Words on Kokura

At the very beginning, "Kokura" was a 5th piece to Ombilicum II. Seasons. It should have been called "Spring is back again". You may even spot hints to Spring by the end of the track.

BUT. As the composition was going on, the music got darker, much darker.

I had read that article abouit the city of Kokura, Japan, which was the original target of the 1945 2nd nuclear bombing. It was only because of the bad weather that it was decided to choose Nagasaki instead.

The fact is that the plane actually turned back 3 times over Kokura before leaving. that was just after the Hiroshima bombing. I tried to imagine what feelings could people have there, before, and after. Probably a terrible mix of fear and relief.

That's how the nice ambient Spring II track became a dark cinematic violin led dramatic piece. Though i tried to mix drama and relief through the use of the church organ (flute mode).

The piano ending, apart from approaching the harmony of the original Spring track, is here to depict the silence after, the return to quietness, though the harm lingers on.

Dresden, is even more cinematic as it's based on an ethnic percussion scheme, with military snare rolls and taiko hits. The background is a live treatment of field recordings i had done before. the idea here is that you're in a plane over Dresden, where you're going to drop hundreds of bombs, in a sort of hysterical way. So this is chaos really, continuous hum and hits of human madness. The orchestral line (with horns) reminds of action movies, with that ridiculous/heroic touch.

That track may be listened to with headphones to get that constant sea sick panning of background electronic lines.

I ended up calling the duo "Ombilicum III" though we're quite far from the cool relaxing ambient works of Ombilicum I & II. Only because we're still following that original idea of Filiation i had in mind from the very beginning.

You may find info on Hiroshima on http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp
I would like to thank the memorial Peace Museum for allowing me to use the painting as a cover.
The painting is called "Corpses Piled Like Lumber" Author is Kiyomi KONO / under exclusive license to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (please do not use image without permission)