開場的「失去」(Something is lost)副歌有華麗迷幻的迭音，清澈的吉他與管風琴把戀人道別時的不捨徹底傳達，第八首「月與提琴」(Moon and Cello)堪稱是整張專輯中歌詞最少的，卻也是意境最美的一曲，開場的電子聲效猶如把北國的《Mum》請到面前來，蒼白悽美的音象滲入了我記憶深處，我開始記得沒有你的楚苦。
"Ephemeral" takes Piana's sound into a new, more acoustic, terrain. Shedding some of the glitch aesthetics that made "Snow Bird" a genre-defying micro-pop release, "Ephemeral" shows Piana's strength as a songwriter and arranger, and a master of her electronic and acoustic art. A recent interview conducted with Piana describes the thought processes behind "Ephemeral"
"Ephemeral" is much more acoustic than electronic this time, more pop and less experimental. Why did you choose to do this? How do you view this album different from "Snow Bird"?
Piana: Most of the songs on Snow Bird I created sound, noise and structure first and lyrics came up to me after. For this album, I wrote songs with lyrics first and added atomospheric sound later. Many gentle songs are created this time that I didn't want to put noise or glitcy edits much, More I wanted to use musical instruments like cello and violins to leave the emotional feelings.
Tracklist/曲目列表
1. Something Is Lost
2. Early In Summer
3. Beside Me
4. Color of Breeze
5. Little Girl Poems
6. Muse
7. Mother's Love
8. Moon and Cello
9. Beginning
Snow Bird + Ephemeral
Re-press back in stock! Japanese pop, fragile melodies, Cocteau Twins:esque beauty, laptopisms and Satie-like piano chords
Happy (HAP001)
After the success with this record, Taylor Deupree at 12K/Happy decided to re-press and so people, we have a hot new 2nd edition of CDs that landed today.
Happy is Taylor Deupree's imprint devoted to the exploration of unconventional japanese pop music. This is Happy's first record, the beautiful "Snow Bird", an album by Naoko Sasaki aka PIANA, with songs that have a touch of introspection, melancholy, and play out as a girl’s monologue. The sounds are gentle, jarring and, at times, funny. "Snow Bird" offers a unique blend of modern electronic production techniques and pop sensibilities. Naoko’s vocals float dreamlike over cropped percussion, and melodic, digital micro-structures - her voice perfectly suited for telling her subtle stories, like she does on her guest appearance on MOKIRA's "FFT Pop". Yuichiro Iwashita (Minamo) provides guitar and Yasuya plays clarinet on track 11. This acoustic instrumentation is a beautiful contrast to Naoko’s electronic compositions.
ARTIST INFORMATION:
Born in 1976, Piana is Naoko Sasaki, living in Morioka, Japan. Her musical activity began with Card
Skepper, a collaboration with guitarist Yuichiro Iwashita who is now one half of the electro acoustic unit Minamo (cubic music, quakebasket, apestaartje, 360 records). Through participation on albums and live performances with World’s End Girlfriend, she has been fascinating many people with her delicate, cute and unique voice and musical talent as Piana.
TRACK LIST:
1. 20 Years Ago
2. Butterfl y
3. Snow Bird
4. Spring Has Come!!!
5. Winter Sleep
6. Hide and Seek
7. Voice
8. Monster
9. April
10. Blue Bell
11. After 20 Years
SELECTED REVIEWS:
"On this debut from Naoko Sasaki, alias Piana, connections are forged between the seemingly disparate fields of glitch processing and coy J-Pop. Coming across as a child’s sketchbook or diary, there is a palapable sense of nostalgia in these lovely songs, powerful and moving evocations of a kid’s world that vary from the tearful to the joyful to the fearful. Basing her fragile melodies on slow motion Satie-like chord patterns, employing piano, organ, occasional broken beats and beautifully measured guitar from Yuichiro Iwashita, Sasaki then destabalises the music by adding a low key firework display of static pops and hisses which serves as a brilliantly effective metaphor for a child’s sense of wonder, distress, excitement and anxiety. The songs recall both the unsettling, naive sampladelica of Pop - Off Tuesday and Cocteau Twins at their heartstopping best." // THE WIRE (UK)
"....griper tag om mig från första ton. En del har jämfört Pianas musik som en korsning av Erik Saties vackra pianostycken, smakfullt ihopfogade av spillror av knaster och sprak, och även om jag kanske inte hittar konkreta spår av sekelskiftes-musikern så förstår jag vilken atmosfär och vilket tillstånd skribenterna befunnit sig i när de hört Piana, vars album är en trevlig förening av den typ av popmusik och elektronik som Friendly Noise förespråkar. Två av albumets inledande spår – "Butterfly" och "Snow Bird" – är sidorna hos den skönsjungande Sasaki som framträder starkast i den sparsmakade elektroniska pool som piano-slingorna badar i. I till exempel "Butterfly" multi-plicerar hon sin röst så att de framstår som suddiga ljuddimmor, ungefär som ett screengazing extrakt av Slowdives "Shine". Lika fint är titelspåret där Satie kanske gör sig mest påmind, om man nu – vilket jag knappt klarar av – kan slita sig från de hypnotiska, upphackade fågelsamplingarna som behagligt smälter in i ljudbilden på ett Differnetskt sätt." // Kristoffer Lecander, Twisterella (SE)
2 Snow Bird + Ephemeral
"Ett alldeles utsökt stycke filmisk, småskalig och ja; japansk popmusik. Fylld av sådana där harmonier som glider in i sinnet utan att man riktigt lägger märke till det. Exotiskt, men ändå varmt och välkomnande." // Musiklandet.se
"...Let me begin with the voice. I haven’t heard a voice like hers in a long time — at least, not since I first heard the main character of Hayao Miyazaki’s Whisper of the Heart sing (in Japanese) John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads.” Not only is it high and squeaky, but it’s also fresh, innocent, and completely stripped of pretension. I say this even though she’s singing in Japanese (the liner notes on the album are in Japanese, too, though you can find translations on the Happy web site)... Sasaki’s simple, honest voice is crucial here because her music is extremely complicated. There are crazy rhythms, backwards melodies, bleeps and blips, and other assorted weird noises sprinkled throughout these eleven songs." // STYLUS MAGAZINE (US)
"Piana has a sad whimsy to her sound, on songs like “Blue Bell”, she releases her vocals in soft bursts over tinkling bells and a breezy flute in a song spaced with glacial holes between the instruments. Snow Bird is pure massage and melt, the aural equivalent of watching water glide across stone. This is an album designed for thinking quietude, a fetal position soundtrack buoyed by Sasaki’s hair stroking nuzzle of a voice." // INDIEWORKSHOP (US)
This item is filed under::
- Electronica/Techno/Electro
- Indie/Rock/Pop/Folky
Snow Bird + Ephemeral
BACK IN STOCK. Startling, original and lush Japanese experimental pop. Warmly recommended!
Happy (HAP003) | *BESTSELLER!*
"Bäst just nu" // NÖJESGUIDEN (SE)
"Ömsint och avskalat gör japanska Piana (Naoko Sasaki) en oemotståndligt vacker musik på nya skivan Ephemeral." // Rated 5/6 in SvD (SE)
We are very proud to offer you "Ephemeral", the new album by Morioka, Japan's Naoko Sasaki, otherwise known as Piana. Following 2003's critically acclaimed "Snow Bird".
"Ephemeral" takes Piana's sound into a new, more acoustic, terrain. Shedding some of the glitch aesthetics that made "Snow Bird" a genre-defying micro-pop release, "Ephemeral" shows Piana's strength as a songwriter and arranger, and a master of her electronic and acoustic art. A recent interview conducted with Piana describes the thought processes behind "Ephemeral":
"Ephemeral" is much more acoustic than electronic this time, more pop and less experimental. Why did you choose to do this? How do you view this album different from "Snow Bird"?
Piana: Most of the songs on Snow Bird I created sound, noise and structure first and lyrics came up to me after. For this album, I wrote songs with lyrics first and added atomospheric sound later. Many gentle songs are created this time that I didn't want to put noise or glitcy edits much, More I wanted to use musical instruments like cello and violins to leave the emotional feelings.
About lyrics, "Snow Bird" is an abstract poetry which is expressed the imaginative inner feelings of a little girl's past, present, and future times. "Ephemeral" is not about one person's fantasy world but a suite of a frail love story of long-past childhood. I've locked up the never-coming-back times in this album.
Do you have any musical influences for this record?
Piana: I am not really inspired from other music, I would say more from novels, poetries, or movies. Haruki Murakami is the writer I get the most influence on my music. If I hadn't have met his works, I might not have been able to come up with my music.
It is clear that despite her success with her first release, Piana was not content to simply release another "Snow Bird". The lengths she went to create a more mature and developed, yet unquestionably-Piana, album, are evident in the production, composition, and creativity of "Ephemeral". A bold, yet important statement about her seriousness as an artist.
Joined this time by Yuichiro Iwashita (Minamo) on guitar, Seigen Tokuzawa on cello, and Gen Saito and Sawayka Kuwabara on violin, "Ephemeral" casts serious acoustic musicianship against a modern electronic framework. The dreamy yet melancholy, powerful yet fragile sound of Piana's music mixed with her angelic Cocteau Twins:esque voice rounds out an expertly produced album that, sounding like no one else, effortlessly floats her to the top of her craft.
