Mysterious stories about natural creatures, guardian spirits, samurais, and love from Japanese folk brother duo Kicell.
Kicell (キセル) combine traditional folk and alternative rock with home-made bamboo instruments. This brother duo see themselves in the mother nature and try to stay as they are.
We have introduced their seventh and eighth album before. The meaning of the title of their ninth record, “Kantenbouki” (観天望気 / Weather lore), is to predict the weather based on natural phenomena and living creatures. In other words, “living in harmony with other creatures in nature” is perhaps the album’s important theme.
Takefumi plays guitar riffs and drums. Tomoharu plays bass guitar, self-made bamboo flute and bamboo harps. Guest musicians on keyboards add further colours. For this album, Takefumi composed the music with the image of the melancholy scale (Miyako-bushi) of the Edo period, 300 years ago, when samurai ruled Japan.
When you listen to the song “Watashi wa shiranai”, it tells us that this life and the afterlife are made of human love. I feel it is like a Buddhist cosmology. In “Harutonari,” they sing about spectres, ghosts and guardian spirits. They might sing the way of “mindfulness” in “Hekiga no koro”.
In the Edo period, Japanese people still felt close to and believed in spectres and ghosts. The song “Enka” reminds me of the story called “Kikka no Chigiri”（Promise to meet in autumn), one of the stories in the Edo period novel “Ugetsu Monogatari” (Tales of Rain and Moon).
“Kikka no Chigiri” is the story of a samurai who was taken prisoner, but just only to keep his promise to his best friend, committed suicide and returned as a soul. Lyrics such as “There is. But there isn’t” or “Sad to laugh” sound like a Zen problem, a paradoxical question for meditation.
“Ugetsu Monogatari” is a bizarre tale of spectres and ghosts, but at the same time it is a story of the deepest soul and noble love. On the other hand, Kicell’s music might be a process of accepting the world as it is, while reflecting on oneself.
Stream “Kantenbouki” 観天望気 LP on Bandcamp, YouTube Music and Spotify.
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