Haru – Ume Gumi (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It seems that I spend a lot of time talking about music in terms of its genre makeup, in which sounds and styles have been woven together to create a specific sound. But sometimes, it is the role of geography, or, more specifically, culture, that is the more pertinent element that defines a sound.

And, in the case of Haru, Ume Gumi’s debut single, it is easy to see both these factors at work. Firstly, it should be said that Ume Gumi is a husband-and-wife duo comprising Yukiko Gray from Kanazawa, Japan, where they are now based, and Richard Gray, who is from the UK. He is known for being the lead singer, guitarist, and producer of Devious Dogs. He also releases music under his solo project name, The Dead Blues Club.

But they’re coming together to make music as Ume Gumi is an exciting prospect, an astute mixing of Orient and Occident, eastern tradition and Western groove. Haru neatly blends sixties, pastoral pop, and the sounds of the Showa era, a mid-twentieth, Japanese musical movement in which musicians mixed the traditional instruments of their own culture with those more associated with Western pop and rock movements.

The result is gorgeous. Bucolic and light of touch, Haru is delicately wrought and full of lilting rhythms, the perfect blend of exotic understatement and rock’s more weighty urges: space, atmosphere, and a gossamer beauty all in one place.

An old saying goes, “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” In the annals of statements so incorrect as to defy belief, that has to be near the top. And Haru is the proof.