We’ve always had a weakness for Sonic Pieces’ hand-stitched covers, shown below in an image borrowed from Sounds of a Tired City.  Minor Planet contains an circle on the cloth cover to represent its title, but we’re simply going to call this “the new red one.”

The iconoclastic Midori Hirano cheerfully changes her sound from album to album.  klo:yuri was an electronic album with stringed guests; the lovely Time Unbox, a collaboration with Ytamo released earlier this year, was an ambient/modern composition blend, wrapped in origami paper, containing occasional vocals.  Minor Planet travels into space, imagining galaxies and stars.  Electronics remain present, but are present more for adornment than tempo.  The one constant is Hirano’s piano, present on each album as a connective thread, or in this case like the tether between spaceship and astronaut.

More than anything, Minor Planet is an album of texture…