yanokami - yanokami 8 August 2007
Yanokami was the duo of pop-jazz artist Akiko Yano and electronic musician Rei Harakami: hence ‘yanokami’ from their surnames. Often bands and musicians will go out searching for others to collaborate with. Yanokami’s formation, however, was nothing like that. It began in 2003 when Yano and Harakami learned via word of mouth from friends in the music industry that each was a fan of the other’s music. At the time Yano was in New York while Harakami was in Kyoto. Since they were halfway around the world from each other the two formed their duo over e-mail. For both musicians yanokami was a side-project, but the two spent a decent amount of time e-mailing ideas back and forth. Each would e-mail the other with short audio samples of ideas, for example. This went on for four years until the release of yanokami, their debut album.A year later Yamaha released yanokamick, an all-English version of the album. I haven’t heard it, so I cannot say how it compares, but I would expect it to be just as good.Unfortunately this is the only yanokami album released in Rei Harakami’s lifetime. In July 2011, at the age of forty, he died from a brain hemorrhage. He and Yano had been working on new material, and yanokami’s second album, Tooku wa Chikai, came out posthumously in December 2011. That was understandably yanokami’s final album.