Sunny Spot Story (1/2)

A piano note, dropping into a hole in the heart.

Three and a half years have passed since her 4th solo album 'Piano Fantasia' which fascinated music fans in the world by its lovely melodies and piano sounds. The Tokyo-based pianist and member of the cinematic instrumental music band, Anoice, and its side projects, RiLF, Films, and Mizu Amane, Yuki Murata, will release her 5th solo album 'Sunny Spot Story' on April 27, 2022.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Yuki has been working energetically with not only new releases under her own projects such as Anoice's latest album 'The Hidden Forest' and RiLF's latest album 'My Beloved Farewell' but also soundtracks for various types of video works; Robin Bain's 'Girl Lost: A Hollywood Story', Joey Fingers's 'Reduction In Force', and Osamu Minorikawa's 'I Eat the Tears', TV drama series such as TV TOKYO's 'My Husband is Sleeping in the Freezer' and MBS's 'Love Phantom', and enlightenment videos produced by Japanese government's organizations such as Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. However, her talent, which is admired by famous Japanese composers, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nobuo Uematsu, and Takeshi Kobayashi, and has left her name in the history books of the three major international film festivals, Cannes, Berlin, and Venezia, is alive here.

This album 'Sunny Spot Story' comes in a set of two CDs; Disc.1 with 14 songs and Disc.2 with 10 songs. The songs included in Disc.1 were recorded at Anoice's studio and a large concert hall, together with the same instrumental players with Anoice's latest album 'The Hidden Forest'. It consists of mainly simple piano solo songs such as the first lead single 'shall we dance' and 'song for brahms', and also beautiful neo-classical songs with warm atmosphere played by a piano and string trio formed by a violin, a viola, and a cello as heard in the second lead single 'with all of my love' and 'my perfect place'. Disc.2 includes improvised solo piano compositions which Yuki played on her own piano with a simple recording equipment while under a state of emergency due to the pandemic and features a more stripped down sound in contrast to the songs on Disc.1.

This is a new masterpiece featuring a piano just like the great works from film music composers Thomas Newman and Alan Silvestri and neoclassical artists Max Richter and Jóhann Jóhannsson.