Akira Kosemura

Prior to our digital age, the "instant" of instant gratification took a bit longer. Minute Rice took five minutes and Instamatic camera photography required waiting and waving a drying square in front of you. Akira Kosemura's tribute to this space age nostalgia evokes the cloudy magic of an image un-swirling into not-quite-sharp focus. His gently prepared piano pieces contain both simple, unrushed melodies and the unmasked machinery of the piano in all its clunks and scrapes. With occasional assists from Muneki Takasaka's equally pliable guitar, overheard birdsongs and children playing, the pastoral quality nears pastiche levels, but the brevity of the tracks saves this from grating. Comparisons to Broderick and Richter are legitimate, but there are also echoes of Ross Bolleter's ruined piano studies and their loosening of musical memories. The Polaroid qualities of memory, almost painterly in their abstraction and expressions, are equalled by Kosemura's extra-musical touches. The metronomic limp inside the clockwork of "Tyme" and the aquatic slur of "Benice" are little imperfections that communicate volumes within the solid white frame of melody.