The Four Seasons, and Then

A 5-track concept album inspired by the 1,000-plus-year-old four-line poem "Four Seasons" attributed to Tao Yuanming, where each stanza depicts a scene from one of the four seasons.

The first track, "Shisawa" (Four Rills), is a story of rebirth as meltwater fills a dried-up valley. The second track, "Kihou" (Strange Peaks), captures the dynamism of summer as cumulonimbus clouds collapse and grow high. The third track, "Meikei" (Bright Splendor), portrays the stillness of the autumn moon that grows clearer as it waxes. The fourth track, "Koshou" (Lone Pine), depicts the loneliness and pride of a single pine tree standing on a snowy ridge. The four seasons come around any number of times every year; whether collapsing or waxing, they always return to the same place.

However, the fifth track, "Saigetsu" (Time), is different. Based on a passage from another of Tao Yuanming's poems, "Miscellaneous Poems"-"The prime of life does not come twice, a day cannot have two mornings; one must exert oneself in time, for years and months wait for no man"-it presents the climax with the truth that, in contrast to the four seasons, human time does not cycle. While nature is reborn over and over, a human's prime comes only once. It is precisely because the cycle of the four seasons is depicted over four tracks that the structure of the final track breaking out of that circle and racing away takes on meaning.

Four seasons, and one non-cycling time. Within the 5 tracks spanning less than 30 minutes, an eight-line Chinese poem from over a thousand years ago is entirely encapsulated.