Haco - Nova Naturo (2021)

On Nova Naturo, Japan’s Haco expands her already divergent song craft into a zone that meshes field recording, electronics and layers of floating voice into an imagined sound environment that encourages a sense of a deepened interior terrain. Haco’s work in groups including the now legendary After Dinner and Hoahio have earned her a unique and respected position in the Japanese music communities, but it is with her solo work that she has unlocked an utterly unique and deeply personal approach to sound.

Drawing inspiration from mythologies surrounding ideas of rebirth, Nova Naturo propagates a sense of ambience, but arrives at this sensation without dwelling in the aesthetics of ambient music. Rather, Haco combines unexpected elements, and uses these combinations to refocus our ears and invites us to listen closely, but with a sense of relaxation. This record is not a labour and instead suggests a kind of release from labour, an opening out into place, into the human experience of exploration and the rewards that come to those present in the moment.

Haco works alongside the French improvised guitarist Manuel Adnot, the drummer & pianist Tetsuji Matsuo, and the double bassist Makoto Inada, who are based in Kobe. Also on this record is Stabilo (Speaker Gain Teardrop) from the Hiroshima ambient scene, and Tarnovski (Gurun Gurun), a key figure in Czech experimental-electro music, who were previously involved in her album, ‘Qoosui’. There is also a collaborative track with the electronic music maestro Keiichi Sugimoto (Vegpher).

These partnerships resolve wholly into this recording, bringing new timbres and threads to an edition that is entirely of Haco’s making. This is a music of immense beauty, but it is a beauty that is complex and at times unfamiliar. It’s in these uncertain moments that Nova Naturo finds its most compelling and fulfilling resolutions.