Nº 17 niji – ironomi

“Upflight of butterflies following a light that wants to conquer, to swallow, to distant, to echo.”

Following 2010’s release of the KITCHEN. LABEL classic “sketch”, ironomi returns with their long-awaited 7th album, a 3-CD collection entitled ‘niji’ (rainbow) spanning 164 minutes. Joining pianist Junya Yanagidaira and programmer Yu Isobe are a stellar line-up of their most loved collaborators and contemporaries. In ‘niji’, the record is marked by the same tranquility and fleetingness of ironomi’s well-recognised sound, but also offers a slight departure from the traditions of their previous recordings with the addition of other instruments (saxophone, contrabass, koto, violins etc) contributed by the guest musicians on each of the 12 tracks – Nobuyuki Nakajima, Jyoji Sawada (Choro Club) as well as members of the KITCHEN. LABEL family ASPIDISTRAFLY, haruka nakamura, ARAKI Shin, Akira Uchida, Rie Nemoto among others.

ironomi’s enigmatic sound has always been difficult to describe with plain words. One could listen to their music on an ambient level and just let the music flow, or listen even more closely to discover a intricately-woven mesh of palatable details. ironomi’s impressionistic ripples of piano fragments generate the cumulative feel of a gently flowing river or the shifting play of light through the leaves of trees. Their music is a metaphor for the sound of nature – one that has existed from the beginning, free and untainted.

The duo’s sound is distinctively less about conventional compositional structure than it is about creating and sustaining a mood. For each of the recordings in ‘niji’, improvised sessions were recorded with best takes kept intact with very minimal post-production. This work showcases ironomi’s capacity to construct compelling music in real-time. Their melodic-harmonic imagination acts as an improviser to consistently discover and shape new forms together with their collaborators who also share the same strong sense for the dialectics of sound and silence. This collection of pieces, though not written together, seem to have been predestined for each other in this album.

A highlight of this album – almost 40 minutes worth of music recorded together with long-time collaborator haruka nakamura on classical guitar, whom had spent his early formative years touring with ironomi. April Lee and Ricks Ang of ASPIDISTRAFLY are featured on “Aijisai”, a semi-improvisational session. The result is perhaps the most strongly lyrical piece of ironomi’s releases to date.

“niji” is available on 3 CD and digital formats on 24th December 2015, with artwork created by KITCHEN. LABEL founder Ricks Ang. The physical CD copy comes in a customised letter-pressed folio. The cover is designed with a unique holographic foil which causes a refraction that creates constantly changing light reflections and prismatic colors. This links back to the symbolic representation of the miraclous hues of ironomi’s sound world, trapping listeners in a peaceful space of pure sound and sonic allusions.