麓健一 (Kenichi Fumoto) : 「美化」

I first heard Ken’s music two Winters ago at Pastel Records in Nara, Japan where they were playing  songs from his latest album: You Don’t like Love Songs released on JetSet Records in early 2008.   It was there that Kenji Terada, one of the record shop owners, informed me that Ken would be performing on Christmas Eve at Sample.

That night I gathered new traveling acquaintances and headed to the show housed in a quaint art studio, where inside the dim Christmas lights reflected off of the spartan walls.  The ticket price included a small illustrated Little Red Riding Hood book,  which added to the otherworldly quality of the night’s performances which included a host of other local artists performing on handmade grind organs, a cello and droney guitars.

Ken’s set included two unforgettable songs: うぐいすの谷 and 時と鏡, the former of which speaks of a train station in Tokyo and is included on his more recent release:「美化」, containing 16 tracks along with a handful of choice songs spanning his previous releases.

The performance itself was like stumbling into a small chapel out in the country somewhere illumine by candlelight where a man strums away the lullabies of the night.  I had never been so moved by music sung in a foreign tongue as I had with Ken’s music.  Since that show, I’ve found myself humming the infectious melodies and vocalizing the lyrics in ways that I’m certain sound not unlike Beatles songs sung ever so earnestly by non-English speakers.

When I listened to the album:「美化」, I was impressed by how closely it approximated the experience of seeing him live and being privy to his secret world, a dense tapestry awash with warm synths and chamber pop melodies.  The album dynamically shifts from walls of playful synthesizers crashing into each other like ocean waves to softer singer-songwriter skeletons.  These novenas on a nocturn are personal incantations conveying a deep well of emotion that is haunting and heartbreaking.  Below is a video of the eighth track from the album 「美化」:

バリケード

A video sampling of his brand new album,「あるいはその夏は」, can be found below: