“Music for Museum Gift Shops” finds Japan-based band Lullatone revisiting songs from their adventurous 20 year-long career on instrumental solo piano.
The mellow melodies in these 52 songs shine in the subtle, simple renditions. The innocence of past albums is illustrated here with intimate recordings – a kind of calm, cozy minimalism that is warm and familiar. Ambience over ambient. This is Lullatone all grown up – at home, with two kids, helping them with their homework – making music that sounds like an informal, unaffected take on classical music. Homemade classical – for fans of Erik Satie but in a better mood, or maybe a more naive Goldmund or Hauschka, or possibly even a Wes Anderson soundtrack if the whole film was set in a lo-fi light-soaked living room.
For this project they wanted to make more personal soundtracks for riding a bike to the library, making a late breakfast on a weekend afternoon, studying another language, or browsing through books in a museum gift shop.
Tracklist:
1. trying something again again (piano version)
2. my second favorite song in the world (piano version)
3. an ode to eaten snowflakes (piano version)
4. a blanket of snow spotted from under the blankets in bed (piano version)
5. morning coffee (piano version)
6. fleeting years (piano version)
7. an older couple holding hands (piano version)
8. icicles melting (piano version)
9. for all the forgotten resolutions (piano version)
10. wake up wake up (piano version)
11. another word for productivity (piano version)
12. waking up on a picnic blanket (piano version)
13. going to buy some strawberries (piano version)
14. second day of school (piano version)
15. sad grass (piano version)
16. the biggest pile of leaves you have ever seen (piano version)
17. thursday inverse (piano version)
18. gathering sticks for a nest (piano version)
19. afternoon nap for pets (piano version)
20. a runaway kite (piano version)
21. origami tulips (piano version)
22. wet grass (piano version)
23. starlight (piano version)
24. make believe melody (piano version)
25. we're better than this, were better than this (piano version)
26. little by little (piano version)
27. checking things off of a to-do list early in the morning (piano version)
28. umbrella (piano version)
29. good morning melody (piano version)
30. race against the sunset (piano version)
31. the kind of song you make up in your head when you are bored (piano version)
32. fireflies and lightning bugs (piano version)
33. the existential dilemma of a melting ice cream cone (piano version)
