Omoya: Houses for the Blue Meditation

Tokyo musician Masami Makino returns to FEF with the follow-up to last year's debut album, Youlu Mystique. A central trio of raga-like pieces showcase Makino's fluid, exploratory 12-string picking, which is very much in the lineage of Robbie Basho and his spiritual heir Steffen Basho-Junghans. These are bookended by tracks of detuned guitar amid eerie atmospherics, swirling noise and organ drone. Almost everything was recorded on a 12-string guitar with various tunings, electric guitar, field recordings from the Parvati Valley in India, pitch pipes, and various types of percussion. "The title “Omoya”[母屋] means the core of the building.