Album Notes

About 「風の歌を聴け」

When I was organizing my songs into various projects back in 2005, two tracks -- "Downtown Downpour" and "Hear the Wind Sing" -- didn't fit anywhere. Both songs used unconventional harmonies and had a liberal sense of time. Nor did they sound like each other.

So they were perfect to anchor an EP of their own.

「風の歌を聴け」 (the Japanese version of the title "Hear the Wind Sing", pronounced "Kaze no Uta wo Kike") is intended to be a five-movement suite where each movement explores some sort of odd writing technique.

"Downtown Downpour", for the most part, stays away from triadic harmonies. "Hear the Wind Sing" incorporates samples and multiple keys. "Rescuer" uses only two chords, while the bass line of "Here" spells out two very famous musical initials -- DSCH (Dmitri Shostakovich) and BACH (guess who). "A Simple Song" has a tonal melody in the treble but a clashing accompaniment in the bass.

The title of the EP comes from Haruki Murakami's first novel, on which "Hear the Wind Sing" is based. And yes, the official title of this release is in Japanese. Japanese musicians title their albums in English all the time. I'm just returning the gesture.

— Greg Bueno, April 2009

About the Work Release Program

The Work Release Program is a series of releases featuring the demo recordings of Eponymous 4. These home recordings approximate how a final album would sound, but they are not considered definitive. Some performances may be rough, and the recordings are not totally polished.

Tracks from each release are posted to the Eponymous 4 official site weekly before being made available for retail. The program began with the release of "Imprint" and continues with 「風の歌を聴け」.

About Eponymous 4

Eponymous 4 is a play on Anonymous IV, an unnamed English student whose writings are some of the few existing documents regarding French music from the Middle Ages. Eponymous 4 is also the home studio project of Greg Bueno, a web developer and lapsed musician.

Greg works at a technology company in Austin, TX. He studied music and journalism in college, and he writes about music on his weblog, Musicwhore.org.