NIKO-PPACHI
Starting off with a PR flavor is unusual, I know, but my second single collection album “Nikopachi” is set to go on sale July 30!! “Nikopachi” is full of singles released from ’99 to ’03 and all sorts of new songs.
Right now I’m playing them back to work out the track order and such, and much to my surprise, I’m finding that many songs I haven’t heard in a while have a remarkably crisp feel. It sounds weird for me to say this, but “Nikopachi” is a nice album.
Although many artists say they never listen to their own CDs in private, I pull my music off the shelf and listen to it quite often. But I mostly listen to the albums—the singles feel as though it’s been some time since I heard them, and listening to them anew surprises even me with tracks I had forgotten about in the middle of this enjoyable “Nikopachi”.
When I hear an old song, the music slips via my ears into the depths of my mind, where it rummages about in my storeroom of memories and opens up many drawers. Drawers where trifling memories I have no need to recall in the course of my life are randomly tucked away. Slightly faded, bad memories of things I wanted to forget, the flavors of delicious food, my favorite clothes I often wore back then. At first vague, then emerging with greater and greater clarity, the music once again refolds them and then returns them to their drawers. Right now, my brain is immersed in this activity.
In the midst of this, I chance upon startlingly valuable things on occasion. Things like memories I couldn’t see any value in and had long since abandoned with other rubbish—memories I now realize are actually glittering treasures. I resolve to carefully preserve them from now on. Nikopachi lets me come face to face with my past self and find reconciliation.
A span of three years goes by in a flash, but in three years many things change, grow, and pass away. A lot happened to me in that time. When I trace my own footsteps, which I thought I knew, they seem more zig-zag than I remember. There’s a huge chance I’ve overlooked slumbering riches there. Now and then I’ll sweep out this storeroom of memories with a swirl of dust.
maaya