Post-rock
Nettwerk Music Group · 14 August 2026
The album opens and closes on two songs from 2023. “Endless Explorations” (4:07) and “Slow Fire” (3:47) came out as singles that November and that June, and here they return remastered, at positions 1 and 8. In between there are six more tracks and four of those had also come out on their own during the spring: “Whispering Winds” (3:04) on 1 May, “Infinite Blaze” (3:55) on the 22nd, “Familial Tones” (4:06) on 12 June and “Harmonic Haze” (2:56) on 3 July.
That leaves two of the eight tracks arriving new, “Timeless” (4:30) and “Canvas” (3:59), and what is being released is the collected run of a three-year long-distance collaboration. Hollie Kenniff and Kazuma Okabayashi have never met in person: they have passed stems between Tokyo and the United States. It runs 30:26 in total and no track gets past 4:30, which is what ends up telling: the pieces set themselves up, find their colour and finish. “Timeless” gives itself the most room, with choir-textured synths swelling and withdrawing over clean guitars.
Kenniff is Canadian-American and has put out five full-lengths under her own name since “The Gathering Dawn” (2019); the most recent, “For Those Who Stay”, came out on 27 March this year. She has Mint Julep with her husband, Keith Kenniff, who records as Helios and Goldmund and who plays the piano on “Harmonic Haze”, credited under the second name. Okabayashi was born in Tokyo and makes his living as a leather craftsman building wallets and bags; he started recording at home on a Zoom MRS-1044 and has released close to twenty albums since 2021, a rate that explains part of what happens here.
What the album does well it does with a confidence there is no arguing with: “Whispering Winds” and “Harmonic Haze” are two pieces of piano and little else, and the piano is placed with a patience much of this family of music does not have. Heard end to end, though, the whole thing does not move: all eight pieces occupy the same band of tone, volume and length, and from the fourth track on I could not tell you which one was playing.
It is Kenniff’s second release this year and the first thing she has put her name to with Okabayashi beyond a single.
Rating: 6.6/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre