LONG SEASON

Fishmans were a Japanese trio from Tokyo, and LONG SEASON is a single piece of music thirty-five minutes long, divided into four continuous movements that drift into each other with the unhurried logic of a dream. The concept came from a simple conversation during a tour in 1996 when someone in the band said, "Wouldn't it be fun to make a song that never ends?" The album is the answer to that question.

The album grew out of an earlier single called "Season," using its melodic and rhythmic DNA as a starting point and then letting everything expand and breathe outward from there. Two complete performances of the material were recorded and then woven together by their collaborator ZAK into a single cohesive piece. Members of the band have said the recording was deliberately loose and uncoordinated, describing how they held up cards to each other during sessions asking when certain sections were beginning and when they were ending. What sounds like serene precision was apparently assembled through amiable chaos. The result is one of the most transportive pieces of music in the post-rock canon.

Singer and guitarist Shinji Sato died in 1999 at the age of thirty-two from a sudden heart condition. Fishmans were barely known outside Japan during their active years, and it was only through the internet, years after Sato's death, that listeners outside the country discovered this album in significant numbers. On your first listen, settle in and let it move through you without rushing toward anything. It sounds like summer heat dissipating into night, like being somewhere beautiful and feeling it already starting to end.