playing ispoised and cooly controlled, focusing on the beauty of simplicity and purity. The fidelityplays a part too, these recordings are clearly diaristic, caught close up, granular andbeautifully blown out in places, adding a level of cohesion to a genuinely special suite ofmusic that melts so effortlessly into the everyday.

Seriously, this one is a keeper, an unsettled but refreshing nap in the afternoon of your life.(Mint / New - with free DL (digital only version available too) - shops please ask forwholesale).

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• Mastered By Miles Whittaker