Mashu Hayasaka - Piano Etudes I

All Night Flight's love affair with Japan continues with this vinyl edition of a set of piano recordings by Hokkaido's Mashu Hayasaka first made available via Bandcamp a few years ago. The playing is poised and subtle, never showy though highly competent, and the recordings themselves kissed with the grain of intimacy. So far so Satie so good. And it's an experience we know well, earned elsewhere via the home recordings of, say, Colette Roper or Mariam Guebru. What's perhaps most interesting about collections like this is how they challenge the notion of the finished artwork - the tracks are prosaically titled in line with what appears to be their period of recording (though I've no idea when exactly 'June 33' is) and presented together as is, seemingly because they're the player's preferred improvisations from a library of many others. As the title suggests, this isn't so much an 'album' as it is a study, a window into process, a view of the artist in situ. It lends a naturalistic air to the whole affair that feels like a privilege, something you weren't meant to hear this way and if you did, it might not have been quite the same. When the player sits in the chair, something is added to the air...and you're moved with it.