MEITEI shares new single and music video for ‘SHIN-OIRAN’

From MEITEI’s new album AGATE, set for release on April 17, the advance single “SHIN-OIRAN” will be released digitally.

Carrying forward the lingering melancholy that runs through the Kofū trilogy, along with the shadows that unfold beyond it, “SHIN-OIRAN” is a work in which MEITEI’s long-standing theme of “Lost Japan” gradually coalesces into a single distilled form over time.

Based on “OIRAN I” (2020), originally included in the first installment of the Kofū series, the piece was performed repeatedly on stage and refined through years of live interpretation. After five years of evolution, it has come to bear the name “SHIN-OIRAN.”

Through this work, what is expressed beyond the historical figure of the oiran is an encounter between the self and the non-self, as well as a continuum of Japan’s natural beauty as witnessed by MEITEI in the present day, imbued with a vivid yet quietly blooming sense of sorrow.

The imagery in the visuals and music video, including winter seas along the Sea of Japan, hail scattering across solitary cliffs, and crashing waves, symbolizes the inner conflicts of the ten years MEITEI spent living in Hiroshima and his confrontation with solitude and the sounds he creates.

Distant voices drifting through layers of decaying textures, ancient instruments combined with a distinctive percussive rhythm unlike traditional methods, and melodies that surface and fade in succession form a sonic landscape that does not tell a clear narrative, but instead reaches the listener intuitively through sensation.

Positioned as the prologue to AGATE, “SHIN-OIRAN” is a piece completed through unwavering and deeply creative dedication. What emerges is not a reconstructed history, but an image of Japan that drifts as something self-evident yet mysteriously beautiful: “Lost Japan,” forming a new contour where Japanese sensibility and contemporary expression intertwine.

The music video for “SHIN-OIRAN,” directed by Kouichi Toya, will also be released on the same day.

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Listen & watch the video:
https://lnk.to/meitei_agate