An album about contentment in the present moment: Japanese artist Hiroshi Ebina explores the possibilities of ambient. On his latest album, On Solitude, this is less about soundscapes. »One Step Closer To Awareness« follows a logic of escalation, with an electronic rhythm that builds a curve of tension but never resolves it. A track such as »Quiescence« follows the genre’s more conventional logic, as Ebina opens up a wide space on the synthesiser in which individual tones bloom like frost flowers.
Ebina found inspiration for this album in Wim Wenders and his film Perfect Days. Unagitatedness, then, is the order of the day. Even on songs such as »The Village In The Sky«, featuring Hinako Omori: the words glide over synthesiser, so that it could almost be pop, if it wanted to be. Instead, it is another accent that Ebina places within his sound on this varied album.
Born in 1987, Ebina mixes all of this on the record and still finds a guiding idea. The intensity lies in the small moments, in the shifting and working-out of a few tones as melody or rhythm.
