Miho Hatori - Ecdysis
by earthbound kid on 2005年12月11日 04:40 AM
@ Home / Reviews / Ecdysis (edit, history)
2005/10/29
Miho Hatori, formerly of Cibo Matto and the only woman I’ve ever proposed to, has released her first solo album, Ecdysis. The album title means an insect shedding its shell, which semi-explains the pencil drawing on the cover of Miho with a bug hat. The album is self-produced and, so far, only available in Japan from SpeedStar Records. The self-production shows, which is good and bad. I remember hearing an interview with Miho and Yuka Honda back in the day, and thinking, “Wait, the one that’s bad at English is the one who writes and sings all their music? Does that make sense?”
It makes sense, yeah, but there are some issues with it. I’ve come to suspect that on previous albums, Warner Brothers Records agitated on the behalf of grammar. In fact, I recall reading before that during the production of Viva! La Woman, Cibo Matto’s first album, there were various disputes in the production process and the whole thing was a bit more rushed than the band was happy with. Or maybe I made that up. In any event, Yuka Honda produced Sean Lennon’s debut album Into the Sun and then self-produced Cibo Matto’s second album, Stereo ★ Type A, which let Cibo Matto do things at their own pace for their second outing. Of course, in the end, I think Warner Brothers was worried about sales around the same time that Yuka and Sean broke up, so the whole band sort of collapsed. However, I suspect that the girls themselves are on good terms, given that Miho helped since on Yuka’s Eucademix.
Miho was talking about putting out an album when I saw her play in the summer of 2004, so I reckon there must be some problem getting a label behind her. This is a shame, because the music is really good, and it would be nice if someone could come in and add the final polish before releasing it to the US college market. One of the ways that the self-production of this album comes across is in the slightly cheap feeling of the liner notes. The content itself is fine enough, it’s just that some little details throw you off. For example, you can tell that the picture of Miho at the back of the notes was taken with a digital camera because of the shifted blues and the general inkjet feel. Also, the pencil drawings that Miho did for this album just aren’t as cool as the ones she made for Viva! La Woman. Undoubtedly, she’s fallen into the old Uncanny Valley — by trying to make the images look sort of realistic, it draws attention to small failures in proportion that would be tolerated in the less detailed drawing, like the cool squiggles of Viva! La Woman. The pictures do help add a suitably sci-fi feeling to the album though. There are grammar errors in some of the text that a big American label would have made her fix. (Of course, no one fixed Sean Lennon’s “all but a waist,” back in the day. Then again, maybe that was a subtle liner-notes-only pun… or not.) However, it’s possible that I’m more sensitive to this now than I was before because my job involves regular exposure to bad grammar.
Helpfully, there are lyrics in the liner notes for everything but the presumably Portuguese section of “Barracuda,” and the English lyrics are translated into Japanese, in case that clarifies the meaning for you. Also, there are two essays in Japanese by other artists and a letter from Miho. She talks about her ‘north star’ and thanks her mother. Fun times await you and your electronic dictionary! I like how the font for the lyrics has the lowercase o rotated 45 degrees counterclockwise.
Surprisingly, there’s an original song completely in Japanese on this album. In the past, Miho mostly stuck to English (or at least Romance languages like French and Italian). The times she did sing Japanese, it’s mostly been just a short interlude here or there. This may have been partially the influence of Warner Brothers. Or maybe Miho was just interested in trying different languages in the past. At any rate, I think she’s been more interested in singing Japanese lately, as evidenced by Smokey and Miho’s “Summer Rain.” I like her singing in Japanese a lot, but also I’m personally a big fan of people singing in the wrong language, whether it’s Americans singing French, French singing Japanese, or Japanese singing Portuguese. Everything is better in the wrong language.
A native English speak probably wouldn’t rhyme “Iliad” and “alias.” That’s why native speakers suck.
Miho’s recent tribute to singing in the wrong language was, of course, the two EPs she put out as part of Smokey and Miho (and Ganda ♥, but no one ever remembers her). The influence of all that bossa nova goodness shows up in this album. The album allows one to play an interesting What If game of “What if Sean Lennon and Timo Ellis weren’t on Stereo ★ Type A?” This album is definitely missing their love of the electric bass and power chords. There’s a fair amount of tabla-esque drum action holding things together. The music is paced like Viva! La Woman, but the instrumentation sounds more like Stereo ★ Type A. Musically the album is a logical synthesis of what came before. The culmination of Miho-ness. No rap though.
The album’s themes are very weird. The first and title (and titular) track starts out with a sort of Björk-vibe. I actually don’t like Björk very much, but I like Miho in Björk voice. After that comes the “A Song for Kids,” which is sung entirely in Japanese. The chorus contains a lovely bit about the hands of the clock not moving backwards. “In Your Arms” is a beautiful cross pollination of bossa nova, Japanese traditional music, and 8-bit video games. My personal belief is that bossa nova is the most beautiful kind of music invented, so when I hear a song this beautiful, I can only assume that the bossa nova influence has seeped deep into Miho’s marrow.
“Barracuda” takes it slightly more up tempo, and has a nice Portuguese section after the main English parts. “The Spirit of Juliet” is one of the songs that gives the album such a weird sci-fi feeling. The idea is that Miho is a sad cyborg with a piece of Juliet’s cell, longing for Juliet’s lost love. I heard “Walking City” live in New York. Apparently, Miho heard some story about an environmental post-apocalypse in which people form “walking cities,” whatever that means. The song is spoken from the point of view of a child. Grammatical errors stand out more strongly in this song because of its format. It’s easier to forgive things in song, since the rhythm carries it a long. However, given the format of the song, cool though it is, certain lines just hit your ear and drop like a brick.
“Sweet Samsara” parts I and II are suitably bittersweet. Miho mentioned samsara as her new favorite word in an interview with Tokion a while back, so it’s natural for it to turn up as a song. (I like cross-media foreshadowing.) “Today Is Like That” continues the bossa nova influence and has a short Japanese section. The keyboarding is reasonably funky, but very downbeat. “The River of 3 Crossings” is not only bossa nova, it also has that crazy “oo-oo” sound like a cuíca. I think it’s sampled on this song though, since the liner notes don’t list it here, but they do for “Barracuda.” “Amazona” contains the aforementioned rhyme of “Iliad” and “alias.” The song is a beautiful end for the album.
Taken together, the album is melancholic, beautiful, bossa nova tinged, sci-fi, weird, and slightly funky. Throw it in your CD changer (CDs? trés Cibo Matto 1999…) along with Smokey and Miho, and they’ll all grove together. Here’s a sampler from the album that I made. Hooray for fair-use. And double hooray for Miho Hatori, and her excellent, if occasionally grammatically sketchy, solo debut!
★★ out of ☆☆, the highest recommendation
2005/11/13
It’s really hard to cram the booklet back into the CD case. Even with several days of flattening under heavy books, it still tore a little as I slipped it in. —earthbound kid
2005/12/11
An interesting review/interview.