Haco — frontperson of the storied, tragically underheard band After Dinner — is set to release her new solo album on Room40-subsidiary Someone Good, acting as the follow-up to 2015’s Secret Garden (on Nuovo Immigrato). Titled Qoosui, the album is described beautifully by David Toop as “weightless, blissful, but also flightless — always connected to the body whose aurality must be blocked to survive its seduction. This tender voice calls from far away yet from a place we all know, stretched on filaments strung through clouds of condensation, the clinking jigsaw of melting ice, soft flows of breath and dawn mists that speak through water insects and dreaming.”
The fact that the Japanese singer/sound artist/pop visionary is releasing a new album is already something to celebrate, but Haco has done us one better by sharing a video for album track “Tidal,” which we are excited to premiere for you down below. Made in collaboration with artist Masakazu Fukuta, the video is, like the music itself, a slow burn of long fades shape-shifting imperceptibly along a row of transportive moments.
Haco sent us a few thoughts on how the video came together:
When my recording of the Qoosui has been done 80%, I was looking for a completely suitable image for the cover art of this album, it should be something ambient, layered, feminine, and airily. At the same time, I was sent the information about the Masakazu Fukuta’s exhibit by the mail magazine from the Third Gallery Aya in Osaka, where I use to know. For the first time I saw the picture of the piece, ‘Jewel’, I immediately thought that I have to meet this gifted young artist, and actually went to the gallery and started to talk with him about my album, has been working on.
His video installation was based a ton of layered photos and a kind of 15 - 20 min slide show. And I really like his concept and keen sense, “The work captures a stunning beauty like an aura emitted by natural things and other life-forms.”
I was thinking the song, Tidal, would be a good matching with the Jewel intuitively, and when I asked him to make a music video for the Qoosui, he actually picked up the song, Tidal, and edited the Jewel piece for it. It worked phenomenal naturally.
Masakazu Fukuta learned the sculpture, and had been not a specialist about the photography and video art, and that’s very unique for me. He has been working on the new exhibition, and almost finished the Jewel series, and our collaboration is a miracle to me.
Qoosui will be available September 1 from Someone Good. Order it here.
Qoosui tracklist:
01. Kusui
02. Tidal
03. White Letter from Heaven
04. Circle
05. Seiren
06. Anesthesia Love
07. Shooting Stars in Your Eyes
More about: After Dinner, Haco
