KONATA KANATA

"Konata Kanata" is the Tokyo-based trio Hontatedori's second release, following their
self-titled debut LP from 2013 on the Japanese Compare Notes label. Taku Unami, Mo
Kamura, and Tetuzi Akiyama are better known as solo performers and in their numerous
collaborations than they are in this unique, lovely trio-at least until now.
Hontatedori places Kamura's wonderfully delicate voice amidst the mercurial two-guitar
landscape of Unami and Akiyama in crystalline settings of aphoristic song. The group
describes their pieces as originating in monophonic compositions by Unami that gesture
eccentrically toward medieval plainchant: "Originally their music sounded like covert and
whispering folk music, however, they've come to the sound of quiet funkiness and cold
psychedelia." Some listeners might liken them to a dialed-back, considerably more reserved
version of various Dagmar Krause-led groups such as Slapp Happy and the Art Bears given
their erasure of separation between art and pop song.
The eighteen exquisite minutes of "Konata Kanata" ("Here There," in a slightly antiquated
Japanese word choice) hearken back to the golden age of unclassifiable post-punk 12" EPs,
in which at a certain point all that you might know of a particular group consists of
rigorously vetted representative pieces (see "A Taste of DNA," etc.), but also to
miniatures-tantalizing scraps of song-that are one of the legacies of musical modernism.