HARUKANA-INORI (Distant Prayer)

Accepting one's life as it is, yet one won't avoid endless raining, painful longings for one's deceased mother, so one says distant prayers. This second album made out of collaboration between singer Sawako Tomioka and lyricist Seido Haku is about emotional pains no human beings can escape. After the ordeals, you might have gained more humanity, strength, and grace. Urged by intense emotional pains one heads toward the ocean. By the ocean one cries, immerses oneself in memories, and says distant prayers. Sawako Tomioka sings of these intense emotional landscapes in different musical styles.

Introduction

01. HARUKANA-INORI (Distant Prayer)
The title track is a spiritual ballad. The soulful voice of Sawako cries out to the vast expanse of ocean. The setting sun is enveloping everything in sheer red. This song of existential grief sublimates into a distant prayer.

02. UMIDENAKE (Cry By the Ocean)
Hard rock tune with intense grief tearing apart the body and soul. The raging guitar represents emotional rainstorm. Sawako expresses an extreme emotional urgency by crying out her existential pains towards the ocean.

03. KOHARU-BIYORI (Good Warm Autumn Day)
Composed in the style of Japanese folk song, this track sounds like a tiny sunny spot which warmly envelopes devastating pains experienced in the previous two songs.

04. HIKARU-HOSHI (Shining Star)
Mother's death, her memories, intense longings for her…in this hymnal song, the deceased mother ascends into the sky and becomes a star shining with quiet light. This poignant hymn culminates into a musical stained glass depicting a religious event.

05. IRIBIHIRIRI (Sunset Burning On My Skin)
Japanese folk song with chilly sense of loneliness. Sawako's reserved, elegant style of singing and deceptively simple piano melodies evoke a nostalgic rural scenery from Japanese past, yet which could possibly be a shadowy, illusionary dream.

06. HANANINARITAI (I Want To Be a Flower)
I want to be a flower sitting on the windowsill. A poet's daydream becomes a strong longing. This simple yet poignantly beautiful song flows like a dream in a densely spiritual space probably associated with a sense of death.

07. ANATATOIKIRU (I Will Live With You)
A standard, positive-sounding pop song. She realizes her mother's aging with a strong sense of remorse...Sawako bravely sings of this painful process with determination, “I will live with my mother”.

08. HOHOEMIODOZO (Would You have a Smile?)
A lovely pop song. You can feel a refreshing sign of life from this pop music letter of ordinary happiness. Pleasantly cheerful vocal harmonies and lovely performance of acoustic guitar are set on the foreground.

09. SHIRANSONNAKOTO (Forget About It)
An earthy blues-rock with a harsh sense of realism in which a desperate human soul shouts out a naked blues of being. Sawako's soulful, cracking voice and bluesy rendering of wah-wah guitar and acoustic piano are prominently featured on this track.

10. SONOMAMADEIIKARA (Just the Way You Are)
This elegant and tender jazz ballade envelopes all the sadness and suffering with its silk-like soft night music.

11. GASSOU-KOUJITU (Good Day For Joining Your hands In Prayer)
In the echoing chamber of profound environmental sounds, Sawako recites a series of Buddhist style prayers of peace and calmness.

12. HARUKANA-INORI -Reprise (Distant Prayer -Reprise)
A reprise of the title song “Distant Prayer” with the accompaniment of acoustic guitar instead of solo piano which was proviously played on the first track.