𝙊𝙪𝙧’ 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝘽𝙮 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙠’ 𝙜𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨’ 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘.
We love pulling back the curtain on the stories and inspirations behind intriguing new releases. It’s always fascinating to hear the personal anecdotes, creative processes, and little-known tales that shaped each track. These insights not only give us a deeper appreciation for the artistry that goes into crafting these musical gems but also create a sense of connection with the artists.
Asta Hiroki‘s ‘Continuation’ is a carefully woven journey, where jazz, electronica, and beat-driven textures are bound by a single theme: endurance and renewal. Across its ten tracks, Hiroki expands his universe, balancing intricate sound design with deeply human performances. Vocals drift in and out, sometimes guiding the music with delicate intimacy, sometimes dissolving into instrumental space.
The record unfolds like a cycle. Early moments bristle with energy, fusing jazz and breaks into vibrant, rhythmic bursts. Elsewhere, voices and harp lines fall against fractured percussion, carrying both fragility and strength. Instrumentals broaden the palette, leaning into meditative jazz, spacious electronica, and psychedelic soul, each one offering a different lens on continuation itself: cosmic scale mirrored in everyday resilience.
Even as the styles shift, from afrobeat rhythms to cinematic swells, there’s a connective tissue in Hiroki’s detailed production. Live drums, piano, bass, and saxophone ground the album in warmth, while textures stretch outward into vast, dreamlike expanses. ‘Continuation’ is not simply a follow-up, but a meditation on moving forward, layered, expansive, and resonant with hope.
Continuation is out now, you can listen to it and read Asta’s exclusive, track-by-track guide below.
Rebirth
The opener acts as a taste of things to come across the record. Jazz instrumentation crossed with soul, breaks, electronica, and a touch of psychedelia. Regardless of genre, I’ve moved my musical focus more definitively towards melody and harmony over texture over the last few years and I wanted that to be front and centre on the first track. Klaverson’s vocals which meditate on new beginnings and restarting mirror the theme of continuation perfectly. The cyclical rounds of hummed melodies and lyrics ‘it goes on and on and on and on and on’ are both metaphorically and literally reinforcing the theme from the start. It’s a mission statement of sorts and kicks things off with a higher tempo and immediate message.
Understanding
Further explorations into the fusion of electronica and jazz a la my previous track ‘Cherry Blossom’ but filled out with a full band. This one features Robbie Hookins on drums, Stephen Patota (FLOCKS, Beth Orton, Madeline Kenney) on bass, and Teis Ortved on sax, with myself on piano. I like how this piece flows with the live pushes and pulls. These performances gelled really well and It’s the closest I’ve ever come to an out and out jazz track.
Light Rain
Intimate and trusting, the arrangement here is modern jazz meets LA beat scene. I wanted to create a musical equivalent of a warm blanket that you can wrap yourself up in. After hearing some of okcandice ‘s poetry and music, they seemed like the right person to share the workload with here. The lyricism is gorgeous in my opinion and they elevate the track with an emotive delivery that still affects when I listen to it now. The track’s title has double meaning to me, and if you listen to the lyrics you’ll probably find something else in there too. I prefer tracks and lyrics like this where there’s room for interpretation so I won’t elaborate 100% on any of these, but might drop some ideas here and there!
Flourish
‘Flourish’ was the last track I made for the record after I thought I already had the run order locked in. It came about quickly and organically from a session where I was just playing around without much direction or thinking about the record at all really. It just opened itself up and was finished so quickly compared to some of the others which were worked on for months or years… I like the contrast of the hopeful, airy vocal snaps over the major chord progression and more minor leaning bassline. The drums were programmed with a kind of LA beat scene aesthetic but still leaning into the jazz / soul aesthetic of the rest of the record. Occasionally, I will just work with a first thought = best thought production process like beat poetry or similar and sometimes that works out well.
Transition (edit)
This track was first featured on my ‘Of Seeing Anything’ EP (2023) – it’s a short piece but one that bridges the first and second half of the album. As the name suggests the arrangement is in two main sections with a transition from a more recognisable beat into psychedelia and off kilter rthymns. I thought it was a nice bridge and metaphor for the more vocal focused first half of the album into deeper instrumental explorations in the second half.
Fall Into The Sun
Waltz time, a mellow sleepwalker of a soul track… The first of a couple of cosmic references in track titles.
I discovered Emma Lucia from her project ‘Jed and Lucia’ on Ubiquity Records, once I wrote the main arrangement for this track I had an idea for some psychedelic soul vocals to go hand in hand with the hazy jazz instrumental and she popped into mind. She was an absolute pleasure to work with and delivered a beautiful vocal and well crafted lyrics. The fantastic bass playing on this track comes courtesy of Ren Nelson who nailed the feel instantly and had some room to play around and show some licks off in the outro. I mainly played Rhodes and also Mellotron on this one, an instrument I utilised a lot on the record overall.
M87
M87 is an elliptical galaxy far more vast than the Milky Way, containing unfathomably more stars and clusters, as well as a supermassive black hole. Within the album theme of ‘Continuation’ I liked this idea of one of the largest most expansive concepts that is almost impossible to conceive the scale of for mere humans. This Inspired the artistic concept before writing.
The main chords I wrote that spawned the track contained the lead melody within them fully formed. I programmed draft drums and bass down with the beat I knew I wanted and then polished and polished and re-recorded to achieve the final more ‘live’ sound. Thomas Buckley (FLOCKS) played drums based on the original programmed beat, and Teis Ortved contributed saxophone leads and layers from the melody provided. I played Fender jazz bass to replace the synth in the original and it became almost military march-like with all the focus towards the lead memorable melody. I found it stuck with me long after I wrote it so figured the entire arrangement should continue around it and focus on it.
Some Day I’ll Be There
Moving back from the macro views of the universe and space to more micro matters, I wanted some pieces to focus on human emotions and the experience of continuing on through hardship, or out of necessity. I wanted swathes of emotion over broken beats so I wrote orchestral passages and interspersed them with rhodes and piano lines for the body of the sounds with Afrobeat rhythms and sub bass to give it weight. The repeated lyric is like a mantra or an internal thought in a self dialogue. Something you might say to yourself to soothe or get you through difficult moments. The piece is not intended to be overly sad, or hopeful, just to mirror that feeling of going through something and reassuring yourself it will be over and you’ll get where you need to be eventually.
Continuation
The title track. There is a literal continuation here between this and the first album ‘Entropy’. The final track on that record ‘These Hands pt. 2’ originally had a ‘pt.1’. This ‘pt. 1’ utilized similar chords and ideas but eventually morphed into something completely different and became ‘Continuation’.
Continuity of a single musical idea across several years and different records fit perfectly with the overall concept so it was named after this. Musically it marries different instrument lines in 4/4 and 6/4 time signatures for an interesting feel, and the guitar on it was the first part that was recorded well over 10 years ago now on a bed in Brighton, UK with a portable recording setup.
It’s Gonna Be Alright
Though you might not believe it when listening to my music or reading these thoughts, on balance I think I’m a realist with optimist tendencies.
Writing an album on ‘continuation’ and delving into ever expanding universes and the human experience of navigating life can be heavy stuff, but ultimately I didn’t want to end on a downbeat message or create a negative idea of what this record is about. On balance most things work themselves out – people get through the harshest difficulties, life finds a way. Not always of course, and I don’t deny sometimes things are just terrible. But I believe often enough it is beneficial to be a touch optimistic, even if just for a small break out of your reality for a moment. And that is something beautiful to me.
This is what this piece is about and is the final thought of the record from me.
