Sat somewhere between Four Tet’s more minimalist electronica approach and something more abstract and experimental like a Warp Records release is Shuta Hasunuma. His work straddles techno, ambient, jazz, post-classical and minuscule sound creation. It has been seven years since his last release and during that time Shuta has been collecting sounds, instruments and recordings and then tried to splice them or merge them all woven together like a musical art collage. This is the thought process behind lead single ‘Emergence’ – which has five totally separate pieces of music being interwoven and manipulated around each other. The bendy synths, skittish beats and glassy hues sound like you are hearing a microcosmos under a microscope. It’s clever and each time I listen to the track, I tune into different sounds depending on my mood.
Recording between Brooklyn and Tokyo, Shuta Hasunuma will release his new album ‘unpeople’ on 2nd October. Interestingly, Shuta says that the music he made for this album was purely for himself. He didn’t think of an overall theme. That said, the album also has an artistic element to it. An exhibition celebrating the release of ‘unpeople’ will be held at POST, in Tokyo throughout September 2023. This will be a joint exhibition with a photographer, Riku Ikeya and a graphic designer, Seri Tanaka. They also created the artwork for the album. The idea is that the exhibition explores the relationship between a physical place and time through sound. Often Shuta Hasunuma’s music is described as ‘music after humans’ and the exhibition appears to lean into that idea.
Enjoy ‘Emergence’, the lead single from ‘unpeople’ and its cool music video below. The single is out now. You can pre-order ‘unpeople’ now.
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