Haruomi Hosono Announces New Album 'Yours Sincerely'

(Orienteer) Legendary musician, producer, and composer Haruomi Hosono signs to Ghostly International and announces a new album, Yours Sincerely due Sept 11th. Hosono's work has shaped pop and electronic music and beyond globally for over five decades, predicting entire lanes of music before they existed. Frieze has proclaimed him as "probably the most significant artist in the history of Japanese popular music." Now at the age of 78, Hosono is entering his next chapter with his 23rd studio album.

Ever-pushing his inventive songcraft, Hosono shares, "I am now 78 years old, but from here on, I feel a growing curiosity toward the unknown music that my new self will create, while also embracing the music of my former self-as if I now carry two musical worlds within me."

Yours Sincerely was shaped over two years. Hosono shares, "It started with a simple question: how do you express the Japanese ideas of omoiyari, jihi, or boseiai in English? I searched, but no word felt quite right. Each came close, yet carried a slightly different nuance. Perhaps the nearest was 'compassion.' It is often translated as 'omoiyari' in Japanese, but its original meaning is 'to suffer together.' It tends to carry a sense of sympathy or pity-something that feels distinct from the Japanese sense of omoiyari. In Japanese, omoiyari also includes the feeling of 'rejoicing together.' In that sense, it may even seem like the opposite. The perspective, the emotional angle-subtly but fundamentally different. For that reason, I chose not to use 'compassion.' Instead, I turned to a more familiar word often used to close a letter: 'Sincerely.'"

Across arrangements that span tender exploratory-folk and bubbling avant-pop, Hosono contemplates a maternal force that envelops the Earth, "humanity's understanding of the unconditional love possessed by those who give us life," he says. Songs tap into a collective current, the "deeply buried instincts-maternal compassion and mercy, things we rarely engage with in our daily lives."

Hosono is also announcing The Yours Sincerely Tour in North America this September, headlining Radio City Music Hall in NY and the Greek Theatre in LA as his first US shows in seven years. Toro y Moi will support both performances.

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