Guest post by Travess Smalley
I’ve been keeping a playlist with my partner Kaela for the last few years called “Home Listening.” It’s all albums, about a hundred now, that can be played at almost anytime, and allow us to work or read, to let our listening drift in and out of focus. The albums tend instrumental and spiritual–Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda, Eberhard Weber are some of those who make repeat appearances. There’s a familiarity and comfort to most of these albums now that warm the environment whenever they’re played. I made a zine of the album covers in the playlist for Kaela while on an extended lakeside residency in the mountains of southern Austria last spring. The music was a reminder of our home 3000 miles away, of morning coffee, and reading in bed. You can see it here.
Toshifumi Hinata’s Reality In Love is the most beautiful addition to our playlist. At turns melancholic, nostalgic, ambient, and atmospheric it reminds me of the Japanese film scores from the 80s and 90s I know–or at least, imagine I know. The piano compositions, like in “Passage,” reverberate against taped strings like a vague memory of an emotion. Reality in Love’s consistency and completeness have made it a routine soundtrack to my walks around the city, or while reading on the train. Every piece holds, it’s a record that never needs a track skip and it feels complete, softly ending with a reprise of the first song, where it started.
As an introduction I’d recommend the album’s climax “光と水.” A brief and isolated piano transitions into a melody so lush it shimmers. Chimes and triangles lightly reverberate and fizzle as a harp flutters around a structured melody that feels pulled from the ballroom procession of a film you’re sure you’ve seen. I always visualize a gold color during this part. It’s truly transportive.
THanks so much for your guest post Travess! This is a great album, and your pdf playlist is simply wonderful – so much up my street, it's like looking through my own collection – and then also finding just as many records that I still need to investigate!
I love all the Toshifumi albums I've found so far. He's got amazing skills with silence and timing. His "Sarah's Crime" album is like some lost David Lynch soundtrack, grand yet subtle at the same time.
Nice looking list there Travess! The journey continues… 🙂
I found this lovely blog via 20jazzfunkgreats a bit back. They've been writing quite a bit about Toshifumi Hinata recently and my further googling brought me here yet again from a time before I read the blog. Thanks for this, it's really beautiful.
Download link is down 🙁
seems to still be working fine–many parts of europe have blocked zippyshare; if you’re there i’m told you can download tor to get around it or you can download opera and use its built in VPN. also definitely consider downloading an adblocker if you haven’t already, as it makes navigating zippyshare (and the internet in general) way more pleasant. hope that helps!
Is this recorded from the CD or LP, and do you know of any places to get an LP?
Came here to see if I could retrieve this beautiful music. Currently, there are no CDs in circulation. Looks like the file-sharing site is no longer running 🙁