Midori Hirano’s musical path is most definitely her own. As she walks alongside her piano, the paper-thin, intertwining leaves of modern classical and ambient music slowly twirl and then fall at her feet. Entangled in October, her misty, heavily coated piano covers everything, like a Virginia creeper obscuring half of an old, desolate house. Soft, trailing electronics fly underneath a permanently grey sky like migrating birds. Everything else is preparing for a long winter ahead.
Hirano’s music is constantly travelling too, looking at things through a dark pane of smudged glass. Outside shapes are smeared beyond recognition, and these vague musical shapes open the door for a genre-blur; different shades gather in her music, with fading colours mingling like a day-old collection of red, orange and yellow leaves.
Minor Planet is Midori Hirano’s first release on Sonic Pieces. Her music bravely steps out – walking its own path – defying categorization and avoiding genre-constrictions. A vague kind of impermanence roots itself in her music; it’s there one minute and gone the next, like a disappearing fingerprint, or like ‘Rabbits In The Path’, which gently echoes with the music of a lost highway. Her keys are enveloped in a damp reverb which steals a sharper attack away from the notes until they’re just vague and bleary clouds of condensation. Her electronic sequences are always there, but they decorate rather than propagate.
The sound muffles its face under an unobtrusive shroud composed of shadows. Smoky electronics burn on a bonfire, and other sounds slowly fizzle, like the glowing fuse of a sparkler as it’s waved around in the air. Thunder threatens to disrupt the opening of ‘Haiyuki’, and then later on a series of playful pops and some fragile crackles rise up, slowly lifting the lid on the music, peeling open the sound and unearthing the delicate strands that live beneath the surface.
Midori Hirano’s music flits between soupy, swampy textures and glass-like electronics, creating a murky and exotic soundscape. This is her Minor Planet, a cuddled sound that’s not necessarily warm or overly comforting. Our individual worlds are little planets full of encounters, shaping our perceptions and our moods in a number of ways. The Earth is but a hub for a trillion microscopic worlds. The closing electronics of ‘Rolling Moon’ drip onto the ground of our minor planet, their patterns forming puddles on a damp and endless night.