Kofū II

This is a fascinating album by Meitei that perhaps can be described as simply a sound collage of Japan, both the country’s history and culture as well as its music. Using samples, musique concrète, ambient interludes and some instrumentation, it’s a very dense album but not intimidatingly so.

There are not really ‘songs,’ but rather short pieces that may begin with a voice, a piano and traditional instrumentation creating a strange effect; it reminded me of black-and-white silent film footage from the early 1900s of street scenes, ancient history come to life. The track ‘Yoshiwara’ (named after the famed nightlife district of old Edo) has a looped phrase of a woman singing the kind of song you’d hear in an old tea house, sung by the working geisha. ‘Akira Kurosawa’, named for the world-famous film director, is a mish-mash of what could be an old movie soundtrack but with a shuffling modern beat. This is a fascinating project, though I wonder how much it will appeal to people unfamiliar with Japan. As a long-time resident of Japan, my interaction with it was deep, but some listeners may find it too dense or obscure.