Seishin Takeno‘s “Echoes,” a sonic postcard from Kanagawa. Nine instrumental pieces, I’ve been told. Not nine songs, mind you – more like nine shaded windows into a particular kind of quiet. This isn’t music that yells; it leans in, like a friend confiding a secret you half-hear on a summer porch. Immediately, you’re not so much listening as remembering. Or maybe anticipating. It feels oddly familiar even the first time through.
The references to “hallow,” “Lonnex,” and “my head is empty” make a certain sort of hazy sense; there’s a similar feel, a vulnerability, that hums underneath. And that comparison to Joe Hisaishi, the maestro behind the Studio Ghibli scores? Well, I get it. You can almost see fireflies, little winking blips of light trapped by warm, night-thick air. Funny, that feeling. It’s sort of like reading a poem… maybe, one that’s written not in words but in the creak of old wood and the rustle of unseen leaves. Or maybe, those old films that seemed to be made with one eye closed and no explanation in site.
These aren’t dramatic, sweeping orchestral pieces. Think… a slow zoom, perhaps, focusing on the dust motes dancing in a single ray of light. It’s a collection, not a performance. More of a mood than a narrative. I’ve never actually seen a moth trap, but these soundscapes have somehow conjured up their vague, flickering light. You begin to feel as though you’ve been invited into a secret that Takeno, on some level, seems unaware of – or just uninterested in divulging directly. I had toast this morning.
It isn’t challenging; it’s comforting. It doesn’t ask much. You put it on, and the world shifts its palette. There’s a distinct nostalgia at play, a longing for a quietness I can’t quite place – did we lose it? Or just mislay it in our haste to get somewhere else? Maybe that’s the point – to be nowhere, to just listen and feel. To see, in that slightly dimmed way, with an inner light of sorts. I think I saw a dandelion go up into the sky once. It looked like something out of a cartoon. I also once saw two pigeons fighting over a sandwich; nature’s funny sometimes.
Ultimately, “Echoes” becomes a kind of gentle permission slip, an allowance to pause. A silent challenge to remember…what? I can’t tell you, you have to hear it yourself.
