Nami Sato - World Sketch Monologue (2021)

Japanese musician Nami Sato’s new album, World Sketch Monologue, is a stunning journey into the mind of one of the region's most exciting and innovative musicians.

It follows her critically acclaimed EP, Our Map Here, a groundbreaking series of tracks that were written in response to Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami. World Sketch Monologue is the next chapter in this story. An evolution and a state of coming to terms with the world around us, the essence of life itself is captured, and the textural and emotive form a symbiotic relationship. Through a musical language, Nami explores both the more fundamental dimensions of life; love, death, reincarnation, birth and the more lighthearted ones: green tea at sunrise, long plane journeys, the beauty of the sun on the sea - a juxtaposition that highlights both the grandeur and introspective style of her songwriting.

'It was an ordinary Sendai subway that I always take although it felt like it took me somewhere unknown, perhaps a future in a different timeline'
Speaking on the field recording present on 'Lily Yeats', which was taken during the earliest days of the pandemic, this quote is ever-descriptive of Nami Sato's album and the world you're transported to. The essence of the world we know is extracted and warped to push existence beyond its natural capabilities, to create something texturally familiar but seemingly imperceptible. The synthetic, at times powerful and brave, at others airy and ethereal, inter-merges with these hyper-lifelike textures, creating a new reality existing many lightyears away.

The album however is a far cry from an experiment in sound design. Within the segments taken from the world around us, the essence of life itself is captured, and the textural and emotive form a symbiotic relationship. A brand new world full of feelings, 'World Sketch Monologue’ is as rich in aesthetic and intrigue, as it is full in its heart and wonder.