Komorebi

Electronica / Downtempo / Lo-Fi / Trip-Hop

July 2026 - Instrumental

Komorebi is Ubaye's debut album, written in the wake of a trip to Japan — and that origin explains a lot about the record. The Japanese word (木漏れ日) for “sunlight breaking through leaves”, it opens fittingly at dawn. Aube and Momiji set the tone: hushed, unhurried, more felt than performed. It's less an entrance than a slow waking-up, and something fitting about a first album starting this gently, like someone still finding their footing after a long journey.

From there the record starts to stretch its legs. Sur la route gets moving, Ciel parisien opens things up into something more airy and wide, and Maiko pulls back in for a warmer, softer moment before Torii picks the pace back up. It's a record that breathes in and out rather than climbing in a straight line — energy rises, eases, rises again.

Hayabusa is one of the warmest, most grounded stretches on the album, all low end and weight, before Kitsune brings the light back up. Tsundoku and Yokozuna slow things down again, patient and a little inward, setting up the record's real high point: Confluence and Phénix build steadily into Kanpai, the brightest, most alive moment on the whole album — it practically sparkles.

That peak doesn't last, but it doesn't just fade either — Asphalte keeps the momentum going with real drive, one of the most propulsive songs here, followed by Poussière d'étoile and Alizés, which start letting the air back out. The album closes on Luchador, slow and spacious, ending things quietly rather than with a bang — the light dimming back down after all that midday brightness.

So the arc isn't a single rise or fall — it's dawn, followed by a long, uneven daylight full of small crests and dips, cresting hardest around Kanpai, before settling back into evening with Luchador. Given the trip that inspired it, the whole record plays almost like a diary of a single day abroad — the titles alone (Torii, Maiko, Kitsune, Kanpai, Yokozuna) read like postcards from that journey, folded into a shape that moves from morning quiet to a bright, crowded midday and back down into a calm, reflective close.

Tracklisting:

1 - Aube

2 - Momiji

3 - Sur la route

4 - Ciel parisien

5 - Maiko

6 - Torii

7 - Hayabusa

8 - Kitsune

9 - Tsundoku

10 - Yokozuna

11 - Confluence

12 - Phénix

13 - Kanpai

14 - Asphalte

15 - Poussière d'étoile

16 - Alizés

17 - Luchador

Album cover: based on a photograph of the Sagano bamboo forest (Kyoto), stylized in the ukiyo-e manner.