Umiko Kotori spent her whole life working with music, since childhood she played the piano, sang in a choir, studied opera vocals, after switching to the jazz department and choosing to study popular music, she started playing with bands, discovered modern live electronic music and started learning to produce and record sound. Worked on various films, short animations, performances, advertising, event dubbing and with groups of different music genres as a vocalist, drummer, bassist, producer.
The tracks of UMIKO Kotori’s latest solo album “Sorry to be you” are like overcoming sudden and unpredictable turns in life, where you sometimes find yourself on the verge of death, but when you overcome it, you can be proud of new skills.
“I used nineties grunge monologue, krautrock and hip-hop rhythmic and electronic disputes. The pieces are played with expressive power, without shying away from admitting their mistakes and sharper inner states, revealed in timbral solutions. The vocals are lightly psychedelic – rap and tonal solos weave unpredictably with harmonic layers of trios and quartets. In some places, the scratchy voice effect reminds us of a tense flow of thoughts, which solves the challenges of life and everyday life represented by heavy bass parts.
The lyrics, like the album’s overall darker subdued sound, are about refusing to pretend. The truth is that a person sometimes attacks, that being a single mother is difficult, that it takes time to find a wise friend, that the man next to you has not always learned to be a man, and participating in the information flow is just beautifully pointless. This honest position, based on experience, allows me to playfully enjoy self-irony, bursting schoolboy frenzy and creative (dis)order that echoes myself.
Therefore, the title of the album (born from a life note to the author sprawled out on the sidewalk with a skateboard) can be offensive, because it is written by a person who is no longer afraid to be offended.
Stressful drive, anger, desire for freedom, sleepless nights looking at your inner darkness and fear, daily running… But the soul pauses more carefully and unexpectedly finds light. Me and you, we’re on the road. Nobody knows what will happen. Shall we dance for a moment?