yasujiro ozu – hitokomakura

2 x CD
and/OAR
2007

tracks:
  1. Steve Roden - Tapping The Inside Of Sitting Still
  2. Hitoshi Kojo - Ka Ra Mo
  3. Koura - Tadaima
  4. Kiyoshi Mizutani - Two Tables (2)
  5. Aono Jikken Ensemble - Tsuiso (Chasing Memories)
  6. Yoshio Machida - Kaze
  7. Alejandra & Aeron - Ukigusa
  8. Aono Jikken Ensemble - Kodama (Echoes)
  9. Haco - Blind
  10. Jason Kahn - Pillow Shot 10, Ukigusa
  11. Asuna - From Scene 99 To The End - Kohayagawa-ke No Aki
  12. Steinbrüchel - Seen
  13. Taku Sugimoto - Tengu In Linguistics
  14. Sawako - Tooi Soba
  15. Dale Lloyd - One And The Same, Beginnings And Endings
  16. Bernhard Günter - Iki No Kaiga
  17. John Hudak - My Windsock
  18. Steinbrüchel - Waldsee
  19. Toshiya Tsunoda - Similar Figure On Horizon
  20. Keith Berry - Hatsu Yume
  21. Kiyoshi Mizutani - Two Tables (1)
  22. Michael Shannon - Hitan
  23. Koura - Dakara
  24. Roel Meelkop - Ukigusa
  25. Marc Behrens - Samma No Aji
  26. Lawrence English - Before That Tower Lies
  27. Sukora - Rendered
  28. Michael Shannon & Dean Moore - Jiken
  29. Heribert Friedl - W*
  30. Michael Shannon - Graced By Loneliness
  31. Dale Lloyd - Return To Me Who Sleeps

This is the second of a series of label projects pertaining to film directors. The first
one was for Andrei Tarkovsky, the third one is currently in progress and pertains to
Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Tetralogy” (L’Avventura/La Notte/L’Eclisse/Deserto
Rosso).

This second release turns its focus upon Yasujiro Ozu’s use of  “pillow shots” (i.e. short poetic pauses that appear between the acting segments of his films). The term “pillow shot” was not coined by Ozu himself, but several years after his passing in the early 1960s by a Japanese journalist who was trying to draw a comparison of the intermediate scenes to “pillow words” found in traditional Japanese poetry. This is a double CD release with both CDs featuring audio plus a cross-platform compatible PDF booklet containing pillow shots (courtesy of Criterion Collection) and liner notes.

Each artist featured on this release was asked to choose one or more “pillow shots” to use as inspiration for their pieces. A large assortment of pillow shots was provided for the artists to choose from. The artists also watched the films from which the pillow shots came from in order to get a sense of how their chosen pillow shots were employed by Ozu.

The sound work featured represents a wide range of artistic approaches, but as always with these projects, the artists were chosen specifically, based on their previous work and on how it might contribute to the collective whole of each project.