Note

I originally planned to take it easy in my later years, releasing singles here and there at my own pace. But before I knew it, an idea for an EP came to mind, and that has brought me to this point. I started working on it around the end of last year, thinking I would release it quickly before summer, but it ended up taking much longer. This EP is the result of long days of mixing and mastering while fighting with the swollen battery pack under the trackpad of my mid-2009 MacBook Pro, which kept expanding in the summer heat, and with an external hard drive that was always short on space for version control. I want to say something cool like, “It’s not about the tools; it’s about using your mind within the limits,” but honestly, I really hope to finally replace my gear next year.

1. Meeting Myself

An instrumental piece opening the EP, marked by a curious tone that sounds like an organ but not quite, like a guitar but not exactly. The sound was shaped using a custom Max patch. The original version was written in 2006 with strings, bass, and vocals, and its structure remains almost the same. In the early 2010s, it was planned as the first track for an electronica/folktronica album, but the project stalled and the piece remained unreleased for many years.

2. New Life

Made as an homage to the Velvet Underground’s classic “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, fully aware that many people around the world might say, “Wait, how?” The first version was written around 2007 and was first released on major streaming services in 2015.For this EP, the arrangement stays almost the same except for the drums, but the mix and mastering were greatly updated to improve the overall sound.

3. Walk With The Star

Flowing naturally from the previous track, this piece fills the space with a repeating pattern built on simple chords and habitual guitar strokes. From the middle section, Mellotron tones, guitar phrases, and layered sampled voices come in. They may sound like simple delay effects, but there is a small twist behind them. This version was completed around 2009, but long held back since it didn’t feel like a single. Finally placing it on the EP brings a quiet satisfaction.

4. Pneuma

Positioned as a highlight of this EP, this track is almost a recent work. The title comes from the word “pneumatic” in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and also inspired the name “pneumatics” used by otom for another project. The piece started around 2015 with an intro guitar phrase, and went through many versions with loops, bass lines, drum patterns, and vocal melodies. The version included on the EP was completed in about 10 minutes, with the melody and structure decided in that short time. It felt like it “came down” in a sudden moment of inspiration, a feeling that remains important. This track was chosen for a promotional video and is available on YouTube and Vimeo.

5. Emotion

Closing the EP, this track has a large three-part structure. It was the first piece created after switching from a desktop Mac to a laptop at the end of the 1990s, when the production setup moved from MIDI-only to full audio recording on Mac. At the time, the goal was to make a song in the style of My Bloody Valentine or Kevin’s Pastels remix, and the structure remains almost the same. The piece combines glitch-like noise, wall-of-sound style drones, and vocal sections into a single track. Looking back, the approach hasn’t changed much since then. The ending vocal section also appears in “Somewhere” from the first album “November Morning” (2004). TThe final part of the track brings the piece a little closer to the famous duo Hachi-Roku (Hachidai Nakamura and Rokusuke Ei). Though this track had no release place for a long time, including it on the EP brings a sense of completion.