Go Hirano, Distance (side A)

I first discovered Japanese experimental musician Go Hirano from his later works, and came back to his 1993 debut Distance after having heard them. While those two albums are understated and beautiful, Distance presents a harsher listening experience. It's full of scratchy sounds, often high frequencies. I have a hard time discerning if the harshness came with the sounds' creation, or stems from having recorded with a cheap cassette deck and possibly its built-in mic (I'm guessing the technology based on the sound of the album). Even with the more aggressive palette, the pieces here already feature both his very slowly-evolving approach to structure and his monochrome approach to palette for each distinct piece (the palettes vary a lot between tracks here). The cover photos are beautiful, but the stark font does not match the photos or the content.