Shin Sasakubo - Manayachana (2014) [Hi-Res]

"Manayachana" was co-composed by Dai Fujikura and the guitarist, Shin Sasakubo. Fujikura has offered this background on the music: "As I write this, Shin and I have still not met face to face. One day Shin contacted me through a social networking site, asking if I had any guitar pieces which he could perform in a concert. I told him I do, but I have taken a look at his musical activities, and thought it would be great if we can find a way to co-compose a piece. I proposed this to him and he was over the moon. He was very busy working on his own albums at that time, so I knew he would be in and out of the recording studio. I asked him if he could play some fragments while the engineer was on a break, then send them to me. He played some improvisations and sent me the files. I extracted one note at a time from these samples and started creating the electronic sounds. I then reconstructed the improvisations in electronic form and composed a backing track. I sent the track back to him, he said "It's finished, it's great!" But I had intended that this was merely the backing track. So I asked him to add a layer (again his own improvisation) on top of the track next time he had a coffee break from his own album recording.

He played, recorded and sent it back to me. As usual, his recording was full of material. This was a bit too much for one track, so I started by eliminating a lot of material. Then I reconstructed it again and mixed it. This became the 1st track, which is the title piece, "Manayachana". We both had so much fun making this track, we decided to make another one, then more and more.... Towards the end of the album you can hear a strong south american sound, which reflects Shin's roots, as he was born in Peru and studied Guitar in Peru. I had a suspicion that Shin was a bit afraid to give me this "south american" element. (Maybe he thought, as I am a "contemporary classical composer," I might not like it.) On the contrary, that was why I was initially attracted to working with him. So I decided to make a rhythm track, combining fragments which were taken from whatever he sent to me as a sample, then I looped it. Eventually I sent back the rhythm track, which shocked him, he told me later. He thought I had hired another guitarist to make that rhythm track, which was obviously derived from all the materials taken from his guitar samples. Then he improvised on top of the rhythm track, so effortlessly it was like watching a duck take to water! It was so clear this sound world is "his thing". I am glad I prompted him to produce this, pushing via the music, not verbally. I knew his wife was a traditional Peruvian singer. I asked him if she wouldn't mind contributing to the creation of the album, so she did. Shin sent me what was pretty much the finished song, though once again, I decided to de-construct it. I don't know why, but I combined her voice with the guitar samples, which had nothing to do with the song which Shin had recorded, in order to make a new track. The tempo was different (obviously), and I'm not sure harmonically it made sense. but I worked on it to turn it into one sound world. All the sounds on this album (except the voice - contributed by Shin's Peruvian wife) were originally generated by Shin's guitar. In the end we came up with this album which defies categorisation. I leave it to you to decide if this is electronica, guitar, drone, world music, contemporary classical music, meditative music..... We are happy to release this album from Minabel." Dai Fujikura (edited by Miranda Jackson)

Tracklist:
01. Dai Fujikura - Manayachana (The Mystery of Things) (5:59)
02. Dai Fujikura - Tuta Wayra (Evening Wind) (4:00)
03. Dai Fujikura - Rumi (Stone) (3:59)
04. Dai Fujikura - Puyu (Cloud) (4:37)
05. Dai Fujikura - Tinkay (Offering (To God)) (8:31)
06. Dai Fujikura - Anqas (Blue) (5:22)
07. Dai Fujikura - Paseo Alpaca (Passage to Alpaca) (4:49)
08. Dai Fujikura - Wawa (Daughter) (4:14)
09. Dai Fujikura - Wayta (Flower) (4:21)