A degree in Environmental Science isn’t an obvious precursor to a career in music, though for Shuta Hasunuma, such an education serves as a frequent inspiration for the sounds that he creates. Hasunuma resides in Tokyo, though his interests don’t lie solely in the bustling capital city, and the field recordings that are a frequent ingredient in his music are just as likely to have originated in outlying rural areas as they are Hasunuma’s home city of over twelve million. His self-titled American debut, released on Western Vinyl, uses field recordings of both the city and country mouse variety, processed digitally and augmented by piano, guitar, and electronics. It’s an album of simple but affecting emotion, of winsome recollections and bittersweet beauty.
Hasunuma’s uncomplicated manner is his strength, and this album is one of a sparse emotional economy. A few notes in a straightforward pattern are fertile enough ground for Hasunuma, who works with tranquility without undue melancholy, and perkiness that’s able to abstain from annoyance. Guitar is picked slowly over slow waves of electronics, serenaded by a field recording that exists on the track’s edges, and peaceful piano is plunked over skittering blurs of synthesized insectoids and deep, gentle purrs. Hasunuma embraces a glitchy imperfection in his music, allowing the music’s beauty to be marred, as it were, by digital artifacts and interruptive flurries of sonic minutiae. Under Hasunuma’s care, however, the mingling sounds feel surprisingly natural, and tracks, such as “Karma Fulcrums,” that feel more like artificial constructs are in the minority.
Hasunuma’s debut is rife with gifted songcraft, though it’d be hard to classify any of the tracks as songs in the traditional sense. Instead, he joins melodic fragments with more atmospheric components, and, in the end, fashions haunting compositions made all the more effective by their simplicity. Those with an aversion to openly emotive music or the gentle tugging of their heart strings might not find Hasunuma’s work to their liking, and the more cynical of listeners could label it too easy and too direct. But, as with the perfect haiku, portrait, or three-word song, sometimes the work that seems so effortless in its creation is a product of a number of well-crafted subtleties, and Hasunuma’s is not a talent that should be so easily disregarded.
