Midori Takada & Jakob Bro – Until I Met You (2025)
By Rafi Mercer
Some meetings don’t make noise when they happen — they make space. Until I Met You, the 2025 collaboration between percussionist Midori Takada and Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, is one of those encounters that feels like a long breath drawn together. It isn’t a duet in the conventional sense. It’s a shared state — two musicians shaping the same air, trusting silence to carry what words never could.
Takada has always treated rhythm as meditation. Bro, with his translucent guitar tone, plays like he’s painting with light. Here, they meet somewhere in the middle — a borderless place between resonance and release. The record opens quietly: a single bell tone, then a faint shimmer of guitar. No rush, no introduction. Just presence. You can feel the first seconds decide everything.
As the record unfolds, percussion and strings orbit each other with gentle gravity. Takada’s marimba and temple bells form the architecture; Bro’s guitar moves like weather, soft but certain, tracing outlines rather than filling them. Every sound feels placed with intention — not composed, but chosen. Through a proper system, you hear the intimacy of touch: fingertips on wood, string against air, breath between notes.
The title, Until I Met You, suggests sentiment, but the emotion here isn’t romantic — it’s elemental. It’s about encounter itself, about what happens when two listening minds find equilibrium. There’s no conflict, no show of technique. Just patience. Takada lets rhythm drift; Bro answers with melody so fragile it could dissolve if held too tightly. Together they build something weightless yet grounded — a conversation without translation.
Midway through, a subtle motif emerges — a descending figure that sounds faintly Spanish in shape, though its roots feel more universal. The tone of Bro’s guitar leans toward nylon warmth; Takada’s marimba follows like reflection. It’s sunlit but restrained, the kind of sound that sits between joy and clarity. It reminds you that minimalism, when played with soul, can still hum with life.
What’s most striking is how natural this pairing feels. Takada, whose Through the Looking Glass once defined Japanese environmental music, finds here a new kind of landscape — open, human, gently imperfect. Bro, whose work often floats at the edge of jazz and ambient, learns the discipline of breath. The collaboration doesn’t merge their worlds; it expands them.
There’s a moment, near the end of the record, where everything drops away except a single sustained guitar note and the faint shimmer of bells. It lasts longer than you expect. In that pause, you understand the entire project — sound as patience, silence as meaning. It’s the kind of moment you can only reach when both musicians trust the listener to stay still.
When the final tone fades, it leaves a shape in the air rather than an ending. You feel lighter, slower, aware of space again. That’s the quiet miracle of Until I Met You: it reminds you that listening itself can be a form of meeting — not between people, but between attention and time.
Some albums move you; this one stills you.
And when you return to it — which you will — it feels less like pressing play and more like resuming a conversation that never stopped.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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