Haruka Nakamura - Twilight (reissue)

“From the car window, a view of street lamps atop the hill. The lighthouse keeper feeds a bonfire with firewood.”

Originally released in 2010, haruka nakamura’s second solo album “twilight” has established him as one of the most vital and successful independent artist in Japan. Three years since the original release, “twilight” is now reissued in a newly packaged CD edition with a special inclusion of 3 bonus download tracks.

The album refines the lyrical, pastoral imagery that inspired his first album “grace”. Recorded in a studio overlooking the ocean as a tribute to the sight of the expiring sun falling slowly over the horizon at dusk, “twilight” is a sustained reverie that mirrors the dwindling rays of light at day’s end with its subtle variations in timbre and texture.

The brassy shimmer of ARAKI Shin’s sax opens the first track “Yuube no Inori” (M1), swelling languidly as the orchestra slowly unfurls around it like a resplendent sunset.

Throughout the album, haruka nakamura coaxes a startling range of tonal color out of piano phrases that twinkle, patter and shuffle through a variety of compositions and tempos – the gentle march of “harmonie du soir”; the somnolent haze of “On the Verandah” (M6) punctuated by drowsy stutters and cicadas muttering all around you; the reverberations of your languishing pulse as night starts to fall in “faraway”. isao saito’s sensitive percussion offers subdued but confident support throughout – dwindling to a hush as the fading rays of the sun dissipate in the crisp night air.

The middle of the album – “Koukei” (M8) and “dialogo”, in particular – wanders off on a short jaunt into looser, ethereal territory. The furtive meandering of the soprano saxophone by akira uchida, roving itinerant chords, airy percussion and carefully-spaced sustain and release of the pedal are reminiscent of acoustic ambient jazz of ECM. Closing the album, however, are two melody-driven vocal tracks: “twilight”, a gentle flicker of a ballad that rises and ebbs with April Lee’s (aspidistrafly) fluttering, half-whispered vocals, and Janis crunch’s acoustic arpeggio-driven elegy in tribute to the dwindling of “The Light”.