Text by Sleepland

The winters of Berlin are particularly bizarre to me. There are very short hours of daylight, with clouds covering the sky even at noon. Most days have barely any sunshine at all, and it gives the feeling of living inside a world without any colors. People seem cheerful in summer, but in winter, they seem nervous as if the emotions are being absorbed into this world without colors.

"Out of Hue" was composed during my stay in Berlin from autumn 2017 to the beginning of 2018. Living there for a year, what impressed me was the most was the transition of the seasons compared to the spring, summer, autumn, and winter in Japan.

Winter forced to think about life and death, and I thought of some of the musicians I respect who had passed away. For days, I listened to the music they left behind, and asked myself, why did they pass away? What scenery did they see at the end?

I had a chance to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp. I thought I had some knowledge about the persecution of the Jewish people and others by the Nazis, but when I saw the buildings, the documents, and the atmosphere with my own eyes, I was completely stunned. Crossing the gate of the second part of the concentration camp - Birkenau, a devastated vast land came into my eyes, and I was unable to comprehend the truth that this was the place where tens of thousands faced the unimaginable.

Here, in the midst of a snowy wind blowing, I couldn't imagine it was real. It left a hole in my heart, and through that sense of being left behind, music arose.

While in Berlin, as a document of my stay, I published music almost every month on Bandcamp simply titled "Plain works". Before, I was mainly using guitars to make music, but as this project went on, I started to use the modular synth which became a part of my new expression method. Half of the songs in this album is made using the modular synth. The modular synth I used had an inorganic texture, and somehow, this matched my feelings.