Photo: Ryo Noda
We love vibraphone wizard, multi-percussionist, and composer Masayoshi Fujita, whose beautiful and beguiling Bird Ambience, was one of our Album Picks of 2021. So we’re over the moon to know he is ready to follow it up with a new full-length album. Entitled Migratory, the new record will see the light of day on September 6th through Erased Tapes. Fujita’s previous album saw him merge influences he’d kept separate til then, and turn the spotlight on the marimba alongside drums, percussion, synths, effects and tape recorder. On the upcoming Migratory, he continues to display his incredible creativity and technical virtuosity, both on his signature instrument, the vibraphone, and also on the marimba and synthezisers.
After living in Berlin for 13 years, Fujita moved to his native Japan with his wife and three kids in 2020, specifically to the mountain hills along the coast of Kami-cho, Hyōgo, “fulfilling his life-long dream of living and composing music in the midst of nature”, as the press release describes. In Fujita’s own words, “nature is there as the image to be evoked by the listener from the music.”
As the album’s title suggests, birds are once again the inspiration behind the new album, with Fujita having an image of migratory birds travelling somewhere between Africa, Southeast Asia and Japan, and “imagining them hearing the music from the land underneath, and how their point of view of the world from above blurs the boundaries of music and land”. He comments:
“These ideas and images were inspired by my experiences of living abroad and returning to my homeland, as well as by the artists featured on this album who also somehow travelled or lived in other countries across the boundaries, and being influenced by the music of other lands but at the same time somehow led to their roots.”
In his Kebi Bird Studio, an old kindergarten turned into music studio, Fujita brough his Migratory to life with the help of some collaborators, including composer, poet, vocalist and educator Moor Mother, London based Japanese vocal performer Hatis Noit, Swedish shō player Mattias Hållsten and also his father.
The wonderful news comes paired with the first single, the beautiful and reverie-inducing ‘Tower of Cloud’. Speaking about the track, Fujita says:
“‘Tower of Cloud’ took form when I was preparing a live set for a tour a few years ago, and it evolved as I played in Europe and Thailand. The synth riff gives me a late summer feel and reminds me of cumulonimbus clouds, and I can see a swallow drawing a circle in the sky to the marimba melody.”
Listen to ‘Tower of Cloud’ below.