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Gllia

Browsing the music at amazon.co.jp in 2007, I happened upon a thumbnail of a CD cover depicting some brightly-coloured giraffes. Impulsively, I ordered it, despite knowing nothing about Kazumasa Hashimoto, the composer and multi-instrumentalist behind it. Happily, it's a wonderful record, though not an easy one to describe. The genre labels attached to it at Discogs are "Modern Classical, IDM, Ambient" which barely seems helpful at all. Hashimoto was linked at one point to the putative genre of "childish music", which perhaps gives a slightly better sense of its flavour. "Warmtronica" is another label that has been affixed to his work.

The instrumentation includes violin, cello, piano, clarinet & glockenspiel, but it doesn't strike me as having all that much overlap with classical. Though there are also significant servings of acoustic guitar and mellotron, and a smattering of bass & drums - it definitely isn't rock'n'roll. The vocals are fascinating: so stilted and affectless, that to begin with, I wasn't sure if their origin was natural or artificial. I'm still not certain about that now - but as the voices are credited to Uma Torrini, Ms. V and Mr. B, I'll assume that they are real people for the time being.

My favourite pieces on this disc are the title track, and 'Milmils'. On the strength of my affection for Gllia (2006), I afterwards acquired three more albums by the same artist. Yupi (2003) is almost entirely instrumental, and with slightly more of an electronic emphasis; while on Epitaph (2004) the strange, listless voices also appear. I enjoyed both of these, though neither one quite as much as Gllia. I was less fond of Euphoriam (2007) which features more conventional vocals on a number of its tracks.

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