Nami Sato grew up in Sendai – a small town on the coast side of Japan. In 2011, The Great East Japan Earthquake, a Tsunami washed out many towns. Her hometown, Arahama, was one of them. Despite losing family members to the tragedy and having her hometown swept off the map, Nami has come to a point of acceptance rather than despair. Throughout the healing process, her music has been a great source of reflection and inspiration.

’Our Map Here’ is a release composed primarily from field recordings from the surrounding towns affected by the tsunami. The five songs on the EP were originally written for a memorial installation, which was built next to a subway station nearest to the town she grew up. Nami says the idea "was to create a map of memories around the coastline of Sendai City”.

Each title of the songs are the names of the areas where field recordings were carried out. Nami visited those five areas a few times with her microphone: "Instead of directly interviewing the locals, I focused on capturing the sound of local festivals of affected areas and disaster relief events. I created collages of sound by extracting and using the most personally memorable part of the recording.”

Despite the melancholic nature of the EP there are moments of optimism and rebirth within the layers of sound. Sato skillfully wraps the recordings in light blankets of melody and mood which results in a hopeful yet nostalgic message to the world.

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