haruka nakamura / grace



01, every day
02, arne
03, opus
04, ralgo
05, elm
06, luz
07, lang
08, cielo
09, elm/2
10, sign
11, lamp
12, grace
13, cadenza


sing           janis crunch (01,04,06,12)
guitar      muneki takasaka aka paniyolo (04,05,07,11)
piano       ryodo yamamoto (04,11)
bass          toshiaki hamada (01, 06, 10,11)

"cielo" + aspidistrafly

all written by haruka nakamura



::IN STORES::

schole (JP), TOWER RECORDS (JP), HMV (JP), AMAZON (JP)

A-Musik (Germany), Norman Records (UK), Andtheyfell (US), NODE CULTURE (China)

iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, amazon mp3, hrfq.com.

<< iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, hrfq.comにて、全曲試聴可能 >>


::REVIEWS::

たとえばコーヒーがおちるまで
たとえば季節の変わり目
いつもの見慣れた風景が
いつもと違う色の光で色がついているとき

- 下田昌克（絵描き）


ライナーノートに「日常の断片が散りばめられた...」
とあったので、harukaさんの日常ってどんななの？
なんてそんなつもりで聴きはじめたらいつの間にか
自分の記憶をたぐっていることに気がついてしまった。
見たつもりになっている風景とか、
見たことのない（でも見られたら良いなと思っている）風景とか...。

- 中島ノブユキ（音楽家）


いつかまた
遠くの町で暮らしている君に手紙を書くときが来たなら、
僕のつたない言葉のかわりに、
この音楽を、
そっと封筒の中にしのばせようと思う。

- 鷲尾和彦（写真家）


Grace, at least in its religious connotations, generally bespeaks of a free, undeserved gift from God, a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine favor. On a quotidian or everyday level, it has to do with a natural ease and suppleness of bearing - nature’s mute symphony for the eye, or the live ember-eyes of a stranger in the street.

However convenient, Haruka Nakamura’s album for Schole Cultures maintains an equilibrium between these two poles, drawing from each during its nearly fifty minute rumination on all things languorous and red-blooded. Often, in fact, traces from each camp overlap, shift shape, and reassemble themselves as the album winds along. An ambulatory melody churns onward during “Cielo” with all the resignation and peacefulness of someone looking up to the sky, while space is simultaneously opened up for Nakamura to waft and dapple various ambient textures, including some rolling guitar lines that dimly glisten in the background.

Then there are other pieces whose fetching simplicity proves utterly beguiling. The harmonium melody of “Sign” is like a canicular sun, whose pressing warmth leaves little room for questions of personal desire and returns one to the play of the world and its myriad forms.

In keeping with this, hints of premeditated order in the basic trajectory of the tracks are not to be found, and in its humble way, the album may be seen as a contestation of the primacy generally given to such things. The album moves smoothly along overturning itself from spare pieces for piano, augmented only by feint glitches or field recordings, to the dense fug of “Lus”, to haughty, twittering pop numbers like “Ralgo”, or delicate ballads like the slightly melancholic title-track, which plays on subtle shifts in tonal gravity, and which allows ideas to breathe and expand.

The ordering therefore doesn’t turn it into a sort of itinerant clown, nor does it entail the work getting trapped in its own perfect reflection. It displays a sturdy yet flexible foundation; and, in a manner of speaking, it has all the simple yet mysterious charm of a person whose gait all of a sudden becomes the source of endless appeal.

- Max Schaefer


Japanese artists like Haruka Nakamura, Akira Kosemura, and Cokiyo seem able to effortlessly produce some of the loveliest pop music around in 2008. Born in 1982, the Tokyo-based Nakamura offers up thirteen intoxicating settings on his aptly-titled full-length debut Grace (he recently shared a 2007 split release with Kosemura titled Afterglow). Acoustic guitar and piano are Nakamura's main tools but he embellishes that core with electronic touches, field elements (the sounds of children playing in “Opus,” traffic noise), and some key contributions from guests such as singer Janis Crunch, pianist Ryodo Yamamoto, and guitarist Muneki Takasaka. The lilting acoustic guitar waltz “Every Day” makes a strong opening impression with sing-song melodies prettily sung by Crunch, and her voice graces other songs too, including “Luz” and the melancholic title song where her voice is respectively Siren-like and plaintive; perpetuating that celestial ambiance, female voices also float overtop a gentle thread of acoustic guitar and electronic iridescence in “Cielo.” Nakamura's resplendent ballads and waltzes exude warmth and humanity and are, in their modest way, quietly uplifting; the sunlit waltz “Sign,” to cite one example, is so potent, one imagines it could unite warring nations if only it could be globally broadcast.

- textura


Last year, Haruka Nakamura released Afterglow, a rather stunning collaboration with fellow electro-acoustic artist and label-mate Akira Kosemura. In my review of that album, I predicted that we would be seeing many big things from Nakamura in the years to come − at that point he had not yet put out even one full record by himself. Well, the day has finally arrived, and Nakamura has blessed us with Grace, his debut LP. So, how does it stack up? Does it fulfill and exceed expectations, or does it reveal that Nakamura was just a young musician who got lucky? The answer, oddly enough, is a little of both.
Excellence comes from the general atmosphere which saturates the record; Japanese artists have recently become known for a warm and welcoming tonal quality, and Nakamura finds himself at the forefront of this movement. Listening to this album feels like a hug from your mother after you’ve been away from home for far too long, it exudes a general faith in perpetual well-being. As it turns out, Grace is an exceedingly well-named album indeed.
Much of this is due to the subtlety and finesse with which Nakamura manages the electronic counterbalances to his organically classical instrumentation. Where most other artists of this genre are content to merely throw some glitches into the background (Nakamura himself was a practitioner of this method in his older works), Grace presents a wonderful willingness to almost entirely abandon the rapid-fire glitches of old in favor of far more subtle, but no less important, methods of electronic manipulation − especially when it comes to vocal samples. For example, in “Arne,” a child sings a looping melody over the music, and Nakamura processes it just barely enough to produce a slight alienation. But this only invites us to take a closer listen at the voice, and the familiarity we find underneath only makes that voice all the more comforting in the end. Nakamura’s electric sensibilities never shout, “Hey! You! Listen!” like some spoiled child; rather, they respectfully invite the listener to further examine these sonic creations. In this respect, Nakamura has immensely improved since his work on Afterglow.

However, for all this praise, there is something about many of the songs that feels almost − I use the word with extreme caution − trite. Whereas Nakamura’s work on Afterglow was marked by a sense of relaxed immediacy, this music seems merely contemplative. Although I can appreciate repetition as much as the next listener, I need more than one or two loops, repeated several times. Most of the songs lack any sense of real progression: they begin suddenly, they end suddenly, they are sustained indefinitely.
Not every song falls victim to this plague. Midway through the album, “Luz” delivers a beautiful and haunting melody which evolves naturally and lingers delightfully. Album opener “Every Day” hits every right note at exactly the right moment, and is hands down the standout track of Grace. Moreover, the album as a whole is extremely cohesive, and even if the individual songs may occasionally show a note of stagnation, a macrocosmic view reveals gradual development of album-wide trends in the interaction between songs.

Grace is not quite as good as good an album as I was hoping to receive from Nakamura, but it remains extremely solid nonetheless. In certain aspects, Nakamura’s work is light-years ahead of what he presented to us on Afterglow. Perhaps this young artist is still struggling to find his own voice, if only slightly. This isn’t Nakamura’s masterpiece, but he still has one in store for us down the road. Of that, I remain convinced.

- Tom Butcher