Chihei Hatakeyama - Variations

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4...according to our Phil on Thu 14 Oct, 2010.

This week we got a coupla tasty releases on the super reliable Soundscaping label. Based in Oslo they are knowledge gatherers. I always always trust a label which releases a handful of things a year. They don't rush releases, they don't try and cram as many down your neck as possible (though I appreciate labels have to make a living!). But the ones who release 2-3 things a year are nearly always good. They take their time over each release and everything about it done perfectly. Soundscaping is one of those labels. They released one album in 2008 (Christophe Bailieau) and a Celer CD earlier this year. This release is by Chihei Hatakayama . You're probably familiar with his sound palate which he doesn't drift too far away. This album sees him fulfilling your processed drone/ soundscape fantasies with another album of bliss. A lot of it sounds quite spiritual and uplifting. Listening closely to it you can hear the different textures and layers which build up to make the tracks. There's plenty going on to get absorbed into and even if you just want to listen to it on a surface level then it's just lovely. Excellent!!

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The theme of Variations focuses upon production per se, intentionally excluding leading elements like visuals or narratives, as has often been the case with many of Hatakeyama’s earlier works. For Variations, Chihei Hatakeyama embraced the opportunity to contemplate his own compositional techniques – to understand its meaning and the processed sound, resulting from his usual production method of composing in real-time DSP software environments, where heavily processing of pre-recorded sound material transforms into different forms, often to an extent with no traces of the originals.

This is very evident in Variations, with recorded sounds of electric guitar, vibraphone and piano making up the constituent parts, with the addition of subtly processed field recordings. In observation of sound particles in his own production, Hatakeyama noted repetitive patterns in transformed states of his sounds, reminiscent the palettes of water. Whether driven from a personal point of experimentation or naturally formed, the traces of water are present in the sound material of his latest work, despite not being the primary motif. To replace the working title ‘Water’, Variations was born from the fact that Hatakeyama began producing the album tracks in late 2008 at a time when composing with MIDI was abandonded in favour of playing sound files on Reaktor and Max/MSP. Thus dawned the idea of infinite possibilities sound files have in nature and the concept of variations played on sound files.

Tracklisting:

1. Variation for Electric Guitar I (06:06)
2. Variation for Piano I (08:23)
3. Variation for Electric Guitar I (10:00)
4. Variation for Piano II (09:35)
5. Variation for Electric Guitar and Vibraphone (12:46)
6. Variation for Piano III (05:24)

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