Akira Sano - Phase Contrast From Recollection (2023)

12k welcomes Tokyo-based artist Akhira Sano (with previous releases on Important Records and IKKII, among others) to the label with Phase Contrast From Recollection, a suite of minimalist works that embrace the discreet punctuations and dynamics of piano, tines and sine tones. These small occurrences are born from Sano’s concept of celluar movement and the formations and evolutions of life.

Phase Contrast From Recollection explores its sonic world through a microscope, its sound wriggling and jumping, skittish, yet curious. Sano is interested in movement, not just in celluar form, but also as physical vibrations in the air. Tiny movements of sound are as fascinating to him as those biological ones.

Amongst the palette of almost-pure musical tones lives a layer of noise and static, microscopic, as if residue and byproduct of celluar movements. There is both calmness and restlessness in these works. The gentle waves and muted piano exist in an open space, churn and collide on laboratory glass. And there also lies a directness, a lack of artificial reverb or implied space. The sounds focused and removed from a large world to live happily in a tiny one.