Hisato Higuchi - henzai (2010, Family Vineyard)

Living in Tokyo, Hisato Higuchi is a Japanese musician who released a few albums since the early 00's, and "Henzai" is his third one for Family Vineyard.


It's and extreme and very ascetic release, with hummed fragments of songs, drifting guitar notes with a whispering voice of no decipherable words. The influence of Loren Connors is huge but a parallelism can also be tempted with Ilyas Ahmed.


There is no obvious melody, just a collection of pallid, washed-out, very slow monotonous improvised meanderings with sometimes sparkles which will fall on a ground to humid to start a fire.


This album should be tedious for all these reasons but while I'm never able to enjoy it totally, there is something appeasing in it, maybe due to the melancholic feel, a long dark tunnel whose end seems unreachable. Listening to "Henzai" is like drinking a cup of green tea you had let to infuse to long and whose taste is more bitter than what it should be, but you'll finish it to the end.


Hisato Higuchi - Ashi No Nai Inu by familyvineyard


http://www.myspace.com/hisatohiguchi
http://ghost.readymade.jp/
http://family-vineyard.com