Technique of Relief


Technique of Relief is the seventh solo album by Susumu Hirasawa, released on August 21, 1998 via Nippon Columbia. It is considered to be Hirasawa's most popular album. Like most of his material, the majority of the instrumentation is by Hirasawa.

Overview

With his previous solo album Siren, Susumu Hirasawa felt that he perfected both the "simulated world music" concept that started on Sim City and his post-Aurora vocal style. He essentially stopped experimenting with his style in the late 1990s because he felt that no new developments on that front would arise. Instead, he shifted his focus towards creating music for Interactive Live Shows.
Technique of Relief was, from the beginning, a concept album for an interactive live. It builds upon a broad "restoration of a perfect character" theme introduced in Scuba: while that album was about bringing scattered individuals back together into a group, Technique of Relief has the thoughts and experiences of many people combining into a neural network and becoming a single entity. The concept of "Green Nerve", which Hirasawa had played with in previous works, appears here as the character of a perfected human. The plot begins as the World Cell's breakdown causes the Green Nerve Network to cease functioning, and the Bridge Builder has to repair it.
Hirasawa rerecorded songs originally performed by Berserk actress Yūko Miyamura for the album. All the album's tracks weren't conceptualized and recorded holistically, but rather continually modified based on various phrases and flourishes he thought of on the fly.
On Technique of Relief, Hirasawa incorporated new sounds that he came in contact with into its style: tracks from a cassette tape of Indian music that a friend of his bought in the country were extensively sampled, 8 bit 22.050 kHz techno/jungle MOD files downloaded from a German site were used as drum parts for four songs and he applied elements from luk thung after seeing its popularity across all layers of Thai society.
Technique of Relief is the last of Hirasawa's main discography to be recorded in Bangkok. Unlike previous occasions, he recorded electric guitar parts as well as vocal ones. Since he did not bring one of his trademark Talbo guitars to Thailand, he had to rent a Fender Stratocaster, whose sound he disliked. The album is also the first since Virtual Rabbit where Japanese guest musicians, both singers and instrumentalists, appear.

Personnel

;additional performers
  • Mari Furusato - Soprano Voice on "Moon Time"
  • Keiju Nakajima - Sumatra Magic Horn on "Mother"
  • uncredited Kathoey friend of Hirasawa's whom he nicknamed "Fake Breast Brother" - Soprano Solo on "The Man from Narcissus Space"
;technical
;visuals
;operations
  • Nippon Columbia
  • *Teslakite
  • **Eiichi Yamakawa - Production
  • **Toshiyuki Akimoto - Direction
  • **Mika Hirano - Promotion
  • *Shingo Ninomiya - Promotion
  • *Naoya Shimizu - Sales Promotion
  • *Chika Fujita - Edit
  • Chaos Union Soho Project - Artist Management
  • Wai Rachatachotic - Coordinator
  • Chaos Thai: Takahisa Taira, Sajja "Yai" Tanyacharoen
;thanks
  • Danuphol "P. Jae" Kaewkan, Kentaro Miura, Akira Shimada, Toshio Nakatani, Satoshi Kon, Suguru Funatsu, Tokinori Katakura & Yuka Furusato, Yasumi Tanaka, NIFTY-Serve FAMIGA Interactive Live 要素技術支援 Project