Nana Horisaki: 壺 Pot (CD)

Nana Horisaki
壺 Pot
haptic perception
Japan, 2019
Compact Disc

Singular, angular, and delightfully askew, the indie pop of Nana Horisaki is beguiling & hard to pin down. Her guitar work is restless without being abrasive—bubbling figures that share the askance slant of post-punk and the cerebral intentionality of modern jazz. The tone is clean and the parts are busy, but with a loping, steady quality that feels more like a distinctive gait than a virtuosic show of force. This creates the wavy, hypnotizing ground for gentle sung melodies. Imagine Tenniscoats with a background in math rock—with not a trace of the rockist, self-serious pretensions the latter genre can ferment—and you’re somewhere on the same street.

Horisaki’s debut CD, Pot, finds her vision & talents fully formed. A wonderful collection of unlikely songs and a great introduction to a unique, undersung artist (notwithstanding some deserved praise from All Night Flight & Paradise of Replica, to whom I owe the pleasure of this tip).