Japanese sound artist Shuta Hasunuma hasn’t been heard of for a bit (seven years to be exact) but has remained in the minds of the listeners who like their sounds (electronic and otherwise) on the more restless side, where concepts from different genres are stripped to the core, and then those strips are combined in an almost random fashion to create something new.
That compositional tactic seems to be quite present on unpeople, Hasunuma’s latest effort, his first in seven years.
Hasunuma takes on his knowledge (and love of) techno, ambient, jazz, post-classical, and even contemporary music (among others) and does exactly as described above – strips them into basics and then reconstructs them into a new and very personal creation.
This time around he had the help and input of other artists like Jeff Parker, Cornelius, Greg Fox, and Keiji Haino, to name just a few. Yet with all the collaborative elements, throughout the album Hasunuma has full control, using his collage composing technique to present his music as a series of bits and pieces of memories and ideas that still form quite a cohesive whole.
That ‘bits and pieces’ concept to create a whole is very often a hard thing to achieve successfully, but on unpeople Hasunuma is able to give it a very human touch.
