Back catalogue: Classical

Review: Japanese vibraphonist and marimba player Masayoshi Fujita returns with Migratory, his masterful new solo album, on which his sonic explorations into the unknown continue. Forming part of a nascent uptick of albums exploring ideas of freedom in movement and displacement, Fujita's record sonically documents and expresses a return to his native Japan with his wife and three children, fulfilling his lifelong dream of living and composing music in the midst of nature after remaining resident in Berlin for 13 years. After this move, Fujita set about converting an old kindergarten into a music studio, and, perhaps adjoining his own experience of raising children, found himself composing Migratory in part through the dialogue formed of the ideaistic relationship of early childhood, movement and settling. Selectively mixing bird ambience, electronics and, of course, his patented vibraphone, Fujita's record is a melancholic but no less arresting one.