Yuma Koda to Release Debut LP AMID KINOS via Newhere Music

Japanese composer and sound artist Yuma Koda is set to release his debut full-length album, AMID KINOS, via Newhere Music. The twelve-track record takes its name in part from the German word for cinema, a nod to Koda's childhood spent at his father's independent movie theater, and centers on what Koda describes as imagined nostalgia, the feeling of places and memories shaped as much by imagination as lived experience.

Why do humans seek a sense of home, or long for nostalgia in the first place? Is it comfort, a desire for belonging, or something else entirely? Home may be found not only in places, but in objects, songs, or even virtual spaces. Amid Kinos, the debut full-length from Japanese composer and sound artist Yuma Koda, is rooted in one of his enduring thematic concerns: what he describes as 'imagined nostalgia.' Such feelings are often partially fictive, yet by examining them, new emotional states can emerge.

The ideas behind Amid Kinos have been forming throughout Koda's life. Growing up, Koda spent much of his childhood in an independent movie theater run by his father, immersing himself in a wide range of films. While studying classical music theory in Italy and Japan, he developed a deep interest in jazz and electronic music, alongside a lasting admiration for the philosophy and approach of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. Koda has since built a distinctive interdisciplinary practice spanning film, fashion, and installation. His work includes compositions for fashion brand HYKE and sound-art installations.

That history feeds directly into the album: Amid Kinos turns inward, exploring Koda's own conflicted relationship with nostalgia rather than treating it as something shared or collective. He describes the album as a deeply personal attempt to translate, socialize, and contemporize those feelings through sound.

To give form to those ideas, Koda brings together a constellation of musicians central to Tokyo's contemporary music scene: guitarist and producer Takuro Okada, saxophonist Kei Matsumaru, bassist Marty Holoubek, and prolific drummer Shun Ishiwaka. A wider circle of collaborators joins them, including Brooklyn-based guitarist and songwriter Mei Semones and composer-vocalist LUCA (who previously contributed to Ryuichi Sakamoto's async). Also featured are Julia Shortreed of Black Boboi, Osaka-born Munich-based drummer Shinya Fukumori, and Yuma Abe, vocalist and guitarist of Never Young Beach, among many others. Together, they design a quietly cinematic sound where ECM-informed jazz and electroacoustic composition continually dissolve into one another.

Instead of placing Koda's piano at the center, the contributions of each musician are treated as equal voices, woven together with field recordings captured in Portugal, Tokyo, Denmark, and New York. Drawing on techniques associated with musique concrète and sound collage, Koda meticulously layers and processes sound, deliberately blurring the contours of memory. By excavating these layers, time bends, ambiguity gains definition, and the music itself undergoes transformation.

Across the album, that process surfaces in distinct moments. 'kopfkino' is imbued with sentimental beauty shaped by reflections on youth. 'on describing poets' draws inspiration from a scene in Robert Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer, while 'artemisia' merges urban noise with intimacy in a post-genre sensibility that exemplifies the album's stylistic breadth. 'amid kino[s]' juxtaposes free-jazz-like repetition with spoken word. 'images on loan' traces loneliness and remembrance through intertwining piano lines and a poetry reading from Jan Urila Sas that feels like a negotiation with emotion in real time. The album closes with 'ende,' a duet between Mei Semones and Yuma Abe—part lullaby, part whispered folklore, a piece both dreamlike and grounded.

With influences from jazz, ambient, film music, and classical idioms, the album maintains a subtle, low-temperature intensity throughout—simultaneously serene and excessive. The work affirms formative moments from Koda's childhood while sustaining a quiet gaze toward something sacred.

Reflecting on the impulses that informed Amid Kinos, Koda says: 'The nostalgia within me and the confusion surrounding it. My deep longing for images and language. While being influenced by the friends I've encountered over the past few years, I made this album by carefully considering how to reconcile these elements through my current methods.'

Tracklist

01 'umbra'

02 'kopfkino'

03 'images on loan' (feat. Jan Urila Sas, Shun Ishiwaka)

04 'marthe' (feat. Shuhei Kato, LUCA)

05 'senari'

06 'artemisia' (feat. Julia Shortreed)

07 'nanpō no hito'

08 'liquorice' (feat. Takuro Okada)

09 'borrowed light semblance'

10 'repose'

11. 'amid kino[s]' (feat. Kei Matsumaru, Shinya Fukumori)

12. 'ende' (feat. Mei Semones, Yuma Abe)

AMID KINOS features contributions from Takuro Okada, Mei Semones, LUCA, Kei Matsumaru, Marty Holoubek, and Shun Ishiwaka, among others. Koda has previously composed for film, including the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival-winning score for KONTORA and a Best Original Music nomination at the British Independent Film Awards for The Ceremony, as well as television work with Haruomi Hosono.

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