Shisō

Filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu was fond of what he called “pillow shots”—brief scenes shown between sequences of action or dialogue that helped set the mood, give physical context, or comment on the interpersonal situations of his characters. As Koura, improviser Brian Labycz applies that idea to sounds instead of images, shuffling 34 brief field recordings from the Japanese islands of Honshu and Shikoku with 33 tracks of even briefer silence. Each vignette gives just enough feeling to spark the imagination, stopping before the mind starts to exoticize or romanticize what it hears.