The Habit

For more than three decades, Go Hirano has shaped a quietly absorbing sound world on the edges of the Japanese underground. Emerging in the 1990s with three releases on PSF Records, he built a distinct voice rooted in melody, atmosphere, and an intimate, home-recorded immediacy.

The Habit gathers recordings spanning decades of daily playing, with its core captured in 2020 at Pianola Records in Tokyo and other pieces reaching back to the late 1980s. Across piano, pianica, wind chime, percussion, and synthesizer, Hirano explores repetition, space, and resonance with remarkable patience.

Simple melodic figures shift gently in harmony and texture, while room sound and the natural world remain part of the music. There are affinities with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Brian Eno, but Hirano’s “initial, unadorned expression” gives The Habit its own warmth, beauty, and lived-in magic.