• About
  • Concerts
  • Discography
  • Video
  • Migratory
  • Contact

Masayoshi Fujita

Migratory

Migratory

2024-06-25

Masayoshi Fujita’s masterful new solo album, where his sonic explorations into the unknown continue.

In 2020, after 13 years of living in Berlin, Fujita returned to his native Japan with his wife and their three children, fulfilling his life-long dream of living and composing music in the midst of nature. The family found their new home in the mountain hills along the coast of Kami-cho, Hyōgo, three hours west of Kyoto. Once settled in, Fujita spent his time turning an old kindergarten into his own music studio, Kebi Bird Studio, which became the birthplace of Migratory.

On his new album, the composer and producer masterfully reimagines and mesmerises with his trademark sounds of vibraphone, and resumes his experimentation with the marimba and synthesisers that he first incorporated on his 2021 album, Bird Ambience, which followed the release of his acclaimed vibraphone triptych: Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018).

Nature has always been a source of inspiration for Fujita, and on Migratory it takes centre stage. You can hear it on the album’s peaceful and considered field recordings, but most importantly, Masayoshi highlights – “nature is there as the image to be evoked by the listener from the music.”

“I love the creative work of Masayoshi. To collaborate on such a beautiful composition is really exciting and I’m honoured for the world to hear it. – Moor Mother”

 

Listen the single Tower of Cloud and Our Mother’s Lights

Buy Migratory on LP · CD · DL

– Sleeve Notes by Pico Iyer –

AWAKENING TO RAIN

Here in Japan we live closer to the elements than anywhere else I know. It’s not just that, following the Chinese model, there are 72 micro-seasons in every year, speaking for the time of distant thunder or the days when frogs begin to croak. It’s not even the Shinto spirit that finds a god in every drop of rain or mountain shadow. It’s that our lives here are given shape and depth by the fire and earthquake and tsunami and typhoon that have defined the land for fifteen centuries and more. In Kyoto 234 trees are officially recognised as guardians of the ancient capital, as indispensable to its welfare as the wooden temples all around.

 

Think of a classic woodcut by Hiroshige: the human figures are almost faceless—anonymous shapes in a landscape whose real subject is the turning of the leaves, sudden snowfall, a mountain in the distance. Turn to a haiku and the writer disappears inside some much larger canvas of summer heat or birds returning to their nests at dusk. We’re part of an order that keeps cycling even as you or I come and go.

 

I think of all this as I listen to Masayoshi Fujita’s latest vibraphone and marimba recordings. One moment I’m underwater, immersed in a river that—as the classic 13th century Kyoto poet has it—is always moving even though the water remains the same. The next I’m up on a fog-encircled mountain, waiting for whatever treasures the parting clouds disclose. There’s no clutter of personality or agenda here; rather, a sense of deep responsiveness to the sounds all around, which come through as immediately as hard rain upon some pebbles, or a time-suspended day of snow.

 

Fujita has been crafting such aural landscapes through many seasons. But now that he has returned from a 13-year sojourn in Berlin to a mountain village in his native Japan—not far from where I have lived for 36 years—his closeness to the natural world is more absolute than ever. Space as much as time is dissolved as a sudden vocal from Hatis Noit on “Higurashi” gives us the clear beauty of the north, while the rippling intensity of “Our Mother’s Lights” with Moor Mother evokes a feeling available to anyone on any continent.

 

Pay close attention—the kind of attention Fujita’s work demands—and you can register all the tiny, almost indiscernible inflections that mark the movement of one season to the next, the passage of birds over water. Now, as I listen, I can see the sun rising over faraway peaks, now I’m somewhere between waking and sleeping as an early summer rainstorm blurs the sky. “Migratory” gives me the Japan where I sit (this week is the season called shoman, the time when silkworms feast on mulberry leaves), yet it belongs to anyone who has seen pine trees, mountain streams, the calm of starlit nights. This is a traveller’s work about the wonder of being home.

 

— Pico Iyer, May 2024

    Nara, Japan

Bird Ambience

Bird Ambience

2021-03-03

Masayoshi Fujita marks a new sonic direction

Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Masa would separate his acoustic solo recordings, the electronic dub made under his El Fog alias, and his experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek. The new album sees him unite all these different facets for the first time into one singular vision.

He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone — on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018) — to the marimba, which takes centre stage on the new record alongside drums, percussion, synths, effects and tape recorder.

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different. The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.” — Masayoshi Fujita

Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambienceallows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms.

The lead single Thunder, which blends mildly abrasive effects on the marimba with a warm feeling of benevolence, was inspired by the poem You Will Hear Thunder by Anna Akhmatova. It comes with an equally breathtaking video directed and shot by Ryo Noda in the mountainscapes that surround Fujita’s new life in Hyogo, rural Japan.

Watch the video for “Thunder”
Buy Bird Ambience on 2LP · CD · DL

 

 

Bird Ambience Mock Up

Book of Life

2018-05-12

The third instalment in a trilogy of solo vibraphone recordings

 

“Berlin-based composer and vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita released his new album Book of Life, the third installment in a trilogy of solo vibraphone recordings.

Masayoshi continues his mission in bringing the vibraphone — a relatively new invention in the history of instruments often kept in the background in orchestras and jazz outfits — into the spotlight with his new album, Book of Life. Having trained as a drummer, Masayoshi began experimenting with the vibraphone, preparing its bars with kitchen foil or beads, playing it with the cello bow, or using the other end of the mallets to create a more ambient texture of sound. Focusing on the vibraphone in this way sets Masayoshi apart, dedicating his artistic life to celebrating this fascinating and often under appreciated instrument and making his take on ambient and modern compositional styles a unique one.


“I think the vibraphone is capable of more interesting and beautiful sounds that haven’t been heard before. It’s quite a new instrument but it’s often played in a similar way. I feel that there is a lot more to explore with this exciting instrument.” — Masayoshi Fujita

Masayoshi previously released two albums under his alias El Fog. He often collaborates with other artists, most frequently with the adventurous German producer Jan Jelinek whose revered album Schaum was released in 2015. The following year, Masayoshi released his experimental Needle Six piece, a BBC Radio 3 recording of an improvised session with UK electronic artist Guy Andrews for Late Junction. In addition, his label peer and fellow Berlin resident Nils Frahm mastered Stories, providing a fitting symmetry to its re-issue on Erased Tapes now.”

· Order Stories

 

1. Snowy Night Tale

2. Fog

3. It’s Magical

4. Old Automaton

5. Book of Life

6. Harp

7. Mountain Deer

8. Sadness

9. Misty Avalanche

10. Cloud of Light

 

ERATP111, CD/LP/Download

Stories (2018 reissue)

2018-05-11

Re-issue of ‘Stories’ on Erased Tapes

 

1. Deers

2. Snow Storm

3. Cloud

4. Story of Forest

5. Story of Waterfall I. & II.

6. Swan and Morning Dews

7. River

8. Memories of the Wind

This album was originally released on Flau in 2013

 

ERATP110 (LP/CD/Download)

Apologues

2018-05-10

2nd acoustic vibraphone album

1. Tears of Unicorn

2. Moonlight

3. Swallow Flies High in the May Sky

4. Beautiful Shimmer

5. Flag

6. Knight and Spirit of Lake

7. Puppet’s Strange Dream Circus Band

8. Requiem

 

2015 Erased Tapes

ERATP075 (LP/CD/Download)

https://www.erasedtapes.com/release/eratp075-masayoshi-fujita-apologues

Stories

2018-05-09

FLAU31

Original release of ‘Stories’ from Flau in 2012

Flau Website

Sheet Music

2018-05-01

Sheet music of ‘Tears of Unicorn’ (Vibraphone solo ver.) and ‘Swan and Morning Dews’ are now available through Sheet Music Direct.

Tears of Unicorn

Swan and Morning Dews

© 2025 Masayoshi Fujita - All rights reserved