Flowers of Shanghai [OST]

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If you are only familiar with Hanno through his excellent drum n' bass recordings as Multiphonic Ensemble and News From Street Connection, the compassionate soundtrack he has composed for Hou Hsaio-hsien's acclaimed film about the women of a late-19th Century Chinese bordello will be one of last year's revelations, emphasizing the Eastern lyricism which his dance music sometimes loses amid its clever appropriations of Western beats and self-sampled solipsism. For the most part, the record eschews Hanno's usual knotted, jazzy programming for spacious and airily rhythmic arrangements of traditional instruments (wood pipe, stone flute, sitar, violin, horns). Hanno (on accordion) and violinist Hiroyuki Kanemoto describe sensuous calligraphic patterns in the perfumed air of the film's main theme and "History ~ end credit" (curiously presented first on this CD and later reprised), then fall silent before an assertive pulse-like rhythm. During the record's most exquisite passages, two of which were co-written (with the pianist ("Doze") and with the guitarist ("Virture")), Hanno introduces the modern implements of his craft (turntables, synthesizers and tape recorder) so deftly as to support the delicate arrangements without the risk of overshadowing them. It's as though he has reserved most of the tricks in his bag for those moments when they'll have the greatest impact. On "Life In Clamor" and the riveting "Seeker's Rhapsody," Hanno renders his impressions of the conflict and unrest faced by the film's characters with off-beat collage of found sounds and the score's predominant instrumental voices - skirls of flute, fevered fiddling, piano - framed by a nervous, splintered breakbeat narrative derived from the theme's palpitating heartbeat. Rearranged samples of dialogue, sounds and music taken directly from the film figure prominently in the two sections titled "A Slice Of Life," while "Queer" and "Nocturne" assimilate all of the score's elements in dissonant plumes adrift and illusory as opium-pipe haze. Apparently there is much more to Hanno, already renowned in his native Japan as a prolific musician and producer, than the ticklish drum n' bass of Multiphonic Ensemble's amazing King Of May (King Records/Sub Rosa). Watch for Flowers of Shanghai to pass through your local art-house theater, and take note of Hanno's rising star before the rest of the world catches up. It will happen.