Éditions Appærent is extremely proud to present the original soundtrack for Christopher Makoto Yogi's film I Was a Simple Man, composed by Alex Zhang Hungtai and Pierre Guerineau.

I Was a Simple Man is a ghost story set in the pastoral countryside of the north shore of O'ahu, Hawai'i. Revealed in four chapters, it tells the story of an elderly man facing the end of his life, visited by the ghosts of his past. Incorporating familial history and mythology, dream logic and surrealism, I Was a Simple Man is a time-shifting, kaleidoscopic story of a fractured family facing the death of their patriarch that will take us from the high-rises of contemporary Honolulu to pre-WWII pastorals of O'ahu and, finally, into the beyond.

The soundtrack is a delicate, elegaic paean to Hawai'i as it appears in the film; lush and florid; subtly psychedelic; bathed in moonlight. The sound of the island — the spirit of the island — is as much an instrument as Zhang's saxophone or the scattered, raindrop piano that peppers the record. Even at harsh peaks, like a no-input mixer talking to itself like a lonely ghost, the record retains a sense of quizzical calm. Both nothingness and interrogating nothingness; misery and magic.

There is a presence of overgrowth all throughout the record, of creeping vines or a figure just out of sight. A significant part of Zhang and Guerineau’s process was listening, editing, and flattening, over and over. This dialogue created a record that feels recursive, an eternal return or incantation to something that no one remembers is lost. Field recordings of Taiwanese Buddhist rituals sit alongside harsh strings of noise, saxophone, piano and synthesizers. Melodies vanish and reappear, mirroring the dream-like and time-shifting essence of the film.

I Was a Simple Man is streaming on the Criterion Channel.

released March 21, 2022

Produced, recorded and composed by Alex Zhang Hungtai and Pierre Guerineau
Mastered by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier and Pierre Guerineau
Design and layout by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier