Review: Masayoshi Fujita – Migratory

Label // Erased Tapes
Released // 06/09/2024

Masayoshi Fujita follows up 2021’s Bird Ambience with the aptly named Migratory.

Recorded at Fujita’s Kebi Bird Studio in the coastal mountains of Kami-cho, Migratory opens with “Tower of Cloud”. Brimming with melancholy and romance, it evokes memories of more thematic music by Sabres of Paradise and Angelo Badalamenti. The laggard square bass sequence – delayed and reverb-soaked – provides a rigid skeleton for Fujita’s marimba flourishes and white-noise, staccato synth vamps to dance around. Although relatively light and airy, it becomes subtly discordant as it introduces long, oscillating synth pads, taking you into a far tenser headspace.

“Pale Purple” begins with piercing shō notes and low drones (perhaps an organ?) that loop in sequence, punctuated by marimba and vibraphone parts – a spell at dawn, the sound of mountains waking up. Something about “Blue Rock Thrush” reminds me of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold: Prelude”. It’s not the music, though – it’s the structure, the slow birth of something elemental. With its lulling vibrato sax circling, it’s almost spiritual, and it sends me flying.

“Our Mother’s Lights” features guest vocals from the inimitable Moor Mother, dripping words like honey over Fujita’s dreamlike marimba arpeggios and a sax lead reminiscent of the great Yasuaki Shimizu. As Moor Mother says: “We are just travelling through open space, in the darkness of our mother’s light”. “Desonata” has a meditative quality. A repeated, filtered synthesiser sequence, the vibraphone long and majestic, soaring like some cosmic bird, juxtaposed against the marimba, earthly and sassy, like a cat at play. This same feeling continues in “Ocean Flow”, though far less cosmic, where seabirds and subtle tidal tones wash in and out of the sound picture.

“Distant Planet” paints a far more minimalist picture; the marimba takes centre stage here, innocent and stripped bare, its melody almost childlike – in awe of something else, something greater. As the synthesiser comes in halfway through, you get the sense of a conversation being had. It’s as if a child, looking up at the stars in wonder, poses a question through the marimba while the synthesisers provide the answer from somewhere out there.

The sax and shō return on “In a Sunny Meadow”, and it’s heartbreakingly beautiful; the dulcet saxophones blend exquisitely with the shrill tone of the shō. “Higurashi” features the hauntingly beautiful vocals of Hatis Noit over a bed of what sounds like cicadas (perhaps synthesisers) and light marimbas. I won’t lie – I shed a tear on this one.

More delicate soundscapes appear on “Valley”, where vibraphones and drones float over distant winds. The album closes with “Yodaka” – which, according to Google Translate, means nighthawk. Whether correct or not, it certainly sounds like it. Drones and the shō create a sense of drama – a dark incantation to the moon – gradually relaxed by the marimba and vibraphone parts, which counterpoint the darker tones. It encompasses so much of what I love about this album: the interplay of dark and light, the mystery and the beauty of the mountains and the coast. It makes me homesick; it’s wild, romantic and honest. I’ve never been to Kami-cho, but I’ve been to Ceredigion, and I know there’s magic in them hills.