Hum, by sawako

Hum

by sawako

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1.	Pink Liquid Cotton Candy 05:55	buy track
2.	Patchwork Blanket 02:55	buy track
3.	Rush 04:17	buy track
4.	Incense Of Voice 04:56	buy track
5.	Way Home From School 03:46	buy track
6.	White Sky Winter Chicada 08:05	buy track
7.	Cloud No Crowd 13:02	buy track

about

NYC/Tokyo sound artist Sawako has recently made a name for herself with her own unique combination of field recordings and DSP combined with noticeably feminine touch. It is this strong use of both mediums that makes her hard to classify or neatly tucked away into a specific genre. Her latest release, Hum, is an elegant and detailed work in which she consciously brushes against the fringes of pop music by extracting and processing the sounds of everyday life and working them into melodies and arrangements. Coded sound blends lightly with piano, voice, roomtones, field recordings and the additional instruments from a number of supporting musicians including Aoki Hayato (guitar + pianica), and 12k’s Kenneth Kirschner (room tones), and Taylor Deupree (kyma).

Hum is very much an album about life that takes influences from Sawako’s home in Japan and her recent years as a student of sound and media technology in New York City. There is at one time both a sense of girlish innocence and curiosity and the result marks a unique point in 12k’s recent output.

While Hum is primarily a soft, ambient album, Sawako is obviously hinting at much more beneath the surface. It’s as if she is not just searching for music in non-musical places but playing hide-and-seek with the most beautiful and sublime sounds around her and forming them by hand into a dreamy work of art.

credits

released November 8, 2005

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about

sawako 東京都, Japan

Sawako is a sound sculptor, a timeline-based artist and a signal alchemist who understands the value of dynamics and the power of silence. She released albums from 12k, and/OAR and Anticipate, and has performed internationally as an audio and/or visual artist in MUTEK(Canada); Warm Up at MoMA P.S.1 (NY); UCLA Hammer Museum (LA); Sonar, MACBA (Spain); OFFF (Lisbon); ICA London (UK) and more. ... more

discography

island light

Dec 2011
summer tour 2002

Jun 2011
early works #01

Jan 2011
early works #02

Jan 2011
Bitter Sweet

May 2008
Hum

Nov 2005
fishwish

May 2003

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