It’s time to fall back. Rather than entreat you with another long-winded overview of another artist’s work, how about we revisit just one more time this other work by Shinsuke Honda: Silence. Whereas Banka (Late Summer) played to the varied moods of late summer, of course, Silence from its album cover to its ruminative, meditative, forlorn music, just wraps itself in the soft brisk breeze of autumn.
Not to rehash too much of his story but this was the point when one time guitarist for influential, pioneering Japanese rock band Hachimatsu Pai, Shinsuke expanded on his background work for film, advertising and theater, taking inspiration from grown-up loves (electric blues, jazz, and minimalism) and fusing them with golden era rock instrumentals of his childhood. Finding the point where the surf of his native Hiroshima met the increasingly fading rural farmlands of Tokyo’s exurbs — that was Shinsuke’s great visionary turn.
One does wonder what ALTY, a sub label of the larger Apollon Japanese record company, expected from Shinsuke. Early on they appeared to function as a library music division. So, reading on the record jacket a callout to this idea of “Resort Mind Music” pointed to a direction they might have asked Shinsuke to go. Shinsuke went there. However, I think he pointed in a more personal direction.
Drenched in a golden guitar tone full of reverb, tremolo, and played with very little accompaniment (if any) songs like “For the Golden Star” gracefully build through laconic electric blue vibrations. Others like “たそがれ” play like the soft, hazy last song your parents and grandparents probably remembered when they were sorting through their first pining memories. Silence and nostalgia seem to be full-time dance partners. Then, as soon as you think Silence is something, it explores the DNA of this kind of music.
What can you say about songs like “ブエノスホノオ”, “Winter Space 1226”, and “夕映え”? Each has its own mystery. Some are indebted to early instrumental experimental prog of groups like Ummagumma or Obscured by Clouds-era Pink Floyd or Curved Air, albeit in the newer ‘80s mindset of “ambient” rock. Aided by Hiroki Komazawa’s wonderful pedal steel accompaniment, part of them take from the school of Latin and modal jazz, rethinking it through a fuzzier lens.
Then you have the final two songs, perhaps the highlights of Silence, that tap into the universal hypnagogic feelings induced by some of the least understood rungs of instrumental music: country and blues. On the former, you get the “heartland” making its enlightening transformation far from its locale through the feet of Hiroki Komazawa and through the hands of Shinsuke.
The album ends on that dodo of our generation, the “electric blues”, pointing to an unending evolution of that search for the golden tone in “朝”, letting Shinsuke join the pantheon of steel-string masters like Peter Green, Conny Veit, Andy Powell, Steve Hiett, and others (much like Santo & Johnny) who looked towards the sea to find their own bit of scenery setting.
Perhaps, this is our cue to take in a change in the air?