YUICHIRO FUJIMOTO - Kinoe

Small sounds for precious moments. Tiny particles of

timbres suited to days stained by grey clouds. This is the essence of the

album. Frothy specks of dust speckle a handful of songs.

Since early adolescence, Yuichiro Fujimoto has been fascinated and

drawn to the visual and sonic arts. He studies music as a whole, but never

learns the technical grounding to play any specific instrument. In his free time

he strives to capture and freeze sonic moments, scraps of freshness,

yearnings for glittering perfection.

Raised under the wing of

Norwegian jack-of-all-trades artist Kim Hiorthøy, he composed small sketches in his

early years of activity, later gathered into that little gem of the new

millennium that is "Komorebi". An extraordinary ability to chisel out slices of skewed

pop. Boundless imagination and a knack for escaping the genre's clichés. A dazzling

debut. The label that releases the record is the daring Smalltown

Supersound, an extraordinary force in today's alternative music scene.

A

A year later comes "Kinoe", released on Audio Dregs.

Layered bubbles of air

sail across a static sky, sugary-sweet pralines froth in

space, transparent circular lines trace drawings of childlike innocence.

"Kinoe" takes the shape of an empty room. Background noises manage to

break an oppressive silence of uncommon intensity. One room only.

Solitary. Curling up in the roughest corner and starting to ramble on about a

immaculate landscape. Horizons of timid happiness. Infinite spaces of celestial

beauty. Colors, shades, details, yearnings, light, darkness,

genesis.

After the 20 seconds of noisy intimacy of “In The Groove”, the

journey begins with “Drawing Of Stars”. No title could ever be more fitting. A shimmering

xylophone with a steady cadence steps forward, and with touches of angelic delicacy

it draws the stars. Scattered across the sky. Disordered and sparkling. Minimal organ phrases

treated with a bold stroke depict a dark, horrendous sky.

Sporadic guitar chords complete the piece, making it perfect and

perfectible at the same time. Toward the end, the purest noise saturates the sonic

space, and nothing can be perceived but the hint of an interstellar catastrophe.

Six minutes in which peace reigns with absolute steadiness.

The following

“After Rain” leaves you speechless. Once again a xylophone (and what else?) traces

rhythmic embroideries of earthly visionariness. Notes meet, collide,

recirculate, flow, clash. As the seconds tick by, the beat

turns bastardized with digital regurgitations. Around the track's core floods in

a centrifuge of bleeps. Random timbral little creatures scurry everywhere

in our minds. Bouncing beings ricochet off imaginary walls like

a pinball from Mars. All this lasts just 4

minutes, but we wish it would never end.

The intro to “Morning

Dance” hints at a slightly livelier track. Percussion in

the background as accompaniment, and an accordion up front busy

weaving a sinuous sonic line.

Around the one-minute mark, a snap of

searing intensity cuts everything off. We enter a dark, endless tunnel.

Suffocating air and compressed space. Now the accordion is slow, cranky and

weary. A backdrop of electronic noise slices through our minds like a

sharp knife cutting through a stick of butter. Sporadic, varied acoustic touches

embellish it. A suite for dark journeys through a city set on a

deserted island where the sun is blotted out.

An interlude of field recordings

from a pet shop in "Cook Doodle Doo Is Music".

We hear monkeys, birds and whatever else your imagination of the animal kingdom can

conjure. Immaculate guitar phrasing reappears right on cue.

An ultra-lo-fi sketch for solo xylophone on "Kid Play. Mom Nap". Another

secluded, delightful gem.

We hear a pen branding its own

marks onto a sheet of paper in the following "Without Mabataki". As the seconds

slowly go by, a sonic soul creeps in and starts to infect the small concrete

noises. Total (e)stasis. An electro-(so)nic pattern emerges almost as if by magic.

Processed, stripped-down guitars begin to saturate the

structure. Analog dust rising from the soil of a planet outside any

solar system. Our writer presses relentlessly on, smearing his

work plan. It ends its work in a complex interweaving of

rhythmic patterns. Sonic ornaments for space painters.

A melancholic, wrenching piano suite for ailing beings in

“Listen to Grandpa’s Youth”. Minimal, sly notes struggle to gain

confidence and take flight. A heart from other eras bleeds uninterrupted throughout

these 4 minutes. Romantic minds will dream of a better future hearing such

fullness. Sounds of the purest water streak the piece as it draws to a close. A

soundtrack for a night to be loved and hated at once. Tormented in the face

of one's own faults and weaknesses.

On tiptoe and sly, the next track begins,

“Harmony”. Several minutes of spartan, bare melodies. A

stringed instrument used to distill the words of the soul. Simple,

precise, unpretentious. At the two-minute mark, catastrophe strikes. The same naive and

sincere sounds from before are plundered by a machine. Reprocessing a sound so

pure to render it macabre and jagged. Sporadic bursts of frothy noise

poison. An organ from interstellar space rises in pitch and

overwhelms every other sound, building to total noise. Crystalline, piercing,

intrusive. A prolonged reiteration that reeks of perfection.

The senses

rest in a sweet lullaby of xylophone and bare-bones percussion over the

abundant minute of “Sunday Music Club”. A bare sound full of meaning. That's

the whole paradox right there.

A masterpiece of crystalline shape, shortly after. “An

Octave Of Shells” is an immersion into a deep, dark sea. The crackling

glimmer of an analog synth, uncoordinated notes from an alien piano sketch out

an endless seabed, restless noises ratchet up a pressure already at

unbearable levels. Cold, solitude, horizons, sensations.

A cross-section of

compositional originality, again on full display, in the penultimate track “Forest’s Name”.

A composition still built entirely on that much-hated accordion and

mistreated before. Here the sound comes out clean and pure. Once again the beloved

xylophone steps back in and, together with various kinds of little bells,

adorns and embellishes. No foreign treatment. Limpid glimmer and

uncontaminated chatter of classical instruments.

The conclusion is entrusted to those scant two

minutes of “Old Bird Tape”. Let yourself go with the phlegmatic pace of

a lo-fi guitar, admire the disjointed honking of a harmonica

out of place and out of context. But admirable precisely for that reason.

To close

out the story, we can call this a dreamy, untouchable record. A gem of

chemical perfection. A painting with imaginative colors and brushstrokes. A woman with

a sculpted body. A work to discover, love and consume.

Ride the wave of great music

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30/04/2026