Plantar - Forest, Sea, Harmony

One of those miracles - unexpected and pure - that seems to swim against the tide of time, having perhaps more to do with the 1920's than the 2020's. Satie/Ravel/Darius Milhaud-related harmonies recorded on Japan's Sado Island.

What a genuine outsider musician can bring to the table in the 2020's might not sound at all like the fantasies we have of outsider music: wonky, bare and clunky folkish music, since this wonky, bare and clunky music has precisely become the sound of the global underground. Instead, what Nozomu Sato offers is a suite of 6 pieces of contemporary (but contemporary in a very uncontemporary way) chamber music for alto saxophone, bass clarinet and piano, so far from today's zeitgeist that it could only be missed by most since the day of its release. 

It would be tempting to compare it to Hayao Miyazaki's vast and green meadows, but Plantar's suite doesn't sound like music for film. Classical music that reminds of impressionist masters like Satie and Ravel, music too free to be tamed by moving images, that also echoes vernacular music from the whole 20th and early 21st century, in the most subliminal way: from Cool / Third Stream giants like Gerry Mulligan or Jimmy Giuffre to the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Unlike soundtracks, Forest, Sea Harmony is not that easy to access neither, not immediate, but rather foggy, disconcerting at time ; all this attributes contribute to making it some of the very best music released in recent years. Not many people seemed to care since its release two years ago, but I have little doubt this will stand amongst some of the most precious records released in the decade we're living in. (M/M)

Tracklist

1. Theology
2. Geography
3. Mathematics
4. Ecology
5. In The Mist
6. Rest