KOKEI NO AWAI

KOKEI NO AWAI, the latest album from Japanese experimental artist kent watari, is a hauntingly intimate exploration of memory, place, and perception—translated through a challenging, abstract sound. Drawing from the ambient and avant-electronic traditions of artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and Tim Hecker, Watari’s work is at once deeply personal and universally reflective.

The title translates loosely to “Distance of the Scenes,” blending KOKEI (a view, a scene) and AWAI, a uniquely Japanese word describing the nuanced space or distance between things. This liminal concept becomes the conceptual core of the album—where vivid everyday moments are abstracted, blended, and reimagined through sonic textures.

Inspired by the surprising harmony between seemingly unrelated places—a quiet mountain view from Kyoto’s Ginkakuji Garden and a bustling Yokohama supermarket with discounted deli food—Watari reassembles fragmented realities into one cohesive auditory experience. KOKEI NO AWAI is not just a reflection on space, but on how perception connects—or separates—those spaces.

The album unfolds like a personal cartography of inner landscapes: surreal and richly layered. Grounded in electro-experimentation, it also weaves in elements of traditional Japanese music, providing moments of organic warmth and familiarity amidst digital abstraction.

KOKEI NO AWAI invites the listener to look more closely at the world—to question the connections between scenes, to reframe the unnoticed, and to experience the beauty found in the subtle space between.