Currently describing himself as an “ambient folk” guitarist, Motohiro Nakashima, made his recorded debut with an album of delicate IDM, over 2 decades ago, on London’s Lo Recordings. Since the 2010s, Nakashima, himself haling from Fukuyama, in Japan’s southern Hiroshima prefecture, has been releasing music largely independently via Bandcamp. His latest long-player, however, is his second for Tokyo’s Flau. Across 10 tracks, the album is a musical mediation on the environmental crisis and our collective feeling of helplessness in the face of disaster capitalism. By design then, this an introspective and sometimes melancholy collection. 

Violinist / cellist Kumi Takahara, and ARAKI Shin on reeds and flutes, accompany Nakashima’s gentle picking, and grainy, glitchy treatments. Together, creating a suite of contemplative, electro-acoustic chamber pieces. Peaceful, pensive pastorals. The electronics generating either a static that crackles like flame, or dense detailed vapours of ghostly, digital textures. The orchestration and wind instruments are key in constructing the carefully intertwining, soulful, swelling arrangements.

“Fault” and the title track feature the vocalists Michiru Nakashima and Marucoporoporo, respectively. Both are intimacies of floating, fluttering frequencies, squeezed, thin sequences, bowed strings, sighs and whispers. “Cycle” is another highlight, built around a slowly, evolving, repeating, plucked, post-rock-ian refrain, that finishes with its cymbals crashing. The album as a whole, travels from its cool, calm classical beginnings toward, by its close, something nearer to spiritual jazz. Compositions that, despite their subject matter, rise from polite pondering to inspiring feelings more like hope.

Motohiro Nakashima’s “Sea Of Thought” can be ordered directly from Flau.