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BEATS OF LOVE 

133. Gift From "La Mer" by Hajime Mizoguchi

THE ENIGMATIC Arthur Russell is the reason we all love a cellist. His recent reissues are a wow, go buy. 

Fellow cellist Hajime Mizoguchi employed everything but his cello when creating the cuts on his debut album, Halfinch Dessert, only using it to add in colour and depth. Reminiscent of Basquiat, whose found material became both an alternative canvas and an integral part of his early work.

Mizoguchi, like Russell, had non-classical alliances. Notably Seigen Ono of Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence fame, besides ad industry experience. Prompting Diego Olivas to note “Hajime loved to make music that was contemporary and accessible, but in a way his music had a lot of ruminative and big-hearted romantic melancholy that one would shake off making purely technically-proficient music.”

This move away from sheet music towards more abstracted imagery was liberating as it embraced a digital technology that still sound so now, like this understated beauty, that floats along on a soft cushion of airy percussion. Sounds he created to induce sleep following a serious road accident that left him in severe pain with whiplash. (Cheers, Diego, again.)

Sounds that decades later still soothe troubled souls like mine with its masked complexity and warm energy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.