Marihiko Hara

Brighternow

Here's a little something about "one of the most talented young producers around today":


"Marihiko Hara is a composer residing in Kyoto, Japan and a representative of the artist collective rimacona-lab.
Born in 1983. Graduated from Kyoto University. He composes sound-based works with a look at the scenes of inside/outside himself, reflecting on a strength in the silence and the relation between sound and us.
He is also a member of the pop group "rimacona" with Natsuko Yanagimoto (vocal) and taking part in "Clicks & Cuts 5.0 "
and whose album "tasogare to piano" was released in Japan."
- Soundcloud.
http://www.marihikohara.com/

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Credo - (Home Normal 2011)

"This begins with some cool stuttering Lionel Glitches interspersed with tape hiss and pulsing, ghostly waves of ominous drift with these very occasional suspended notes like little baby depth charges in a distant ocean. I want more depth charges NOW! At one point I'm waiting for a dub techno track to start but it never materialises. By 'Credo I', mood-wise, I'm thinking more along the lines of Alva Noto. Here there's a distinct downtempo beat skittering along with all kinds of brilliant sonic rumbling and fluttering ephemera draped all over the ambling beats. It's a really nice tune which then segues into a more hesitant, stunted glitch-a-thon which is revealed as its brother - 'Credo II'. I'm digging this future-ambient stuff. Nice soothing clouds of sleepy melodic drone over insistent, itchy digital beatery and odd stumbling mechanised rhythms. I'd happily say this is one of the most interesting, busy sounding releases I've heard on Home Normal. There's tons going on and it would not sound out of place if it appeared on the Raster Noton stable being that there's a distinct experimental techno feel on some tracks! Fave track - the gorgeous, slow build/new dawn of 'Trio', modern ambient at its most divine, up there with the best from folk like Loscil."
- Norman Records.

Brighternow

- From an earlier post @ the New & Noteworthy thread:

Tomas Phillips & Marihiko Hara - Prosa - (Tench (USA), 2010)

Prosa marks the first collaboration between Marihiko Hara and Tomas Phillips.

Utilizing a diverse range of instrumentation, both electronic and acoustic, Prosa is as still as it is dynamic. Its formation (a transcontinental process, through the post) was an exercise of patience and concerted application alike. Thematically (but indirectly), Prosa shares a space with writers whose palette wavers between existential crisis, awkward distance, and snapshots of emotional expenditure (e.g. Jean-Philippe Toussaint) and with certain "quiet" descriptions found in classical Japanese literature. Phillips and Hara’s mutual effort to treat sounds as words, and otherwise abstract music as narrative yields a composition that can be viewed as a whole or digested in chapters. The duo’s confident choice to display sentimentality alongside a detached abstraction (thus referencing the sensibilities of such labels as 12k, Raster-Noton, and 4AD) makes for a captivating listen that will appeal to fans of modern classical, electronic and acoustic experimentation, and contemporary ambient.

Tomas Phillips is a composer, novelist, and teacher whose sound work focuses on improvisational performance and minimalist through-composition. He began composing electronic music in the early 1990s and has since created music for installations and collaborations in dance and theatre. He lives in the US, where he teaches literature at North Carolina State University.

Marihiko Hara is a composer residing in Kyoto, Japan and a representative of the artist collective, Rimacona-lab. He composes self-reflective music that explores our relationship with sound and values the strength of silence. Marihiko is a member of Rimacona, a pop group with female vocalist Natsuko Yanagimoto.
Tenchrec.com

Brighternow

- And from the Listening 6 thread:

Marihiko Hara - Cesura - [Zymogen - zym016] (September 27, 2007)

"Marihiko Hara designs minimal sound sculptures with poetry and soul, gives weight to pauses, and breaths life into silences and melodies without emphasis.
Cesura is such poetry."

- Free and Awesome !

Brighternow

For a Silent Space - (Rimacona Lab 2005 - Bandcamp 2011)

- Dare I say groundbreaking experimentalism ?

jonahpwll

My first listen of that Silent Space album was a good one. Gonna spend more time with it this weekend. Thanks.

Brighternow

- You are most welcome Jonah . . .

- From the Somehow Recordings micro label Twisted Tree Line 3" CDr postcard releases:


Pleq and Marihiko Hara - The Dawn Came Behind The Fog

"The five tracks on this 20 minute EP begin somewhat quirkily with One Last Dream Of Being On This Universe which includes DIY hammering and a bit of bottle smashing mixed with vinyl crackle, glitchy sounds and some panning processed piano. Having recovered from this enigmatic opener the next three tracks explore a more familiar experimental landscape of subtle hisses, electrical interference, vinyl crackle, processed piano meanderings, plucked strings and breathy white-noise washes over lightly textured drone backgrounds. The final track Place And Time Beyond The Mind has a dystopian air with a quiet piano and rain soaked intro descending slowly into chaos as the piano notes become ever more discordant and doom laden while being chopped up by rattling tin sounds, blips and other electrical noise.

The EP as a whole is pleasantly devoid of melody and familiar musical structures with the more unusual bookend tracks surrounding a gentle experimental ambient core that recalls the sound of Marihiko’s much praised Nostalghia release on the Audiomoves label back in 2010."
- More @ Savaran Music and Sound.

Brighternow

released 11 April 2013:

€music

Brighternow

This one, Released on Audiomoves in 2013, certainly belongs in this fine collection from a very talented artist:

- "I composed this album "nostalghia" after being inspired by several transparency films my
grandmother had left me. The films were taken in 1967 during her travels in Britain, France,
Italy, Denmark, Germany, the Soviet Union, USA and so on. She had rarely told me about
her travels, (I am not sure why), except for a few funny stories. Nostalghia is the process of
my efforts through composition in approaching a memory embraced in those film. The image
of this album was designed by my partner Natsuko Yanagimoto (a vocalist of "Rimacona",
she is also a photo-based artist). She designs with an unique method; scanning the films,
printing them on cloths or papers, sewing them and re-scanning. Some of tunes within this
album have been used in contemporary dance performance."
- From the PDF press kit @ Audiobulb - Soundcloud