The month-old beats of Marihiko Hara’s track “Remember Me” were of particular interest. This was because several of the more recent tracks in the musician’s feed were gentle, plaintive, concertedly still [solo piano improvisations](https://soundcloud.com/marihikohara/20140325-piano-improvisation-take-1). The #beats tag intrigued. Not because there is some significant, inherent gap between sample-based beat-making and solo piano. The divide between perceived dance-floor sounds and perceived classical influences has been closing — been increasingly recognized as an unhelpful illusion — for decades. If anything, crate diggers and solo piano players have in common a taste for the past. And, in fact, the beats of Hara are built from samples of what sound like old parlor jazz, muffled, and muted, and made all warpy like a damaged record, like a rusty machine, like a weak memory. The use of antiquated samples is all the more nostalgic when the muddying makes them sound like we’re hearing radio signals that got lost behind a cloud, or down a dark alley, and not only took decades to reach their destination but were threadbare by the time they arrived.
Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/marihikohara](https://soundcloud.com/marihikohara/remember-me-radio-edit). More from Hara, who is based in Kyoto, Japan, at [marihikohara.com](http://www.marihikohara.com/).