“Komorebi” is an (untranslatable) Japanese word, which more or less describes “the effect of sunlight streaming through the leaves of trees”. It’s a compound of four characters — three kanji and a hiragana particle. Here’s how this “effect” inspired my latest single…
Like most people, since March, I’ve been spending most of my time inside self-quarantining. I’m lucky to have always worked from home, so there wasn’t much of an adjustment needed in that regard. What did eventually get to me was not getting out over the weekends. I never realised how important that was to my overall sanity. Those little breaks really helped to balance things out apparently.
After about 3 months, the cabin fever started to hit me really hard, so my wife and I started going for walks in the forested park nearby, or we’d go walk a simple trail. Cautiously. My wife is extremely good at finding cool random things to do, and I’m really grateful that we have beautiful outdoorsy locations reasonably close by. Despite it being summer and not enjoying the weather (hot, sticky and humid), I have sincerely been enjoying these little excursions as it’s obviously something that I’ve been taking for granted.
I had many little grateful moments like that lately, and that’s when I felt that this would be the perfect time to write a Watermark track called “Komorebi”. I’ve had that word written down in my “inspiration” notes for ages.
Musically, I made a lot of work for myself (again), especially in the mixing department. The track is pretty dense in terms of texture and “little things” of sonic interest. At the time of sketching, I had just gotten a plugin called Portal, which I had a lot of fun with. It’s all granular FX, so there’s a lot of time stretching, audio smearing and experimentation going on. That thing is a “happy accident” machine. Because of that, I also did a lot of resampling and editing.
At the time, I had also been diving back into one of my favourite bands, Foals. It was the 10th anniversary of their “Total Life Forever” album recently (one of my favourite albums of all time), so I was reminiscing. Although I’m well aware that “Komorebi” doesn’t sound like Foals, I think subconsciously they ended up influencing the beat and maybe a bit of the bass interplay. That band is “perfect”, but they are especially talented at rhythm and groove. Anyway, so this song does have an “indietronica” feel to it I think. It’s not something that I’ve done much of before, so it was fun.
I just wanted to create something beautiful, inspired by that word and the world right now. I think I did that?
credits
released July 17, 2020
Written, produced, mixed and mastered by Watermark High.
London producer Jono Das makes instrumental hip-hop with a prize fighter's mindset: steeled, dynamic, and constantly adapting. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 27, 2022
