Photo by Maya Bankovic
Losing a loved one is an shattering part of life and the way that transition happens from being earthbound to elsewhere, whatever your beliefs are, can be both crippling and a painful enlightenment or something in between.
Toronto, Ontario based artist, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Hiroki Tanaka's debut solo album “Kaigo Kioku Kyoku” which in Japanese translates to “Caregiving Memory Songs” struggles and explores the pain, love, journey of life. The highly personal album is "the culmination of his two-year long experience as a live-in caregiver for both his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and his uncle with terminal cancer."
The track "Inori", meaning 'Prayer' and based off the hymn of the same name by Genzo Miwa, sways like a sad lullaby on pensive dreamy guitar. Tanaka's vocal aesthetic feels at once earnest, earthy but art rockish in tone, reaching into theatrical places. This song does that too with striking post rock meets baroque pop ascensions that have an avant garde sensation. It swirls in a sea of psychedelia but not does not feel overly maudlin but, instead, a bit delusional or confused or maybe numbed up. The kind of numbing up when you have to be utterly strong for someone else while you are secretly crumbing inside. The musical break full of sonic screams and tension feels like a surreal step, maybe, into that place that seems crushingly false but is absolutely real.
Hiroki shares:
"I took the harmony and melody of Miwa’s hymn, and wrote about my feelings of helplessness when caregiving for my uncle and grandmother."
And:
"The lyrics at the beginning of the song are about the first time I had to take my grandmother to the hospital – the first of many – and it was a real shock to see my grandmother so frail. It was complicated too by this feeling that if she didn’t return from the hospital, that this would be it, that I would lose my grandmother, the house, a lot of my childhood memories.
The word “Inori” means prayer in Japanese, and I think the song captures that feeling of a desperate prayer, when you feel out of control, and it’s all you can do to try and cope with the inevitable.”
When you listen to "Kaigo Kioku Kyoku" you might feel as if you are listening to a musical documentary because Hiroki archived sounds related to his families past and culture. He was caring for his loved ones in the house that he was also born in. A treasure trove of past reflections and so he became a collector the sounds "of objects collected from the house, voice recordings of his relatives, and structured the songs off of hymns and Japanese folk songs". This shaped the album in remarkable ways.
“I wanted to create a sonic archive of the space that had provided me life, and served as space for transformation and shedding. I wanted to provide a voice that I hadn’t heard before, one that illustrated the experience of being a caregiver in stark detail. One that celebrated my family’s multicultural heritage and created a snapshot of a family’s history.”
And Press Notes reveal:
[The first single, “Blue Eyed Doll” for example, starts off with a recording of a Japanese choir woman from the eldercare facility Hiroki’s grandmother was staying in. They are singing the Japanese folk songs “Aoi Me No Ningyo” (trans. “Blue Eyed Doll”) which leads into the album track of the same name. Each percussive soundt in Hiroki’s “Blue Eyed Doll” was collected from the house, and includes everything from the sound of a cupboard closing to the clinking of two glasses together. This “found-sound” approach to percussion is what gives every sound and melody in Kaigo Kioku Kyoku significance.]
“Blue Eyed Doll”, for me, does set the tone of the album. Hiroki's approach is interesting. While the song is informed by Japanese folk music, the sound itself with the somber pedal steel lilt feels like a cross genre'd alchemy of classical melodies (and rock classicalism), songs from the American Songbook, popular jazz affections, 70's chamber pop (and garden rock) pushed through a further sort of hybrid of baroque pop and those original Japanese folk tones. It is all so overtly dramatic but finely tuned and nuanced at the same time. Hiroki's voice is so exquisitely lovely pushing ethereal falsettos as he blows you away in secret ways:
"I saw your face in the news
Smiling eyes I keep it close
To know what we went through
Getting off the plane I saw the truth
And the grief comes in waves I can feel it
Breaking the same old blue eyed doll
Ripping the same old blue eyed doll
Shedding the same old blue eyed doll
Sharing the same old blue eyed doll"
Ripping the same old blue eyed doll
Shedding the same old blue eyed doll
Sharing the same old blue eyed doll"
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
hirokikyoku
SoundCloud
Facebook
Hiroki’s debut solo album “Kaigo Kioku Kyoku” speaks to the celebration of brightness, while reckoning with darkness.
“Kaigo Kioku Kyoku”, which translates into “Caregiving Memory Songs” in Japanese, is the culmination of his two-year long experience as a live-in caregiver for both his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and his uncle with terminal cancer.
In a further nod to the circular nature of life, the house in which Hiroki cared for his relatives was also the one he was born in. Combining the sounds of objects collected from the house, voice recordings of his relatives, and structuring the songs off of hymns and Japanese folk songs, Hiroki has created a “sonic archive” to preserve his unique family history, and document the stark reality of being a caregiver.
“I wanted to create a sonic archive of the space that had provided me life, and served as space for transformation and shedding. I wanted to provide a voice that I hadn’t heard before, one that illustrated the experience of being a caregiver in stark detail. I wanted to create an album that celebrated my family's multicultural heritage and created a snapshot of a family's history.”
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
hirokikyoku
SoundCloud
Hiroki’s debut solo album “Kaigo Kioku Kyoku” speaks to the celebration of brightness, while reckoning with darkness.
“Kaigo Kioku Kyoku”, which translates into “Caregiving Memory Songs” in Japanese, is the culmination of his two-year long experience as a live-in caregiver for both his grandmother with Alzheimer’s and his uncle with terminal cancer.
In a further nod to the circular nature of life, the house in which Hiroki cared for his relatives was also the one he was born in. Combining the sounds of objects collected from the house, voice recordings of his relatives, and structuring the songs off of hymns and Japanese folk songs, Hiroki has created a “sonic archive” to preserve his unique family history, and document the stark reality of being a caregiver.
“I wanted to create a sonic archive of the space that had provided me life, and served as space for transformation and shedding. I wanted to provide a voice that I hadn’t heard before, one that illustrated the experience of being a caregiver in stark detail. I wanted to create an album that celebrated my family's multicultural heritage and created a snapshot of a family's history.”
No comments:
Post a Comment