Chihei Hatakeyama - Journey To The End Of August (2018)

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Chihei Hatakeyama - Journey To The End Of August (2018)

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Chihei Hatakeyama is a Tokyo-based musician and mastering engineer who creates nature-evoking electro-acoustic ambient music.
"Journey to The End of August", released through the Hidden Vibes label, is comprised of three lengthy pieces, and the material itself dates back to the end of 2015. Much like the way these compositions unfold at a glacial pace, Hatakeyama continued to tinker with these works until the fall of 2017.
Of the three pieces included on the album, the first track, "MoonRight," is perhaps the most gorgeous, as well as the most enrapturing. Unfolding as slowly and gradually as possible over the course of 20 minutes, Hatakeyama blends glistening synthesizer tones and shimmering guitar drones. In doing so, seems to make time come to a complete standstill - the music just takes you over. And he does such a seemingly effortless job at it, that you don’t even realize just how much of it you’ve let wash over you until you’re way beyond the halfway mark.
August’s second track is its shortest. "Cluster Amaryllis" continues in a similar tone as its predecessor, but it, in an indirect way, pushes things into a slightly more somber, or at the very least, extremely pensive direction. Again, Hatakeyama exerts incredible control and precision in how gradual the balance in rise and fall is on "Cluster," and for a piece that seemingly moves along at an equally as slow of pace, it is actually finds its resolution in a comparatively quick fashion.
The album’s final, and titular, piece is also its moodiest. Not so much an inverse of "MoonRight," "Journey to The End of August," however, does away with the slight hopefulness in sound, as Hatakeyama switches it out for something more on the mournful side. It’s not ‘sad,’ per se, but of any of these pieces, it’s this one that would evoke a more emotional response. It’s less about sliding in to a meditative state and getting lost in the ocean of sound, and more about opening yourself up into the place where your emotions and the music slowly collide.