Miharu Koshi & Harry Hosono Jr.
Swing Slow

LA RECENSIONE

It is the order of the tracks that enchants, that mesmerizes.

It is the order of the tracks that transforms an album into a soundtrack: this is something Haruomi Hosono knows well.

Pulled out from a forgotten closet, the clothes of Harry Hosono—the handsome '50s dandy who had produced several tropical-kitsch works in the years immediately preceding the release of “Magica Orchestrina Gialla” (1978)—and having returned to dreaming of a world that no longer exists, and perhaps never existed, Hosono puts this dream to music.

This is one of those soft, warm dreams, yet not devoid of shadows, that Hosono must have absorbed from the Lynchian imagination, but which he must also have experienced firsthand.

A nebulous dream, with that pleasant nebulosity so characteristic of Hosono's arcane fantasy, which Miharu Koshi's voice manages, revealing and concealing itself, to carry to the most gentle shores of clouds, to the most evanescent nightly departures.

A dream that needs to settle.

Listening to it again after some time, reshaping this mass of opaline clouds, words finally clear away.

…

The wind settles, the fallen flowers pile up

Beyond the curtains, rosy masses, heaps of snow.

The memory of the blooming apple trees lingers

Now that spring is consuming itself.

The wine running out, the songs ending, the jade cups emptied

The flame flickers now dim now bright.

The soul, even in dreams, cannot bear the anguish

While the shriek of the shrike looms.

风定落花深，

帘外拥红堆雪。

长记海棠开后，

正是伤春时节。

酒阑歌罢玉尊空，

青缸暗明灭。

魂梦不堪幽怨，

更一声鶗鴂。

(Li Qingzhao [李 清照] (1084-1155), trans. it. A. Bujatti)