I spent two years living in Mie Prefecture, a stretch of land nestled between Osaka and Nagoya that was part mountainous and part coastal. Caught in the middle of those topographies, sits Matsusaka. It is as suburban-rural as it gets in a place where both those terms are flexed to the maximum – it’s a big city, but so spread out it feels achingly country, anything but cosmopolitan. Field, supermarket, field, field, recycle shop, enclave of houses, field…on loop. It’s a strange place, one that always made me feel especially lonely on the rare times I’d visit.
Music-maker Nigori lives in Matsusaka, and his drone piece “There Is Always A Sad Thing….” strikes such a familiar chord to me possibly because of geographic regions. He’s released three versions of the song, but they all sound virtually the same…choose one and go for it. “Sad Thing” goes for ten minutes and over that time makes the listener feel extremely small, Nigori’s sounds subtly fluctuating . It reminds me of being in rural Mie, a place that rarely changes except for the clouds above. Lonely but gorgeous. Listen below.