In 2021,  classical guitarist Ayane Shino released the album Sakura. The record contained Shino’s incredible acoustic interpretations of the work of celebrated electronica artist, Susumo Yokota. Shino has now shifted her focus toward another Japanese “techno” auteur, Rei Harakami, and while her translations of Yokota’s music were stunning, these new arrangements are just as amazing and if anything more immediate and accessible.

Where Sakura was a cover of Yokota’s perhaps most acclaimed album, Shino has cherry-picked pieces from throughout Harakami’s tragically curtailed career (1). Signed to Tokyo’s Sublime Records – the same label as Yokota – in 1997, he released an album roughly every other year and 4 of them are represented here.

From 2001’s Red Curb there are versions of the title track and The Backstroke. Both original compositions are complex constructions, with tight, shuffling “IDM” beats and strange,  stretching, shape-shifting keys. A sound that Mixmaster Morris once called “bizarre pitchbending”, the plucked patterns of which suggest that they might lend themselves readily to guitar. Shino’s reading of the latter was chosen as a single, and it’s a perfect point of entry. Her classical training transformed into jaunty, avant-folk picking, akin to that of Steffen Basho-Junghans. Jumping like salmon from a stream. Full of energy, possibility and promise.

The album opens elegantly and only becomes more beautiful. Four tracks are lifted from 2005’s [lust]. Long Time, Last Night, First Period, and Joy are re-imagined in cyclical riffing and overlapping repeats. Hypnotising, mesmerising, melodic minuets, simultaneously strummed, picked and plucked pirouettes that find Shino’s fabulous, fantastic fingers doing a dazzling, dextrous dance. Her amazing acoustic acrobatics, super human 6-string gymnastics converting Harakami’s bionic baroque chamber music and crazy, glitched counter rhythms. Building from something basic, and then introducing seemingly impossible notes in between.

さようなら is a selection from わすれもの – Wasuremono / “forgotten things” – a compilation of previously unreleased pieces issued in 2006. River and the shorts Umi 1 and Umi 2 are taken from the 2007 soundtrack 天然コケッコー (A Gentle Breeze In The Village). All continue the virtuoso vibrations and kinda Americana flavour. The music of Pat Metheny is a constant reference point throughout. Shino’s creations sometimes echoing classics of his, such as Sueño Con Mexico. 

NOTES

(1) Harakami died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in 2011, at the age of 40.

Ayane Shino’s River せせらぎ can be ordered directly from Music Mine.