Unno - Amaai (2017)

Everything is in the name: UNexpected NOte. No more, no less.

At first sight, we’re quickly tempted to compare the trio to artists like SBTRKT or Radiohead. Although it’s flattering, to make such parallels would be a way to shrink the sonic field of the band. The three guys grow their music with intimacy, inspired by their experiences as professional dancers or in the fields of entertainment and visual arts. They fill their music with those different but complementary horizons and draw the shape of a universe made of discovery and freedom.

In the same way than children play with toys without reading the manual, UNNO creates its own rules to set the basis of a free and audacious sound. A richness built on several layers of emotions, blessed with a sensitive and warm look over the world. The trio pulls out strength from all those different influences, exploring powerful rhythms as an organic entity constantly on the move, living its own life.

It’s under this shape that Awir Leon, J. Kid and Tismé are at one, and under their name that they invite everyone to join them.

UNNO AMAAI:

“AMAAI” is the Japanese word for the expression “between two rains”.
A moment of clarity when we’re surrounded by distracting noises, which divert us from the real alarm sirens of this world, as Awir tells us in “Comets”.

“ This track is a middle finger addressed to conformism an to the people who fall for it by telling themselves that everything will be okay if they follow the rules. It’s an idea in opposition with the freedom that we have, and that we can find in the lyrics “ I can run forever, I can carry the comets”. “

“ We’ll never suffer if we shut the sirens “

In this album, UNNO draws the cryptic portrait of an era dived into darkness where it’s necessary for everyone to find its light, face its fears and ultimately grow, as in the track “Amaai”:
“I’ve always felt like I was an optimistic person” continues Awir Leon, “but through the different experiences I lived, I’ve lost that feeling more and more. It’s only after facing very difficult things in my life that I found it again, but without its innocence. This is what the track is talking about.”

“And how we sail, and how we swim
How we playm and why we win”

A necessary step back in order to reach new highs, a sentiment heard in echo during the track “Drink that Butter”.

“It’s a new track talking about people who don’t want to live on the ground, a category to which we all belong I guess… With all these benefits and downsides that it represents. A feeling synthetize in the sentence “most flying things can barely walk”.
The picture of drinking butter has two meanings. It’s representing this idea of abusing “too much” of the good things, but also the idea of persistence, of never giving up no matter what are the obstacles to go through in order to reach this lifestyle.”

Those deep interrogations reveal themselves as you go through AMAAI, as if you were in a museum where every piece of art owns a part of an answer, and you have to make you own truth from it. It is the same thing for their music, built as a puzzle where every piece matches with the others and create a consistent set.

Junta Film kept this process to shot all the 15 tracks of AMAAI in slow motion, each track carrying the symbolic of duality. This fight against oneself is embodied by the wild dances of Marie Marcon, Sandrine Lescourant and Johanna Faye.
An intimate and optimistic battle for unity, addressing all the different kinds of assertions of the humanity.

Tracklist:
01. Unno - Comets
02. Unno - Amaai
03. Unno - Make It Many
04. Unno - How We Swim
05. Unno - Mighty Venus
06. Unno - Drink That Butter
07. Unno - Thousand Islands
08. Unno - Walls
09. Unno - The Aftermath
10. Unno - Doesn't Have to Be Dark
11. Unno - Hunt
12. Unno - Sirens
13. Unno - Until the Dark
14. Unno - Lyre
15. Unno - The Last to Know