Tomoyoshi Date is a musician who knows how to make warm music from a cold laptop. To that end, he uses recordings from a Diapason upright piano in the house of his maternal grandmother’s sister.
Quiet ambient piano sounds, mingling with the gentlest of treatments
I think new year’s day is one of those strange days of the year. You go to bed later than usual (well, most of us, anyway), you get up and do what, exactly? Texting “happy new year” to everybody who sends this, and that’s it. I like the fact that this year it is on a Sunday. Not a day lost, which is great. For me, Sunday is another day of work, so I am looking at a few releases to write about. I won’t say which they are, but one is the Tomoyoshi Date release. I looked up what 438Hz is about and read some interesting stuff about tuning, and that it was once 432 as the standard pitch and since 1939, it has been 440Hz; stuff that somewhere in the back of my mind, I already knew.
438Hz is also mentioned as “more “natural” frequency for middle “A,” and mentioned as healing. Tuning and pitches are not my field of expertise at all; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn I’m tone-deaf. Apart from something I played earlier today, this new Date release is the first serious music I have heard in the new year. I picked this for a particular reason: I know Date’s music to be quiet and relaxing. Healing, perhaps too, but there is nothing to heal here, not even a champagne-induced headache.
Tomoyoshi Date is a musician who knows how to make warm music from a cold laptop. To that end, he uses recordings from a Diapason upright piano in the house of his maternal grandmother’s sister. We hear the instrument, picked up by some great microphones and the environment, but Date adds mild, computerized processes to the sound. Sustaining and stretching it a bit, I think, and the result is great. What I especially like about it is that the LP version can be played at 45 and 33 rpm (you can do that with any record, of course) but on the CD, we have both the 45 rpm and the 33 rpm versions. First four ‘quick’ (everything is relative here) ones, and then the same places slower. I must admit, but I blame the new year’s day haze, that I didn’t hear that when I first heard the release, but it makes sense after a few repeated listening’s on this other slow and quiet day.
As I sometimes say, listening to music can have various circumstances, reasons, moods and results. The quiet ambient piano sounds, mingling with the gentlest of treatments, provide that very relaxing soundtrack that fits this strange day very well.
Review by: Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly #1368. Reprinted with permission.
438Hz As It Is, As You Are is available on laaps. [Bandcamp]
