aus
Landia
Taken from the forthcoming long player ‘Everis’, Tokyo-born composer and producer aus (AKA FLAU Records boss Yasuhiko Fukuzono), releases a brand new single ‘Landia’. As familiar and intimate as it is uncharted, aus has ultimately created a sound that would be equally at home listened to on a sun-drenched Balearic coastline as it would on a far-flung Icelandic mountain top.
Owing as much to introspection as it does to exploring organic sounds from the wider, external world, aus took inspiration from the groundbreaking Japanese radio station St Giga which he enjoyed listening to as a child. Being exposed to this continual chatless mix of high quality field recordings, jazz, new age and pop music from around the globe meant that he could draw on these internal aural memories and combine them with the gorgeously enduring melodies for which he is known.
The nucleus of ‘Landia’ was created from Japanese taiko drums heard at a shrine near Fukuzono’s house and from folk melodies collected during his travels.
Having founded the internationally renowned FLAU record label in Japan in 2006, Fukuzono has gained worldwide attention as aus, through his skillful and delicate sound production, exquisitely combining cinematic strings and electronics with sounds from everyday life. With a passion for rediscovering and reinventing the very nature of sounds around him, inspiration is acquired from all corners of his mind: captured movie images; stumbled upon words or conversations; nomadic dreams; long lost memories; and indefinable inner feelings.
Being born and bred in Tokyo, the city is an indisputable reflection of the loud-and-quiet dynamics that permeate Fukuzono’s sound. The city is noisy, carved with canyons of commerce and sonic chaos. But a step away from the main thoroughfares lies a warren of residential lanes painted in semi-silence. Fukuzono tends toward such spaces in his music, where he plays with the sweetness and pathos inherent in the sonic landscape he inhabits. It’s a quality that may have been imbibed as a child as Fukuzono’s mother is a teacher of both ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) and shodō (calligraphy); two aesthetic pursuits that require equal attention to what is there and what is not. With this sensibility and a myriad of other elements firing his musical mind, music laced with charisma and intrigue naturally follows.