This Side to that Side [2024, Leo Okagawa, 0:56]

1.Overture 01:48

2.City (Morning)

3.At the Park

4.Intermission

5.This Side to that Side 00:56

6.City (rain)

7.At the Temple 06:06

8.City (kids)

9.Ending 03:39

10.After the End

about

Lower the Tonearm centres on understated characters and unremarkable places in Tokyo.

Drawing on field recordings of every day locations ranging from shopping centres, office blocks, parks and temples Leo Okagawa cultivates a gauzy, lower-case aesthetic across the 10 pieces which comprise this album in his bid to explore the familiar yet profound components of the ordinary.

His compositions unfold as a series of undramatic, yet strangely affecting episodes. When we lower the tonearm on these pieces we might not even notice they have begun, such is their prosaic gentleness. These are works which celebrate hazy memories, not vividly etched events. They arrive slowly, and leave without you noticing. In their blurry edges, set amid static and fuzz, Okagawa explores how the ebb and flow of these unremarkable places, and our memories of them, form the fabric of who we are.

In this lower-fi approach Lower the Tonearm generates a version of home and inhabitation out of Okagawa’s gentle curiosity about the background, the undramatic, and the everyday.

credits

releases November 8, 2024