Phew

A legendary figure in the Japanese musical landscape, with a career dating back to the punk explosion in the land of the rising sun, Hiromi Moritani is one of the last truly cult artists in an era where that term lost all significance, shadowing more than four decades of intriguing and idiosyncratic activity. A unique voice, in the most literal sense, she “lead” the mythical Aunt Sally until their dissolution in 1979, moving on to forge her own path starting with a single with Ryuchi Sakamoto and a first self-titled album recorded with Conny Plank, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit. An auspicious beginning for a blessed and brave trajectory that breached through the most advanced strains of new wave, post-punk and industrial during the 90s and 80s with members of Einstürzende Neubauten or DAF to pick up the pace in 2010, turning inwards to find her own gravitational pull, hovering between the real and imaginary, detached from most references to other music. Using her own voice in an expressive way, Phew dissolves the boundaries between singing and word in a haze of extended techniques, sound poetry, cut & collage and electronic processing in a manner brilliantly and hauntingly convened on Voice Hardcore from 2018, both in title and sound. At the same time, she's been developing purely electronic longform works on drone and repetition – check Virtual Jamming – and opening herself to precious collaborations with artists like Ana da Silva – Island -, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi – Patience Soup. In these times of renewed interest in the possibilities of the voice – be it choral, medieval or confessional – in the realms of exploratory music, Phew arrives at the OUT.FEST with an always late but deserving recent cover for the Wire Magazine and words of praise towards her album from last year, unfathomable and mesmerizing in equal amount. As herself.