Review: untitled flora by Kikù Hibino
The latest cassette from the Japanese-born, Chicago-based sound artist Kikù Hibino untitled flora takes its inspiration from Hibino’s grandmother, a classical pianist. “I remember her playing Schumann’s Träumerei in a particularly slow tempo when I was only a little boy,” wrote Hibino in the album’s Bandcamp description. “Submerged in the faint glow of the sunset, my younger sister and I laid sprawled out on the black leather couch, probably eating some snacks, watching our grandmother strike the piano keys. The extreme slow tempo of Träumerei was an odd sound. It differed from her favorite Debussy or Ravel pieces she played often, and instead was kind and warm. This is how I’d come to love Schumann.” Hibino also credits his infant son as a major source of inspiration. Fittingly, the music on untitled flora has a youthful sense of wonder, at the same time concealed within the wistful glow of an aging memory.
The nature of memory and the passage of time are recurring themes in Hibino’s work. The masterful and somewhat-similarly titled Fell to Fern, released last year on Superpang, was also inspired by Hibino’s grandparents, and both releases invoke the melancholy of reminiscing on relatives who have come to pass.Musically, however, untitled flora is something of a departure from Hibino’s previous release. As opposed to the shimmering multichannel electronic textures of Fell to Fern, flora presents the artist utilizing simply a guitar and a couple of pedals. Relatedly, whereas Fern presented a soundscape with enough inner space for the listener to be fully submerged, there’s more of an immediacy in how flora unfolds itself. The music recalls some of the more ambient releases from Loren Connors, and Hibino’s guitar playing perfectly evokes a ray of sunlight creeping into a room in the mid-afternoon. The inspiration of familial memory has given way to some truly dynamic music from Hibino, evoking both the directness of kinship and the mystery hanging on the edges of memory.
Kikù Hibino’s untitled flora is available now on the great Reserve Matinee label