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CD Feature/ Daisuke Miyatani: "Diario"

  Tobias

While historians want to fool us into believing that there is a red thread running through everything and that each second was caused by a plethora of preceeding ones, our personal perception suggests something entirely different. When we try to remember certain events, they usually come as still images or short sequences, never as the whole picture. And more often than not, they return to us without prior announcement and infuse us with a wave of emotions from way back in time. Daisuke Miyatani has followed through on that thought: This album is as snippeted as the visions from our daydreams and whispers with the soft voice of nostalgia.

And don’t we all secretly whish to read someone else’s inmost feelings and flip through the pages of his diary? Of course, we will not be able to understand each sentence for lack of background knowledge nor will all entries be complete and sometimes stop in the middle of a sentence – interrupted by real life events, fatigue or the incapacity to put the thoughts into words. But it is this fragmentary state, which somehow seems even more coherent, because it represents the human psyche more accurately than the two-dimensional completeness of Hollywood characters. Such is the sensation of listening to “Diario”, a record of fifteen tracks in the region between floating acoustics, drones and field recordings. Some of these pieces are a mere thirty second short and yet they are never just sketches. Their value can not be measured by their ability of standing on their own – like a web of fragile threads, they sustain each other and weave a detailed aural carpet with scenes arranged in loveable anagrams. At the beginning, Miyatani awards a prominent place to the environmental recordings, mixing them with subtle studio effects and backward sounds or occasionally leaving the tape hissing intact, while strumming the same chords on his guitar for ages. Yet no repetition is exactly the same, as they are embedded in naive xylophone tinkling, echoes of the outside world and melodies evolving around one or two notes. As the album progresses, the ambiance tightens, like a flower opening and spreading the thick scent of its sweet perfume. “Summer Child” and “Hum” are perfectly programmatic visions of August nights in the parc with friends, intoxicated by the embrace of nature and drowsied by the sleepy feeling in one’s body thanks to a day spent in the sun. 

“Diario” never leaves the meadow, the gently rolling hills and the moment just before the sun sets. It is a work which cherishes these spaces so much, that it looses track of what is purely in the mind and what takes place for real. A music as deeply immersed in the feminine energy stream as this one probably had to be created by a boy, and cynical spirits will surely find enough to detest here. But if you can imagine falling asleep in your girlfriend’s arms to the kindest of sounds while she is reading a dime novel, then this is the album for you.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Daisuke Miyatani aka DiskM at MySpace
Homepage: Ahornfelder Records