PHILLIPS, TOMAS + MARIHIKO HARA - PROSA (CD)

"Prosa marks the first collaboration between Marihiko Hara and Tomas Phillips. Utilizing a diverse range of instrumentation, both electronic and acoustic, Prosa is as still as it is dynamic. Its formation (a transcontinental process, through the post) was an exercise of patience and concerted application alike. Thematically (but indirectly), Prosa shares a space with writers whose palette wavers between existential crisis, awkward distance, and snapshots of emotional expenditure (e.g. Jean-Philippe Toussaint) and with certain "quiet" descriptions found in classical Japanese literature. Phillips and Hara's mutual effort to treat sounds as words, and otherwise abstract music as narrative yields a composition that can be viewed as a whole or digested in chapters. The duo's confident choice to display sentimentality alongside a detached abstraction (thus referencing the sensibilities of such labels as 12k, Raster-Noton, and 4AD) makes for a captivating listen that will appeal to fans of modern classical, electronic and acoustic experimentation, and contemporary ambient." (label info)