Articles
2010 Top 10s and 20s
Will Long (Celer)

Albums
Bilxaboy
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Celer & Yui Onodera
Cepia
Dead Leaf Echo
Ferraris & Uggeri
Ernesto Ferreyra
Flying Horseman
The Foreign Exchange
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Ghost and Tape
Andrew Hargreaves
Head Of Wantastiquet
i8u
Anders Ilar
Quintana Jacobsma
Kaiserdisco
Leafcutter John
Clem Leek
The Lickets
The Machine
Magda
My Fun
Ostendorf, Zoubek, Lauzier
Part Timer
Phillips + Hara
RV Paintings
Set In Sand
Shackleton
Shigeto
Matt Shoemaker
Sun City Girls
Supersilent
Swartz
Ben Swire
Collin Thomas
Tomo
Upward Arrows

Compilations / Mixes
Exp. Dance Breaks 36
Fünf
Lee Jones
The Moon Comes Closer
Note of Seconds
Tensnake

EPs
8Bitch
Celer
Jasper TX
Jozif
Lerosa
Machinefabriek
Patscan
Pleq
Simon Scott
SHEMALE
Thorsten Soltau / Weiss
Jace Syntax & BlackJack
Weiss

Tomas Phillips + Marihiko Hara: Prosa
Tench

Prosa, a two-part electro-acoustic exploration of ambient and modern classical themes, was produced between 2008-10 as a transatlantic collaboration between US-based Tomas Phillips and Kyoto, Japan resident Marihiko Hara. Their sensibilities overlap, with Phillips's work centered on improvisation and minimalist composition, and Hara's on introspective music that emphasizes the use of silence. Phillips recently garnered acclaim for his Humming Conch outing, Quartet for Instruments, but he's been actively recording since 2003 with releases on labels such as Trente Oiseaux and Line. Hara likewise has built up a modest discography of his own, having appeared on U-Cover, Cotton Goods, and Audio Moves.

In Prosa I, piano is the central instrument but Phillips and Hara liberally augment it with electronics, pipa, and natural field recordings (running water). The template undergoes significant revision, however, for Prosa II as the piano recedes in importance and the focus shifts to an overall ambient soundscaping style where no one instrument dominates. In the first of Prosa I's two parts, the focus is on stillness and space with the spaces between the notes as important as the notes themselves; of course, in one sense there aren't spaces at all, as the reverb that bleeds off of the piano extends into the pauses and fills the space with its own presence. In the longer second, the piano delicately threads itself across a subtle yet still animating rhythm pattern, the piano playing this time treated so that the notes literally stretch into the spaces following them as the total sound mass grows in density and complexity. Prosa II features six connecting pieces, with each slightly different in style and character. In the first part, the focus moves from acoustic piano to a floating ambient setting with an electronics emphasis. Subsequent episodes feature piano figures swathed in willowy ambient atmospheres and speckled with soft starbursts and static, an electronics-heavy setting of industrial ambient-dronescaping, (what sounds like) a setting of electric guitar treatments, and a concluding section of gauze-covered piano reflections.

Throughout the thirty-seven-minute recording, there's an unsentimental reserve to the duo's electro-acoustic material that would make it sound equally at home on 12k, Raster-Noton, and Line as on Tench. An obvious analogue is the Ryuichi Sakamoto-alva noto model, the major difference being that Phillips and Hara eschew the beat dimension that often surfaces during the Sakamoto-noto tracks and concentrate on the more ambient soundsculpting side of the equation.

December 2010