What is it that moves us, and what would it mean to design that?
I have been searching for that, for a long time.

Take a family photograph.
At which moment does love show its face?
The movement of a hand, an expression, where the eyes go.
Eyes meet, and a laugh comes out on its own.
Hands are held, and warmth passes between them.
The face in the moment of a hug, the face when two people look at each other.
In the very instant something happens,
feeling can burst to the surface.
I catch that instant in a photograph, and keep it as love, as warmth.

Take a fragrance.
There are moments that move us, and we walk past them without noticing.
Set a scent gently on one, and the moment stays, vivid, in memory.
Lovely moments, small stirrings of the heart, are scattered through ordinary days. I believe that.

And then, the audience at a live show.
Applause and cheers cannot carry all of it.
Which song, which moment, and how deeply the heart moved.
What surely happened in those seats
vanished with the house lights, before it could become words.
From the stage, you cannot see inside the hearts of the audience.
To bring a light to that unseen part,
I built frisson, a way for an audience to send how moved they are, right there, as it happens.
What you place on your fingertip reaches the singer and the players, as it is.
Being moved is no longer something that disappears.

Photographs, fragrance, a system.
They look unrelated, but the question I am chasing is one.
What is it that moves us?

Talking about it in interviews does not suit me.
I probably will not film a founder's video, either.
Instead, I decided to put it into poems, into songs, and leave them here.
That is why Aotsuki was born.

I write the words, and Aotsuki sings them.
What you find here are not answers,
but a record of the search, still under way.

The people in the photo were not the only ones in it.

The last two EPs were about the quiet of the one looking on.
This one begins behind the camera.

My work is photographing families.
A first shrine visit, Shichi-Go-San, birthdays, portraits before a wedding.
Ask a child to stand in line, and the child won't.
Draw three circles on the paving stones and say hop, hop, step.
The small shoes jump first, and the best face comes in the few seconds after.

Looking through the viewfinder, I notice something.
Between the people in a family, there are always lines drawn.
A line from mother to child. From child up to father. From father to mother's profile.
Where those lines cross, faces soften.

A photograph keeps a face.
But what it really holds, I think, is the gaze of whoever was looking at that face.
A tilted photo a child took.
Two people on the fridge door, still smiling years later.
Apart from whether it is any good, there is a picture only that family could take.

So: Manazashi. The gaze.
From one child to a family, to the days worth celebrating, to the light of each home, to one person's world.
Five scenes, the frame widening a little each time, and two English versions.

Even an afternoon of doing nothing had a name of its own.

The last EP was about nights.
This one begins at noon.
A veranda. The eaves on a rainy day. A high road at night. A field of grass.
And an album on a desk.

All five happened outside the plan.
An afternoon of doing nothing. A day I forgot my umbrella.
A night I chose the long way home. A sky I stopped to look up at.
A white page with nothing on it yet.

The word for time outside the plan turned out to be "yohaku".
The blank of the paper.
Where nothing is drawn, and yet it is part of the picture.

When I draw, I leave as much of the paper white as I can.
Fill it with colour and there is nowhere left for the viewer to enter.
I think songs work the same way.

So: Yohaku. The margin.
Five moments of stopping to notice what I had been walking past.

From noon to night, five scenes and two English versions.
Once again, none of them are stories about things going well.
And still, these are the hours that stay. I have made them into songs.

A voice that trembles feels strangely like home. I find myself listening in.

Behind this EP is a system.
In the audience, you trace your finger across your phone
and send, as it is, how much your heart is moving right now.
After the show, that night comes back into everyone's hands.
I named it frisson.

There are things I have seen in those rooms.

People move not when the sound swells, but when it falls away.
Even with only three people in the seats, those three hands move, without fail.
In the seconds after the last note fades, the highest peak rises.

People receive, through their skin, what should be invisible.
Goosebumps. A held breath. A voice that trembles, just slightly.
It is in what spills over from the melody
that the most important thing about that night seems to rest.

So: Furue. Tremble.
I chose to keep the moments that waver, just as they are.

Five nights, and two English versions.
Not one of them is a story about things going well.
And still, these are the nights that stay. I have made them into songs.