Meitei - Shitsurai

Release date: March 7, 2025

Format: White vinyl 45 RPM 12" EP

Shitsurai unfolds like ambient origami, embodying the essence of Japan’s age-old traditions and the ephemeral beauty of its changing seasons. Conceived as a commissioned work for Japanese integrated art brand WARA, Hiroshima-based composer Meitei (Daisuke Fujita) sculpts a soundwoven narrative inspired by the 24 sekki — nature’s poetic calendar of perpetual renewal. Through minimal piano, environmental whispers, and delicate electronic textures, Meitei creates an entrancing ode to Japanese aesthetics, folding moments of silence, sound, and sentiment.

In Japan, each of the four seasons of the year is experienced in six phases and all have their own distinct characters. Unveiling a reverence for the Japanese passage of time, the 4-track EP explores the ebb and flow through the twenty-four seasons of Japan as nature awakens, blossoms, matures and settles into a slum from the beginning of spring (Risshun), the first day of summer (Rikka), the first day of autumn (Risshū) to the beginning of winter (Rittō).

Symbolizing the Japanese concept of shitsurai (to arrange) with an emphasis on ma (the sound of silence), the compositions were designed as a collage of delicate piano sounds that the composer played, recorded and subsequently meticulously cut and rearranged. The piano serves as a metaphor for the artist’s individual existence in the shifting landscape of time throughout the record. With each passing season, surrounded by new environments and colors, various textures were drawn with subtle glitchy electronics embedded within natural sounds, gradually unfolding as the album unravels. Transient, sparse and boundless at once, for fifteen minutes, the four tracks cycle through small variations, the album paradoxically, expands with each listening loop: it’s one that can be listened to endlessly.

With this album, Meitei’s unique sound universe is observed from yet another new perspective, as the artist has demonstrated in prior albums. SHITSURAI exemplifies Meitei’s brilliance with motifs, minimalism and movement as he seeks to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism in his never-ending quest to reinterpret and recapture lost Japanese moods.

Tracklist: 

立春・Risshun  
立夏・Rikka 
立秋・Risshū 
立冬・Rittō