Yuichiro Fujimoto: Kinoe
For his music young Japanese composer Fujimoto found a warm welcome with the Audio Dregs label in Portland, Oregon in the US. The album 'Kinoe' was released bereft of any yahoo, while if I'm right, to posterity 'Kinoe' could prove a milestone. 'Kinoe' is the full-length album only the talented debutants put on offer. Like 'Ulysses' this may reflect a one day only but Fujimoto captures a life-span of experiences in just three quarters of an hour. 'Kinoe' features intrinsic play as if in gamelan music from Indonesia and consists of predominantly acoustic sounds elaborated on a computer. Not characteristic to your life probably, Fujimoto though unfolds the timeline of a wanderer in the electromagnetic fields.

This home recorded album reflects on child memories from growing up in serenity and its first notes are the hardest ones. The shattering of the brain for a mere few seconds was only there intended as to pushing you back into your swinging chair. Fujimoto stands at the crossroads of disharmonic chords clashing into structures based on childplay on keyboards and lullabies. Just like I did whilst listening, you rock back and forth during puzzled moments. Yuichiro Fujimoto catches your attention when you listen to the comfort that's set in surface noisy work-outs on the keyboards.

'Kineo' is not how you'll like your day to start. Its confusion should not build your breakfast diet, still you should digest 'Kinoe' to the full. This homemade album is the orchestration for scenes from disturbing and joyful moments in Fujimoto's life that received a little polish, a great sequence plus a friendly if not subdued final mix. Yuichiro Fujimoto used lost and found sounds and from those composed a concept of eerie elektro-acoustics.

'Kinoe' is how you might like the day to be rounded off with. 'Kinoe' has been with me, on me, in me, and I pray, for me since months ago and I'm still fascinated by this album's mysterious beauty. A language barrier it is not; 'Kinoe' features little to no narratives. The album's main attraction is that of nursery rhymes set to an ever evolving pattern of found noises. In the still of your lonely hour, you will grow attached to 'Kinoe'. -Maarten Schiethart

Semuin- Province
[Losing Today] IT

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Kinoe
[Loop.cl] Chile

Yuichiro Fujimoto, ‘Kinoe’, Audio Dregs, 2005
The young Japanese Yuichiro Fujimoto based in Urayasu, Japan, put out his second album in March on Portland-based label Audio Dregs. His debut album ‘Komorebi’ [2004] was published in Norwegian seal STSS. Also he has forthcoming releases in a compilation of the German label Staubgold, the Japanese Plop and Spekk [run by Nao Sugimoto] imprints.
The art design of the website of this musician has a minimalist aesthetic with childlike drawings character, very simple but at the same time gorgeous.
On ‘Kinoe’ also these simple sounds are appraised in which we can listen to some toy instruments as a xylophone like. In addition there are kalimba, melodica, electric piano, field recordings, guitar, piano and electronic arrangements.
It's interesting to state subtle sounds and imperceptible as the flourishes on the guitar on ‘Drawing Of stars’ or the kalimba vibrato and its incrustations of sinewaves. All of it as childlike music. The guitar chord of ‘Morning Dance’ is blended with domestic noises such as spoons, cups. It makes think about an intimate atmosphere, something that is the opposite on ‘Cock doodle doo is music’ with field recordings taken from a zoo or forest with the sound of people’s voices and birds songs. ‘Without Mabutaki’ has a processed guitar with a glitch aesthetic and recordings of a noise made maybe by Fukimoto painting with a pencil that produces a special texture, both familiar than peculiar, and on the other hand, ‘An octave of shells’ is a piece with spyings to the Japanese folk music. Quite courtlike.
Yuichiro Fujimoto from the simple sounds of domestic objects shows timbres and cadence that causes that the music of this Japanese musician is full of details to discover. More info. please go to www.audiodregs.com and at the artist's site www.yuichirofujimoto.com 
Text Guillermo Escudero
April 2005

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Kinoe
[Boomkat] UK

Yuichiro Fujimoto seems to have a similar fascination (or fetish...) with everyday sounds as fellow Japanese audiophile Cornelius. Yet where Cornelius chose to indulge his aural collages through Wilson-esque Cartoontronica, Fujimoto prefers to incorporate the often contradictory audio snippets into gently swelling and highly textured instrumentation. Straddling the line between Frank Bretschneider style clicks & cuts and Mum lilting organic electronica, Fujimoto opens 'Kinoe' with a wave of unfocused static that is at once utterly alien and completely natural. This soon gives way to a thrumming, tapping, twinkling blanket of ebbing necromancy ('Drawing of Stars') that shares shelf space with both Marsen Jules and Jan Jelinek, creating a thoroughly submersive aural balm. Elsewhere 'After Rain' embarks on a marriage of the natural and the digital with a Deliverance-style music-box face off that slowly smudges into a water curtain of florid electronic twinkles whilst album closer 'Old Bird Tape' is a harmonica heavy, velvet hearted shuffle. Beguiling.

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Kinoe
[Autres Directions] FR

Lorsqu’on regarde la pochette de Kinoe, avant même d’y avoir jeté une seule oreille, on se dit qu’on va faire un beau voyage. La douceur, la joliesse et l’ artisanat suggérés augurent déjà de sensations auditives à venir.
Découvert par Kim Hiorthoy, le japonais Yuichiro Fujimoto a publié son premier album pour Smalltown Supersound l’an passé. Et son programme en 2005 est plus que chargé avec ce nouvel album pour Audio Dregs, puis un troisième pour Spekk et des apparitions sur les compilations des labels Staubgold et Plop. Rien de moins. Quelle sorte de musique, en apparence douce, jolie, artisanale peut-elle fédérer de si bons labels ?
Car cette première impression est la bonne. La musique gravée sur Kinoe est douce, jolie, artisanale. On se demande tout de suite : si Kinoe a été enregistré à la maison, pourquoi a-t-on tellement l’impression que c’est le monde qui rentre chez nous ? Ou plutôt un monde, un univers particulier, celui d’un japon boisé et minéral, où les objets sont vivants, où « chaque arbre a une famille et où certaines pierres peuvent marcher ». Ces images, véhiculées par des vignettes minimales, sont fraîches et vivantes, masterisées par Greg Davis. Quelques guitares, un peu des pianos, des bruits de tout et de rien, du xylophone, du bricolage lo-fi et une atmosphère à la fois précieuse, enfantine, méditative, intime, rêveuse. Qui n’est pas sans rappeler les fabrications brutes de The Books, l’expressionnisme minimaliste de F.S.Blumm, les illusions sonores de Flim, les temples bucoliques de Kazumasa Hashimoto. Mais aussi son bricoleur génial de découvreur, Kim Hiorthoy en personne.
Yuichiro Fujimoto est aussitôt intronisé dans ce cercle de compositeurs chers, à la fois proches et mystérieux, catalyseurs d’une certaine transcendance du répétitif, du journalier. Transformant en magique ce qui ne l’est pas, avec des ficelles et du scotch. Coordonnant la ronde musicale de quelques instruments, de vaisselle et d’ustensiles divers comme ne savait pas le faire l’apprenti sorcier de Fantasia.
A l’intérieur du livret, une photo d’Yuichiro Fujimoto, couché dans une clairière, photographiant le ciel.

par stephane

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Kinoe
[Onde Fixe] FR

Les âmes en quête d’authenticité, de simplicité et de sérénité trouveront en la personne de Yuichiro Fujimoto un compagnon de choix, à n’en pas douter. Depuis son premier album (Komorebi) publié l’an passé sur le label norvégien Smalltown Supersound, le jeune japonais n’a rien perdu de son âme innocente d’enfant et continue sur Kinoe à nous délivrer des vignettes mélodiques simples, auréolées d’un aspect rudimentaire et d’une épure exacerbée qui constituent en quelque sorte sa marque de fabrique.

Paisible, jamais bousculée et essentiellement acoustique, sa musique fait appel à quelques boîtes à musique, xylophone, melodica, guitare acoustique, piano désuet et claviers bon marché, tous employés avec délicatesse et hésitation, le plus souvent isolément, plus rarement simultanément, mais jamais plus de 3 à la fois. Le numérique n’apparaît qu’à de rares occasions, juste le temps de remodeler ou inverser quelques notes de guitare ou musicbox, ou de libérer de légères textures en arrière plan.

Ce qui importe le plus ici, c’est ce grain de son si particulier, ce peu de moyens employés, cette volonté de laisser transparaître les bruits qui nous entourent et d’attirer l’attention vers les petits choses qui, d’ordinaire, nous paraissent futiles ou passent inaperçues.
Passionné par les arts visuels, Yuichiro est doté d’un sens de l’observation aiguisé qu’il semble vouloir inculquer à l’auditeur : la plupart des morceaux ont à l’évidence été enregistrés de façon à capturer le moindre son environnant, ne serait-ce qu’un soupir, un souffle, le tic-tac d’une montre, des bruits de couverts ou de pas...
Pour la petite anecdote, Jamie, le chat de Yuichiro, lui aurait confié le secret suivant : la plupart des choses peuvent devenir claires dans ton esprit, pour peu que tu prennes la peine de les regarder et les écouter attentivement. Ayant bien intégré cette confidence, Yuichiro cherche maintenant à nous faire passer ce message, à travers une musique qui ne se noie pas dans le superflu, qui se contente d’illustrer les moments simples de la vie quotidienne. -Sébastien Radiguet

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Komorebi
(Smalltown Supersound)
(Ewan Adams, Undercover)

"Komorebi is modern Japanese minimalism at its finest, bringing the seemingly whimsical calm of a Zen master to the task of making electronic music for the 21st century. This is beautiful, subtle, profound music that transcends melancholy and joy to mix perfectly with the sounds of whatever else may going in the room . A plane flies by, the kettle bois, a police siren in the distance. Whatever your life comes up with this CD already knows and sits peacefully beside it without judgement. You think I am being pretentious, but trust me, this guy is subtly, subtly, subtly a genius of near spiritual proportions,. If I ever met him, I would bow."

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Komorebi
(Smalltown Supersound)
Review from The Milk Factory (UK)

Fujimoto is a Japanese artist and musician whose work has been championed by Norwegian artist/musician Kim Hiorthøy and his debut release appears on the same label Hiorthøy records for, Smalltown Supersound. Fujimoto’s visual work, which can be seen on his website, is typified by a delicacy and strength of observation that catches small, charming details that might otherwise be missed in the rush of everyday life. For example, a small tree branch with green leaves fallen on the grey tarmac of a road, a notebook seen through a window with a pair of spectacles placed open upon it.

Joy is perhaps played on a thumb piano by a precocious child (perhaps in between her Suzuki violin lessons). It’s hesitant, but delightfully so. The sound of children playing in the background underlines the innocence of what might be the interlude between two parts of a story. Little Sunset is surely a lullaby, its notes slow, almost somnambulant as though inevitably drifting off to sleep. It’s difficult to tell what the instrument is – perhaps it’s a xylophone, whose edges are slightly slurred. Whatever it is, it takes careful, charming footsteps as though stepping across an icy pavement. Slow Boat lives up to its name, its guitar seeming to become slower and slower – as if negotiating a path into eventual silence. It’s a little reminiscent of Ogurusu Norihide in its melodic simplicity and pendant pauses. This is calmness personified. Small Mountain’s rhythm is traced out on filtered piano shadowed by tinkling xylophone like a friendly stray following somebody in hopes of finding a home. This time the association is with Kim Hiorthøy’s music, there’s the same childlike innocence.
See Water begins in the same appealing territory as its predecessors until it acquires a sort of digital scurvy that up to this point has hovered in the background. By seventh track, Kujira, the distortion of the sound, particularly when twinned with awkward chords and sharp notes becomes something of a painful trial. Its cessation provokes relief. Sometimes returns to prettier territory, partway through joined by birdsong and children’s voices... and is that a frog? The Book sounds for its first half like a field recording made outside a church containing a particularly enthusiastic congregation, then it’s a piano recital by a serious child who plays with stabbing fingers. The recording sounds like it’s a fourth or fifth generation tape, perhaps copied from proud grandparent to auntie to cousin and so on.

Komorebi is a slight work made up of sketches and vignettes, whose very slightness is one of its most attractive qualities. Using the adjectives ‘pretty’ and ‘charming’ about the first half of Komorebi might provoke images of carefully manicured gardens in English villages (at least to some). However Fujimoto discovers, and reveals to the listener, the beauty in the everyday. The distortion resulting from deliberately lo-fi recording techniques is as much a part of the work as the melodies themselves. Komorebi is an unspoken argument for taking time, looking around and appreciating – if it’s possible – the incidental and the positive.

-Colin Buttimer

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Komorebi
(Smalltown Supersound)

Yuichiro Fujimoto's Komorebi exudes the kind of delicate and meditative qualities a typical Westerner associates with Japan, even if Merzbow and Boredoms prove that not all the country's music is so tranquil. Like the simple, child-like artwork that adorns the CD booklet, the songs on Komorebi are sonic haiku: sparse, uncluttered, minimal??often a single instrument inhabiting a given song (for instance, a slowly plucked acoustic guitar in ??Slow Boat?? and a xylophone's phase-treated patterns in the wistful lullaby ??Little Sunset??). To some degree the recording's relaxed and intimate feel can be explained by the fact that Fujimoto recorded it at home. That ambiance often works to the album's advantage, as when the chatter of children's voices appears amongst the thumb piano-toy glockenspiel duet in ??Joy,?? yet it can be a liability, too, like when the industrial sounds in ??Kujira?? and bird noises in ??Sometimes?? become too distracting.

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Komorebi
(Smalltown Supersound)
Yuichiro Fujimoto's Komorebi exudes the kind of delicate and meditative qualities a typical Westerner associates with Japan, even if Merzbow and Boredoms prove that not all the country's music is so tranquil. Like the simple, child-like artwork that adorns the CD booklet, the songs on Komorebi are sonic haiku: sparse, uncluttered, minimal??often a single instrument inhabiting a given song (for instance, a slowly plucked acoustic guitar in ??Slow Boat?? and a xylophone's phase-treated patterns in the wistful lullaby ??Little Sunset??). To some degree the recording's relaxed and intimate feel can be explained by the fact that Fujimoto recorded it at home. That ambiance often works to the album's advantage, as when the chatter of children's voices appears amongst the thumb piano-toy glockenspiel duet in ??Joy,?? yet it can be a liability, too, like when the industrial sounds in ??Kujira?? and bird noises in ??Sometimes?? become too distracting.
Pieces often remain vignettes as opposed to fully developed compositions, ??Put?? and its simple repetitions of piano glimmer a case in point. While there may be a certain appeal to such sketchiness, that unfinished quality can also be less satisfying. In ??Kujira,?? the amateurish piano playing quickly loses its charm and becomes grating, and nine minutes of thumb piano meanderings (??White Brown??) grows wearisome. To his credit, Fujimoto does effect an interesting rapprochement between traditional and digital sounds in ??See Water?? (where Ovalesque effects nudge the album into glitchier territory) and ??The Book?? (with its collage-like integration of congregation folk-chant, field recordings, and plunking piano playing) but, in the end, the album seems too fragmentary. While Komorebi might remind some listeners of Nobukazu Takemura's work, it begs comparison even more to Lullatone's similarly delicate Computer Recital and Little Songs About Raindrops. The latter (recorded by Shawn James Seymour in Japan, incidentally) is especially satisfying as its songs are compositionally polished without losing their innocence in the process. Had Fujimoto applied a similar strategy to the making of Komorebi, the results would invite stronger recommendation. (www.textura.org)