Marihiko Hara – Flora

With so much great music around it’s very easy for exquisite records to fall under the radar, even if you do have your finger on the pulse. We recently announced our favourite records of last year and already we are starting to discover albums that would have easily made the cut if we’d have known about them.

One such example is Marihiko Hara’s wonderful ‘Flora’ which was released during the spring of 2013 on Japanese label Night Cruising. The ten track album is largely made up of delicate piano-led miniatures with the exception of a couple of longer tracks. Each track is awash with a fragility that is achieved through decaying old tape style effects that subtly underpin the recordings. There is an eerie haunting feel to these pieces, not unlike on Goldmund’s Malady Of Elegance but with a voice of its own and perhaps even more minimal. We’ve long been a fan of Hara’s work but here in Flora, he serves up some of his best material yet…it only leaves us wondering just how highly we’d have ranked this record if we’d known of it this time last month.

If you know Japanese then you can visit the release page on Night Cruising by clicking HERE. Alternatively, check out a digital version available through Boomkat HERE.

Or, you can simply stream this album by hitting play above