Akari is the third album from Tokyo duo Illuha. Following 2011’s debut Shizuku (12k1067) and 2013’s Interstices (12k2028), Akari takes the next artistic step for the band. While Shizuku was recorded in the US and completed separately by the artists, Interstices captured the duo creating their exceptionally detailed music together live during a Japaneses tour. Akari, in turn, is the first studio album where Illuha recorded and mixed together, throughout the entire process. The beautiful st-robo studio in Tokyo put a collection of amazing equipment at their fingertips, from vintage mics and outboard gear to a vast collection of instruments, both acoustic and electronic. Their writing sessions were numerous and long with details meticulously obsessed over for nearly a year. The result is the most bewildering music Illuha have created to date. An album swimming with the most delicately tactile sounds and instrumentation that draws the listener in with hushed, motionless attention.

While Illuha’s Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date are often drawn to the most sparse notes of Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, acoustic grand piano and guitar, the breadth of instrumentation is partially what makes Akari so abosrbing. They have succeeded in creating their own universe of sound, so beautifully recorded, where each element not only has its own space but connects and interacts so fluidly with the other sounds. It is as if they are placed perfectly by nature, the compositions are fluid and organic, a far cry from anything calculated or structured. It is this open space that the music exists in which in turn defines the music itself. There is ample room to breathe within this forest of gentle tines, bubbling analogue synthesizers, clicking percussion and quiet field recordings. This is subtlety at its most refined; hushed without being saccharine, distant without being morose.

Akari is the Japanese word for light. Conceputally the duo used this word as a guide, as if they were searching through the dark, trying to keep the light alive, as if one is cradling a candle doing everything in their power to keep it alight in a storm. It is this almost visceral sense of sheltering, of protection, that gives Akari a very human and personal sound whose intensely deep focus is as impressive as it is arresting.

Akari

Structures Based on the Plasticity of Sphere Surface Tension

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Structures Based On The Plasticity Of Sphere Surface Tension

Arizona

Arturia Polybrute 12, Made in France

Music, Art, Culture, Society, Language, Reading, Books, Authors, and Doers.  That's the Power of Home Depot.  

E.Mystifiti

Transparent Soul

Music from the forthcoming EP by Luke Abbott and Jack Wyllie of Portico. 

Released via Buffalo Temple (BFFT003) on 25th September available on 12" vinyl and digitally.

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Xantako

A track from the album 'UV Sea' out 02/13/16 on Constellation Tatsu.

Forest Walker - Desert Lighthouse

Alessandro Cortini, live instrumental set at Death By Audio, NYC, December 11 2011. Performed on a Buchla Music Easel.

Alessandro Cortini - live at Death By Audio, december 2011

First track from the new Jon Hassell album 'Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)' - Out now:
http://smarturl.it/listeningtopictures

pen·ti·men·to / noun
Reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.

Forty years since its creation, Jon Hassell's Fourth World aesthetic remains a powerful influence on modern electronic music. Continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing, fragments of performance are sampled, looped, overdubbed and re-arranged into beguiling unexpected shapes. Hassell applies the painterly technique of ‘pentimento’ to the arrangements, teasing out texture by the overlaying of sound upon sound, or a carefully timed reveal of the delicate bones pinning the frame of a track together.

The release of this new album also sees the launch of Jon’s own label, Ndeya (pronounced “in-day-ya”), which will be a home for new work as well as well as selected archival releases, including re-presses of classic sides and some astonishing unreleased music.

FURTHER READING ON JON HASSELL:

Fourth World in the 21st century: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2984
Brian Eno on Jon Hassell: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/nov/09/jazz.urban
https://www.jonhassell.com/

Jon Hassell - Dreaming

Moon Wheel — རྡོ་རྗེ་རྣལ་འབྱོར་མ་

From "Kläppen" on Malmö Inre.
https://www.malmoinre.se/product/preorder-golden-ivy-klappen-lp

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lukeabbottmusic

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