From among the wonderful songs of The Lovely Sparrows, I selected those that are especially wonderful and created a 36-minute work.
Every one of their songs is wonderful, but the one that had remained most vividly in my memory for many years was Chemicals Change.
The songs are played in the following order.
Chemicals Change
Rene, Your Country
Golden Age
Reclusive Animals
Devil in the Details
Ghost Light
True Love Is on the Run
The Lovely Sparrows appeared in Austin, Texas, in the mid-2000s, at almost the same time as Page France.
When I first heard their music, I thought immediately that this was unmistakably the sound of the 21st century.
It was not music that merely traced the sounds of the 1960s or 1970s.
They knew the music of the past, but from it they created a sound that had never existed before.
That was The Lovely Sparrows.
This time, I have brought their music together with photographs I took in the summer of 2024.
July 25, 2024.
Thirty-nine photographs of the Seto Inland Sea.
July 26.
One hundred and forty-one photographs taken from Umeda Twin City, looking out over the city of Osaka.
July 30.
Photographs of Fukuyama Castle and Onomichi.
August 8.
Photographs of Fukuyama Castle and Fukuyama Bay.
The Seto Inland Sea.
The city of Osaka.
Fukuyama Castle.
Onomichi.
Fukuyama Bay.
They are photographs taken in completely different places.
And yet, when I placed the music of The Lovely Sparrows over them, they came together naturally as one work.
The sea.
The city.
The castle.
The hillside town.
The bay.
The summer sky.
The clouds.
The light.
These are the landscapes I actually saw and actually photographed in the summer of 2024.
When I take photographs, I am not merely making a record.
I am photographing the light, the air and the landscape that exist only at that moment and in that place.
When those photographs are later joined with music, things sometimes appear that I could not see when I took them.
The music of The Lovely Sparrows has exactly that power.
It is the music that once made me think: this is the sound of the 21st century.
Now that music and the landscapes of Japan that I photographed in the summer of 2024 have become one work.
It begins with Chemicals Change and ends with True Love Is on the Run.
Thirty-six minutes.
This is my summer of 2024, traced together with the music of The Lovely Sparrows.