Review Summary: notes written in the margins of a text
Piano pieces, interspersed with the chirping of nature, intermingled with the sounds of home, is
Marginalia. As of today, it’s a 196 song long suite, a steadily growing collection of daily improvised recordings from Takagi’s private home studio in Hyogo (Japan). An audio-musical diary, quite alike Ryuichi Sakamoto’s essential
12, save that the stakes are a great deal lower. Freeform key plonks snuggle up with the birds and the bees, unorchestrated, and accompanied with further nuggets of life: baby gurgling, car boot shutting, floorboard creaking, Takagi humming. Life busies itself with itself.
Marginalia VII is the best bits from the October 2023 to July 2024 sessions. Check out his Bandcamp and you can actually see when each was recorded. #167 was a late summer evening, #150 a post-lunch noodle, and #151 a lazy morning melody. It’s strikingly intimate, a window into Takagi’s literal garden, yet you’re welcomed in excitedly, freshly squeezed lemonade and an assortment of snacky cakey things arranged atop the patio table. Further warmth can be found in the actual day night cycle that twirls across the compilation, quacks and tweets cascading into hoots and ribbits as the pieces progress. It’s teeming, earthy, nostalgic, warm, hopeful, celebrating the moment, preserving it, sharing it.
My favourite bit is the way Takagi interacts with his environment. #145’s piano improvisation weaves around childish shrieks, bouncing between them, finding the allusive pockets of calm in a life with kids. You can actually see Takagi shift the progression in real time, making space for the laughter, flailing and spittle. #159 is so softly played, allowing running water to sing. #166 soaks in the weight of rainfall. #154 involves a frog. It isn’t the background to the piece, but a part of it, a messy wonderful harmony between life and art.
For how remarkable of a project it is, no individual song is all that memorable. Off the dome, I couldn’t tell you the difference between #166 and #167. But that’s the deal. Ordinary days follow ordinary days. Sun rises. Sun falls. Life goes on. What better way to pass the time, then, than to doodle in the margins.
