Smoking Tigers (Original Score) Masayoshi Fujita

• 1 Bathroom – Night Drive 04:05
• 2 Perfect Family – Sadness Rouge 02:02
• 3 Appa 01:04
• 4 Stealing 02:18
• 5 Model Home Magic Moment 02:19
• 6 Bike – Joon 02:59
• 7 Mama's Piano 01:47
• 8 Loneliness 02:38
• 9 Family Love – Bitter Sweet Growth 02:33
• 10 New Family Love – End Credit 06:46
• Total Runtime 28:31

Info zu Smoking Tigers (Original Score)

Japanese vibraphonist, marimba player and composer Masayoshi Fujita has announced the release of his original score for Korean-American filmmaker So Young Shelly Yo’s debut feature, Smoking Tigers. The full score is out on June 19 on Erased Tapes Music.

Coinciding with today’s digital release of the film, Fujita offers a tranquil first glimpse with ‘Model Home Magic Moment’. “It was maybe the most difficult scene to score because of its emotional dynamics, and also the music had to match every little timing of the actors’ movements,” he adds. “I’m quite proud of how it came out.”

The film is set in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, and is a portrait of a lonely Korean-American teen named Hayoung who is taken under the wings of three wealthy students she meets at an elite academic bootcamp. As she falls deeper into their world, Hayoung works harder to hide her insecurities about her problematic family and lower-income background, only to discover the bittersweet pains of adulthood that will forever shape her life.

“Growing up, we are told stories of happiness — suburbia, a nuclear family, a two storied house with white picket fences and a pool — but when our lives don’t reflect these picturesque portals, how does it affect us? How do these ideal forms of family and lifestyle poison our minds and pressure us to make choices we wouldn’t otherwise?”, explains director So Young Shelly Yo

Unconstrained by traditional styles, techniques, or compositional theories, Fujita continuously explores new possibilities for his percussive instruments and crafts sonic landscapes that are unmistakably his own. He prepares the bars with beads, strips of foil, and similar objects, resulting in new sounds, akin to distortions, that help to expand the vibraphone spectrum without eroding the instrument’s intrinsic character or even abandoning it altogether. The score features Hiroko Murakami who performs the piano on ‘Mama’s Piano’.

The original score Smoking Tigers follows the release of his critically acclaimed 2024 album Migratory, which arrived in September and featured a collaboration with Moor Mother, along with sleeve notes by author Pico Iyer. Fujita will be touring Japan in June and July with longtime collaborator Jan Jelinek before he returns to Europe for his much anticipated Migratory Tour in the fall — dates to be announced soon.

Masayoshi Fujita, vibraphone, marimba

Masayoshi Fujita
His route to Berlin was a roundabout one. Introduced to music via Bon Jovi, his first stint abroad naturally took him to the motherland of rock, the United States. After a year in the USA, he returned to Japan to study film. His love for movie making, however, proved less pronounced than his admiration for Bon Jovi, a band he can still quote and sing from memory. He decided to learn how to play the drums, followed by extensive vibraphone training to craft and play his own, mostly jazz and electronic-influenced compositions. Determined not to stick to traditional vibraphone styles or techniques, Masayoshi started to prepare his instrument with pieces of metal, strips of foil and similar objects. The resulting new sounds, akin to distortions, help to expand the vibraphone spectrum without eroding the instrument’s intrinsic character or even abandoning it altogether. Besides his extremely reduced and deliberate style of playing, it is this aural redefinition that makes Masayoshi Fujita’s craft so remarkable and noteworthy in my eyes. Literally caught in his spell, it was a delight and privilege to accompany his play. On a different note, Masayoshi’s wood prints should not go unmentioned. The cover and booklet of Bird, Lake, Objects present concise, abstract and monochrome landscapes and thus a visual complement to his music.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet