At some unspoken hour, when the world leans into its quietest breath, this album unfolds. It’s a hushed conversation between late-night air and the weight of unplayed notes, a meditation sculpted from the residue of Tokyo’s neon glow and the tactile stillness of an after-hours apartment. Benjamin Fulwood, armed with tenor saxophone, clarinet, and electronics, shapes sound like a nightwalker piecing together fragments of a dream, careful not to disturb the delicate structure of silence.

There’s something inherently cinematic about these recordings - though not in the grand, sweeping sense. This is cinema as seen through rain-slicked glass, small vignettes in soft focus. A saxophone murmurs in a room barely holding its light together, melodies wavering like distant streetlamps through condensation. The breath between notes is not just part of the music; it is the music. Recorded minimally, with room mics catching every unguarded exhale, the sound is less about performance and more about presence.

"Speedboat" sets the tone with a loose, exploratory feel, its tenor saxophone lines drifting over Lav Kovac’s sparse, textural drumming. There’s a sense of movement here, but it’s not a straightforward trajectory - more like a boat swaying with the tide rather than cutting through the waves. Fulwood’s playing leans into hesitant pauses, letting the space between phrases breathe as much as the notes themselves.

The album continues to unfold like a series of quiet revelations. In "Amidst Tall Grasses", clarinet and electronics blend into a hazy, meditative drift, evoking a landscape where time slows and everything moves in soft focus. There’s an organic quality to the piece, as if the music is not being played so much as it is simply happening, like wind through reeds. This mood extends into "Willows & Rushes", a shorter piece that feels like a whisper, its melodic fragments vanishing almost as soon as they appear.

Then comes "Black Willow", stretching over eleven minutes, where Fulwood lets the composition unfold in slow, deliberate arcs. The addition of JJ Moran’s modular synth and Michael W.’s dilruba adds a rich, spectral quality - bowed strings cutting through the electronic haze, shaping a piece that moves between structure and dissolution. There’s a ritualistic feel here, as if each sound is a deliberate offering to the silence surrounding it.

Finally, "Seven Star Lake" closes the album on a note of deep stillness. It’s the sound of looking up at the night sky and feeling the weight of distance - not just between oneself and the stars, but between the moment that has passed and the moment yet to come. It doesn’t end so much as it evaporates, leaving behind an afterimage of sound that lingers in the air like the last glow of a fading neon sign.

Benjamin Fulwood has created a work that doesn’t demand attention but rewards it immensely. "The Stars Are Very Far Away From All Of This" is an album that inhabits its own quiet world, where sound and silence hold equal weight. It’s not just about late-night solitude - it is late-night solitude, distilled into sound.