Moody ambient music that you can listen to whilst gazing out of the train window without feeling as though you’re heading towards single life following a break-up: the ultimate art form. The Tokyo Bedroom Orchestra – the name itself suggests, in a way, that this is a solo project – has mastered it. Hiro Nakamura seems to cast his gaze playfully upon third places, and upon transitions: from solid to liquid, from water to land, from reality to dream. »Tsuioku« means »memory« or »reflection«.
With its blend of reverberating electronica in the higher frequencies and organic instruments, the album gives the impression that an experience is dissolving and falling apart into shreds that no longer quite fit together. The record jumps about, lights are on, but nobody’s home, 36 minutes of a comatose waking state full of diffuse light reflections and sky-blue skies clouded by contrails, short paths to happiness. Nakamura does not construct his music strictly compositionally, but leaves room for happy little accidents, as the idle painter Bob Ross would have called them. The tinkling of delicate bells, the tracks meandering in all directions like a wild yet graceful garden – in its finest moments of bliss, Tsuioku is reminiscent of Oren Ambarchi’s Grapes From The Estate. Whereas the latter demands concentration with its drones, Nakamura allows for a touch more naivety. Just enough that it doesn’t do any harm.
