Chihei Hatakeyama
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Chihei Hatakeyama is an electronic music artist from Tokyo, Japan. He was born in 1978, and released his first full-length album, Minima Moralia on Kranky Records in 2006. Hatakeyama's music is characteristically very slow, composed by repeatedly processing guitars, pianos, and vibraphones on a laptop. The result is a mix of droning chords and sparse single instruments rising above the mix. His music may be classified as either post-ambient experimental music or New Age music.
[edit] Minima Moralia
Hatakeyama's debut US album is a meditation on silence. The albums works as a series of vignettes or meditation exercises. Each track title is a specific image (Bonfire in the Field, Beside a Well, etc.), which the music apparently then seeks to replicate. Because each track has a slow tempo, little identifiably possessing a time signature, and very gradual changes to the droning chords which begin the songs, these titles can be seen as something worth contemplating while listening to the sound.
The title of the album refers to German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno's book Minima Moralia
