After over two decades of releases on P.S.F. Records, Family Vineyard, Apollolaan and his own label Ghost Disc, WV Sorcerer is honored to present the latest physical release of Tokyo-based musician Hisato Higuchi (樋口寿人). An album of melancholy guitar melody and whispers, like a longshot of the overflowing light on the Tokyo street, a monologue from far away.
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Hisato is responsible for some of the most breathtaking, delicate, and smoke-filled guitar playing side of Loren Connors or the quieter sides of Keiji Haino. Those comparisons perhaps help to give an idea of where Hisato’s work floats, but it’s clear listening to him that his work is a very personal musical expression. His music is a Tokyo labourer’s blues. It evokes a ghost-like and ephemeral, auroral and sleep-deprived trance, his super slow and dreamlike guitar, sometimes lurking in feedback, sometimes barely touched, sketches out briefly heard whispers, exhausted emotional trembles. His vocals, when he drags himself exhausted to the mic, seem both distant and close, and just plain shattered; emotionally, spiritually, physically. In its weightlessness, it often feels as if each song has been carried to you on the slightest of breezes, and that a change in the wind would carry it elsewhere.
- arika.org.uk
Since 2003, Tokyo-based guitarist Hisato Higuchi has quietly released a series of equally-quiet albums, many on his own Ghost Disc label, which is appropriately named. Higuchi’s work on this and the previous two albums of his “Disappearing Trilogy” is a sort of shimmering, melancholy guitar-and-vocal atmosphere — downer psych-folk in a drifting haze. His lyrics are more imagery than story, touching on overflowing light, winter cities, the quiet world, and the transience of memories. As the guitar floats slowly into the distance, Higuchi’s voice, imbued with reverb, is calmly narcotic, like someone quietly sympathizing with a friend’s troubles. These songs, while melancholy, convey a peacefulness that’s a welcome counterbalance to the chaotic year in which we’ve been living. Like a cool wind on a warm summer evening, you can close your eyes and let Higuchi’s music improve your mood.
- Mason Jones
I’ve been a huge admirer of Higuchi’s work for years, but this album hit differently. There’s a fragility to these minimal guitar and vocal compositions that feels just like 2020 felt – hanging on by the thinnest threads, riding wave after endless wave until you think you will break, only to stave off the breakdown by the slimmest of margins… and then you do it all again. It’s a beautiful, impactful album.
- Brad Rose
Tokyo-based musician Hisato Higuchi (樋口寿人) assembles pedaling shapes of wraithlike guitar; blasted, genderless vocals; and thin films of digital electronics and fuzz. On guitar he plays blues as oratonical as Loren Mazzacane Connors, moving from chords that sing like guts of pianos through slouched single notes, propping up song forms as nod-out beautiful as anything conceived by Kendra Smith and David Roback.
- The Wire Magazine
Higuchi's compositions are centered around electric guitar and soft vocal flourishes that take shape with ease. (…) The guitar work is highly textural and minimal, and the tonal shifts from track to track give an indication of Haguchi's attention to detail. The playing here is some sort of washed-out, sustained blues that is always spacious and never hurried.
