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rei harakami
red curb
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by Andreas Stuhlmann
When an electronic music artist appears at a jazz festival, as
Rei Harakami did in 1999 at Weimar, Germany, that’s a sign that
we have somebody who perhaps stands out from the mass of techno
creators. After hooking up with the Sublime label (Ken Ishii,
Captain Funk, Susumu Yokota) in 1996, Rei Harakami released his
first EP in 1997, and with his just released third album, Red
Curb, he has evolved to what music critic Kenichi Imamura calls
a “voiceless singer-songwriter of electronic sounds.” Red Curb
leaves the field of techno/breakbeats far behind it, and offers
food for musical gourmets who enjoy the work of artists/composers
such as The Sea And Cake, Tortoise, Nobukazu Takemura, Keith Jarrett,
Al Di Meola, John Cage or Toru Takemitsu. The instrumentation
is simple and naïve — remember how your first Casio keyboard with
its 10 pre-programmed rhythms sounded? — and often uses acoustic
guitar or warm e-piano and organ sounds to carry the base. Employing
reverb and a few other effects in almost every track, overlaid
with brilliant production, Harakami manages to give his beautiful,
very rhythmically textured pocket symphonies incredible depth
and groove. Red Curb combines the atmospheres of a piano bar,
a chill-out club, a concert hall and a jam session, and demonstrates
that with a little creativity there’s still a lot out there in
the musical universe to explore. Don’t miss Rei Harakami’s live
performance at “Extremes” on 5/18
(see Music/Nightlife listings).
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