Brian Lavelle » www.brianlavelle.org

I’m pleased to say that Supernaturalist has now been released by wonderful Belgian label, EE Tapes. I have some copies for sale, if you’re interested, and have also put a fairly rudimentary order page on the site for this and other releases.

I’m very happy with how this CD has turned out, and whilst for cost issues the colour photographic cover which I had originally designed didn’t quite make it to the final release, it’s still a beautiful object and Eriek van Havere has done me proud.

Vital had this to say of it:
There was a time when Brian Lavelle was more active than he is these days. In fact I can’t remember putting on a CD by him in quite some time. Perhaps it’s wrong, but I always lumped Lavelle in with “one of the laptop guys”, but listening to ‘Supernatural’ I think this might not be the right approach. Lavelle uses electronics, field recordings, synthesizer, piano and bass guitar for four lengthy cuts of ambient music. Surely there is some sort of sound processing going which one could classify as ‘laptop’ inspired, but that is only really a small part of Lavelle’s music. Take one of the longest pieces here, ‘Citadel’, which has a firm cemented foundation of drone synthesizers and (perhaps processed) piano arpeggio on top. Field recordings – wind perhaps – take care of the rest. Much more ambient than glitchy microsound. On ‘The Bright Day Is Done’ bird twitter take care of that. Lavelle cleverly avoids the path in the forest that says ‘new age’ and follows the path that says ‘dark ambient’ – it also a path that can be easily found in the forest of all mood music, but its dimly light course is one that we follow much more readily than the lighter and brighter (and duller) new age one. Slow music, out of time, beyond space, simply floating weightless around. Great, maybe not so surprising, ambient music. Perfect rainy day music; start at twilight preferably. (FdW)

So there you have it…

It’s a fact that no matter how small the boxes are which arrive in the post for me, both of our cats will attempt to park themselves inside them when they’re empty (and often as they’re being emptied). Here’s Hamish happily ensconced inside the box in which I received an order from Puerhshop yesterday. As you can see, he doesn’t quite fit but he looks happy enough: definitely Priority Male…

But enough of the cats, who really have no interest in tea I’m glad to say. Today, I tried another of the Shincha I’d ordered from O-Cha.com: this time it’s the Fukamushi Sencha Supreme. Originally, I hadn’t opted for this one as I don’t have a lot of experience with Fukamushi, but comments of the Green Tea Forum suggested that this year’s harvest of this Shincha was rather wonderful, so I buckled. Again.

The leaves are a beautiful grassy emerald green, with shards of lighter colour throughout, and are quite fine as a deep steamed tea like Fukamushi will always be. The vendor says of this tea:

Very green and very thick. More astringent than most or our green teas, the taste of this fukamushi sencha remains on the palate for an extended time. As this is a very bold green tea, be sure to not brew too hot, for too long, or with too much leaf.

Mindful of this advice, I was careful in making this tea for the first time, particularly given my lack of experience with Fukamushi. The parameters I used for the first session were:
A measured amount of 2.0 grams of the fine leaf in a small pre-heated kyusu with 150ml of water at a temperature of almost 80°C for 1.5 minutes. The vendor recommends those parameters of time and temperature with an amount of 4 grams for 300ml of water so I just halved that direction for the small pot I was using. The simple arithmetic seemed to work fine.

The aroma of the unbrewed leaf is much more grassy and intense than the Kirameki I reviewed previously. There’s also that same distinctive sencha sweetness in the smell that I find very hard to describe: a vegetal, rather than sugary, sweetness. I could breathe in that aroma for hours without tiring of it; it’s uplifting and empowering. Or am I just overly excited by the prospect of this tea?

The colour of the liquor is a powerful green: rich and luxuriant. And the taste of this first infusion is surprising. It is bold, as Kevin Moore of O-Cha.com indicates, but it’s much less sweet in the taste than I’d anticipated from the aroma of the dried leaf alone. I’m beginning to learn that the infusion of any tea can dramatically change what you might expect from its taste, having formed a view when giving it a good sniff beforehand, so to speak, and that this applies not just to Japanese tea.

I suppose the same can be said for decent wine and good single malt whisky. Can whisky and tea be compared? Well, it’s been said before that single malt whiskies are chemically complex and are known to contain several hundreds of individual components (congeners) including a variety of alcohols, aldehydes, acids, esters and phenols, as well as carbonyl – sulphur- and nitrogen-containing compounds. Many of these contribute to the flavour of a whisky and the relative concentrations of each are dependent upon variations in raw materials and production methods. Consequently, each single malt whisky is discernable from any other, including those produced at a neighbouring distillery. I’d be curious if the same can be said of green tea. What makes a particular tea grown in a certain area and processed in a defined way taste differently from others, even in following years? I’ve read comment that this year’s Hatsumi Shincha is quite a bit different from last year’s: same farm, same processing, same vendor. So why the difference? Answers on a postcard, please!

Back to the Fukamushi: as the tea cools in the yunomi, more of the vegetal taste comes out. I can’t place it, but its flavour is really quite different from the other sencha I’ve tasted. I like it; it’s different and surprising. A second infusion of this tea, brewed for around half the time of the first one, perhaps a little less, comes out an even more intense colour. Jill described it as chartreuse and that’s a good description. The taste is less strikingly vegetal than before; possibly somewhat sweeter.

I can see this tea will be a nice contrast to the others in the cupboard and I’ll definitely enjoy finishing it.

Next up for review: possibly the Hatsumi mentioned above. We’ll see. I still have a large stack of puerh to get into, and some oolong; fear, perhaps, is keeping me from going there…and I’m obviously enjoying my Shincha so much!

And for good measure here’s the other one, Bob—our Little Slice of Darkness—in that same box. Obviously, he can’t miss out on some packaging action; his brother, however, is the trailblazer when it comes to that kind of thing…

Well, in a twist on the title and content of a slightly earlier post, I’m delighted to say that Spring definitely seems to have sprung around these parts. The temperature and sunshine over the last few days has been consistently good. Maybe I’m speaking too soon, but it is May, after all…

Perhaps I’m wrong, but what may be heightening my mood even more so than the upturn in the weather is that two of my packages of Shincha have just arrived from O-Cha.com.

I tried the first of these today, the Uji Shincha Kirameki. The aroma of the leaf in the just-opened package is wonderful: fresh, grassy with an astonishing sweetness that’s hard to compare to anything else.

My parameters for brewing the first infusion were as follows:

A measured amount of 4.0g of the beautiful deep-green grassy leaf in a pre-heated kyusu with 200ml of water at a temperature of approximately 65°C for 1.5 minutes.

The first infusion is light and grassy, with a soft mouthfeel and no bitterness whatsoever. As you might anticipate with a good first flush tea, there is no hint of the kind of ‘tiredness’ you find in older senchas. There’s a slightly sweet flavour to this but the overall impression is of lightness. The liquor is faintly transparent green, with yellowish tints. The shorter steep time may account for this, but it’s recommended that the brewing time be reduced for a shincha and also that the temperature be reduced slightly. I’ve no complaints with that advice at all; it certainly worked for me.

The liquor of the second infusion was cloudier and greener (pictured here). It has more of an initial impact on the tastebuds in the mouth; slightly more bite than the first infusion. It’s very good indeed and confirms my view that the second infusion is the more representative of the power of a particular sencha.

I managed to get good fourth and fifth infusions of this tea before I had to call it a day. And that was down to me, and the lateness of the hour, rather than the tea. I don’t doubt that if I’d persisted the tea would happily have given more. I’ve not experienced that in a Japanese tea before. Whilst this tea may be relatively expensive—$37.95 for a 100g bag—I can’t complain, particularly if each 4g kyusu of the tea gives at least five delicious infusions. That’s about $0.30 or £0.15 per 200ml yunomi. As they say, you do get what you pay for.

I’ll be interested to compare this Shincha to the other (less expensive) O-Cha.com Shincha I received: the Shizuoka Sencha Hatsumi. More on that one at a later date.

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[Edit: 9 May 2008: I've had a couple of further sessions with the Kirameki and, thanks to Ryan's advice, have had even more enjoyment from this Shincha. I increased the leaf to water ratio—in fact, I used a smaller kyusu, using approximately 4 grams to about 150ml of water—and increased the temperature to approximately 75°C.]

Well, I’m not, as a matter of fact, a cat but I have recently been reading a book with that title by the Japanese author, Natsume S?seki, written at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Originally published in ten instalments in the literary magazine Hototogisu between 1905 and 1906, I Am a Cat is a satire on upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era, portrayed through the eyes of an “unloved, unwanted, wandering kitten”. And it’s very amusing in a wry, philosophical sort of way; easy to dip into and with a storyline that’s more a string of anecdotes and observations than a rigid narrative structure.

I’m enjoying it; the observations on the superiority of cats over humans are really quite droll, especially if you know even a little of how cats behave; and with it tonight I’m also enjoying some 2000 Long Yuan Hao Yi Wu Mountain raw puerh that I got as a sample from Yunnan Sourcing. Very nice indeed, and my first ever puerh: the smokiness, dried fruit aromas and lasting flavour are quite intense, and not what I was expecting at all.

Okay, so that’s Chinese tea, with a Japanese novel, itself translated into English: but it’s Thursday night and it’s been one of those weeks…