Exclusive video premiere of ‘The Phantom’ by Kato Hideki & Kramer, taken from their latest album, ‘The Walk,’ out now!

Kramer is once again gearing up to add a brand new LP to his acclaimed catalogue, venturing again into the ambient realm, this time alongside multi-disciplined Japanese artist Kato Hideki. The duo’s new record, ‘The Walk,’ is the debut collaboration between these two maverick composers.

‘The Walk’ is the ultimate ambient journey, exploring the intersection of 21st century musical artistry and the age-old form of the written word. Hideki and Kramer create a soundscape that interweaves their inspiration by poets Basho and Robert Walser, creating an auditory monument to listening and crafting a new way to see and hear the world. ‘The Walk’ carves out a haven to hear space beyond what the physical body experiences – an immemorial Walk for the listener, without ever leaving home.

Today, they share the third and final track ahead of the LP release, ‘The Phantom.’ Kramer crafted an incredible piece of ambient-cinema, beautifully illustrating the sonic landscape of ‘The Phantom’ with footage from a silent film. “It features footage I borrowed (with love and devotion) from the Swedish silent film director Victor Sjostrom’s The Phantom Carriage.” Kramer remarks. “Music is a phantom. It possesses no physical body, yet it exists in the real world and often drives the very lives of those who listen deeply. The visuals herein invite you to listen even more deeply, as the elusive nature of sound inspires visions both in substance, and illusion.”

Discussing how the collaboration came to fruition, Hideki remarks, “We started working together in the late summer in 2023, discussing the thematics and the sonic palette of the album. We shared strong connections with the writings by Robert Walser and Basho – both of them walked, dreamed, lived and died on the road.” Ambient music was Hideki’s and Kramer’s natural middle ground, meeting there to breathe sonic life to literature of the poets. “I’d waited decades to find the right ‘environment’ in which to create music in dedication to this great prose writer and poet,” Kramer recalls, “and in 2023, I found that it was not ‘the right environment’ that I’d been waiting for, but rather, the right collaborator.”

‘The Walk’ evolved into an album that was not only inspired by the transformation of the art of two long-gone language artists, but by the collaborators themselves. Hideki’s initial instinct when beginning work on the LP was to create “slow yet structured music that sounds deceivingly similar to ambient music.” Says Kramer, “Kato Hideki and his extraordinary work as composer for film, dance and just about every other creative discipline you can imagine, was equally as inspiring to me for this project as the words and worlds of Walser and Basho. I’m not sure that I would even be interested in music at all, unless there were other artists to partner with as I worked.”

With equally kind words, Hideki recalls his time crafting the album: “Neither of us imagined just to make “another ambient record”, nor a direct translation of their writings. Kramer’s genius was apparent to me: his ability to elaborate the music as a composer / musician with his keen ears; to frame the album conceptually, sonically and musically as a producer.”

What you hear in this album is a true collaboration between two artists who trusted each other to let the music transcend. “This months-long act of co-creation I have shared with Kato for The Walk has made me as happy to be alive as Walser and Basho were so happy to be alive while on their walks, as evidenced by their extraordinary descriptive powers, knowing that the world around them – so simple yet so very complex – made life so wondrous, and so well worth the sometimes seemingly insurmountable struggles of finding a way to survive Today, so that we might try again Tomorrow.”

Headline photo: Jeremy Amar

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