- LP
- Recommended
- New Release
Eiko Ishibashi + Hiroshi Minami
Gasping_Sighing_Sobbing
Some Fine Legacy - Cat No: SFR011
- updated:2026-10-23
Eiko Ishibashi has collaborated with Hiroshi Minami—a pianist active in Tokyo’s jazz scene since the 1980s who also experiments with ambient and electronic sounds—on a project that was quietly self-released exclusively as a digital download in 2021. Now, the long-established German label *Some Fine Legacy* is releasing it on vinyl! This dreamlike avant-garde jazz album features delicate piano ballads reminiscent of Bill Evans, layered and edited with synthesizers, vocals, and fragments reminiscent of shortwave radio, with Jim O’Rourke contributing to the mix. With the addition of Daisuke Ijichi’s double bass, this approximately 40-minute “sound film” feels like a multiple exposure of scenes from a smoky jazz bar and someone’s memories or dreams. It’s like watching one of the finest films by Murnau, Marker, or Naruse. (Adachi)
Track List
On the banks of a stream on another planet, a girl made of porcelain is looking up at the sky.
She sighs.
For some reason she can’t explain, even though she’s in the midst of nature, extremely advanced radio waves are flying all around her, picking up the various thoughts she’s imagining.
“This melody I’m singing right now makes me feel as if I’m wearing a dress made of soft, new fabric. It’s like a grassland stretching endlessly. It feels as if I’m looking up at a sky so blue it takes my breath away.”
The moment the electromagnetic waves emitted from that planet were suddenly received in the New York of the future, the constellations vanished from my glove.
And for some reason, the coming of night gave way to the hours before dawn, and the color of the sky shifted to the sobbing mystery of nature—a mystery that humans have forgotten.
My beloved Lili Boulanger is gazing at Tokyo Tower.
Amidst all of this, memories of the Apollo moon landings of the 1960s, the futurism that the universe endlessly paints, and the European atmosphere that lives within me all melted together, giving birth to music through Mr. Ishibashi’s serene dreams.
(Translation)
HIROSHI MINAMI