Daisuke Miyatani at Ahornfelder: Diario (CD)

I got the new Daisuke Miyatani-record in the mailbox recently, and I’m very glad about it. “Diario” was released at the tiny German Ahornfelder-label and it contains about 15 songs, song-ideas, fragments and atmospheric skits of active memory. Sun music, Sunday music, summer music. If you’re looking for the Japanese musician at his artistic peak, order this beautiful Digipak CD right now!”I play the guitar, with field-recordings”, this simple yet oh-so-true self-definition introduces the reader at Daisuke Miyatani’s blogspot and leaves him curious about the music. After recommendable free and semi-free EPs at MiMi, Rain Music and Magic Book Recordings, “Diario” is Miyatani’s full-length debut.

The little story, Ahornfelder know to tell about Daisuke Miyatani on their website is a nice journalistic artifice because it suits his music very well: Living on a small island in southern Japan, working in a bookshop, which stupid half-informed Caucasian (like me) wouldn’t think of Murakami’s “Kafka Tamura” who flees his home to, well, work in a bookshop? (See “Umibe no Kafuka” respectively “Kafka on the Shore” for reference). There is a great amount of hissing silence between Miyatani’s insular guitar-tones one might associate with the dust-laden quietude in a library (let’s think of library when talking about ‘bookshop’ rather than one of these J. K. Rowling autograph session-superstores).

After a short field-recording intro, “Edanone” is a good example for his composition-guidelines. Three harmonic chords on the guitar, played with a lot of space, a handful of xylophone-tones, the rest is background noise. It’s Lo-Fi, yes, but you don’t get the feeling that anything might have been intended or planned. It is what it is, and it’s safe and sound. You can hear the metronome from time to time. “Rain Melodies” is a bit more complex, with processed field-recordings (rain, street noise) and a dendritic dialogue between variant guitar-layers. The distorted bliss of “Old Tape” brings forth a slightly more conventional melody.
A strong sense of late summer relaxation is invoked by the ambient “Summer Child“. Decent little noises fill-up a slowly modulating synth-layer and Miyatani’s guitar fits in-between. One the one hand, you can hear Miyatani actively searching for the right tones. On the other hand, and that’s the astonishing thing about this tune, you wish he won’t find them. The journey is the reward, to drop some ancient saying. Another intriguing ambient composition in “Water Lights“. The guitar is absent in this song, it’s all made from synthic sources or highly abstracted analogue sounds. Plus field-recordings, of course. Song “Hum” is similar, very dense and minimal sine wave-ambient. Ommm… meditation music. With “Sampo“, you can find Miyatani closing ranks to “Summer Child“, yet there’s some more processing in the environmental noise.

With his idea of Ambient, Daisuke Miyatani is very close to his Rain Music label-buddy GoGooo while the guitar-based tracks are bit more one-of-a-kind. Still, both composition tactics work well with each other and bear a lot of excess value when constructively interfering. “Edanone” and “Hidamari” at Position eleven are songs you should check (also because it happened Ahornfelder choose these two for free download) to get an idea about the shy giantism of Miyatani’s music. Maybe less exciting but still very beautiful are “Michi” and “Iindayo“, both super-reduced, erroneous improvisation folk-songs. Free download, ibidem.

Get the record here: Diario
Make sure to check these free MP3:
Edanone | Rain Melodies | Summer Child | Michi | Hidamari | Iindayo