Kahimi Karie
It's Here

Kahimi Karie is a stage name that means absolutely nothing: it's pure sound. Whether it's a first or last name doesn't matter, nor does it have any vague resemblance to the singer's real name that reveals a linguistic ancestry, and it shouldn't be attributed any meaning of words: it's pure suggestion. What Mari Hiki wanted to declare by choosing this name is a sense of estrangement and contemporary complicity in a series of images and phonetic memories, making it seem like the name of an expatriate with such complex ancestry that it cannot be traced: it's pure imagination. Kahimi... well, it sounds Japanese, Finnish, or even African, and Karie, depending on how it's read, can be French-like, Italian, English, or whatever one wants: it's pure abstraction. But it's certainly the result of a choice; surely she asked herself how she could evoke a priori all those sensations, for instance, you know, today you say "Picasso!" and immediately something both precise and vague comes to mind, or rather something applicable to a lot, right?, so let's look for a name that says everything and nothing: it's pure idea. And this incredibly delicate young woman, unlike any seen since the times of Chocho-san, has combined in a few letters sound, suggestion, imagination, abstraction, idea: it's pure music.

This evanescent and diaphanous presence that expresses itself through vocalizations ranging from minute to restrained, and we don't know if it's because she can't do more or doesn't want to do less, this image filtered by a glass that separates her from the rest of the useless and superfluous world, this figure made of air has created a few records of hyperuranic beauty starting from the accessible pop of her beginnings to reach the absolute white of her recent results, paralleling Malevich's career which might also have other points of contact beyond the evolutionary arc, and we'll see if Kahimi Karie continues in the same direction taken by the Russian genius. For now, the Japanese singer is in the White Square on White Background phase: the total deprivation of any embellishment to reach the purest and most sublime significance. "It's Here" is 50 minutes and 21 seconds of music in its purest state, completely lacking any structural and rhetorical logic: Kahimi Karie is accompanied only by two chordophones, piano and acoustic guitar, and a great quantity of idiophones including maracas, marimba, cabasa, wood block, rain stick, various percussions, various types of bells, and many other instruments to achieve only a minimal part of a controlled sound, seeking instead a noise as uncategorizable as possible. No verses or choruses, just a flow of... notes, yes, they are notes, but even more they are little smudges on the staff, cat footprints on the paper after getting ink on its paws, drops of dew, late spring petals carried by the wind onto the sheet music, curls of sharpened pencil, currants, gentle disorder. "It's Here" is at the extreme limit between the purest improvisation, let's grab the guitar and see what comes out, and the deepest and most refined reflection, days meditating on that passage because it doesn't express exactly what is wanted. It's entirely useless, if not even harmful, to mention specific tracks: the work’s entirety is the key that gives profound sense to this album. Because this music is... no, this music is not because it doesn't exist, it passes through the air, but you're not sure that it's there. And yet, it is here.

"It's Here" is Kahimi Karie's first work after four years of silence spent giving birth to and raising her child. Four years in which the singer has enormously deepened her emotional sphere to reach a position of such serenity that enables her to write such a placid, fluid, silent album. A silent album, in search of sound before music in a process that is both ancestral and uniquely refined.