Mix: 12. Toshifumi Hinata – 日向敏文

Toshifumi Hinata, what can one say about Toshifumi? By far one of my favorite artists and composers, it’s not hard for me to talk about his career and music without ruminating over his work with some wild wanderlust affectation. I’ll spare you that, though, because you don’t need me fawning over one of my personal, musical inspirations. What you do need is some context for this hour-long mix I created for NTS Radio covering Toshifumi Hinata’s pioneering, early career.

Somehow, I’ve managed through hook and crook, to acquire and live in, all of Toshifumi Hinata’s sublime work from the ‘80s. From his beginnings debuting as a neoclassical composer — fresh from a stint living his life in Japan after graduating from high school — choosing to follow the work available in England (right before Japan’s ‘80s bubble), only then to come to America, pour over the indescribable mood of midwestern living, and go back to his Tokyo home to try to put so many ideas gleaned, into something special, we’ll try to follow that. And then, his elsewhere — his influences from Jazz, Brazilian, Italian, and French music — that get turned into a fascinating update on the music of Satie and New Europe.

Far from taking inspiration from the influential ideas “furniture music” or “ambient” toyed by others who expanded on Satie’s ideas, Toshifumi — something more obvious, the more you listen to him — always seemed to keep his feet firmly planted in melodic music, expanding the other side of impressionism maybe others tended to neglect. As things manage to get downright abstract and minimal, as he was wont to do (on albums like Chat D’Ete and Reality In Love, especially so), even then, I wager, you’ll never lose sight of that troubadour moving at the heart of the music created for Sarah’s Crime, Story, and Rhapsody In Twilight. Whether experimental or immediate, Toshifumi profoundly always tapped into something special. Toshifumi Hinata’s ever more rare production/compositional work with Jun Togawa and Yukako Hayase, proves it so.

My hope, is that you’ll hear this set (a collection of choice bits from all his oeuvre), one that ends with a breathtaking composition from Tokyo Love Story bereft of sonic ornamentation, and hear a thoroughly impressive sound that Toshifumi created for his, in his, own unique nook of the world. Few artists have a “sound”, and even fewer have one quite like this…

Toshifumi Hinata – 日向敏文

1. Toshifumi Hinata – サラズ・クライム (SARAH’S CRIME)
2. Toshifumi Hinata – シャコンヌ (CHACONNE)
3. Jun Togawa – 詩人の家
4. Toshifumi Hinata – 蜃気楼
5. Toshifumi Hinata – Sの肖像
6. Jun Togawa – 黒い王様
7. Toshifumi Hinata – COLORED AIR
8. Toshifumi Hinata – IN THE LIGHT
9. Yukako Hayase – 2/3 AMINO CO DE JI
10. Toshifumi Hinata – FIRE AND FOREVER
11. Toshifumi Hinata – 異国の女たち−リミックス・ヴァージョン
12. Toshifumi Hinata – マラケッシュ・サンダウン
13. Toshifumi Hinata – カフェ1384
14. Toshifumi Hinata – いたずら天使

/1985-1989 DISCOGRAPHY/DOWNLOAD/