Side A’s sidelong title track is anchored by a monolithic electronic drone with occasional strings. Sachiko moans wordlessly over the top, her long-blaring cadences blending with both endless loops and the sustained bowing of her viola and Fukuoka Rinji’s cello. The cello at certain moments provided a tantalizing counterpoint to Sachiko’s vocals. “Golden Hypnos” starts and ends as if it could be eternal, and the atmosphere is familiar as a window into the age-old contemplation of the self, death, or the passage of time.
Side B starts with a piece so similar that it seems it could be a continuation of side A. Sachiko’s vocals eventually take more of a lead as they become drier, less affected, and more varied, with various vowel sounds emerging into a clearing of sorts in which her voice can wander. The looped drone beneath is very smooth and gradually loses some of its edge, receding like a storm cloud and focusing its intensity. The side concludes with “Chikaeshi no Uta,” in which Sachiko sings melodies and mysterious scales while affecting her voice with sometimes abrasive swells of delay and volume. On the whole, these pieces work on their length, drawing the listener into their ambivalent orbits and locking into a trance—the desire to lose oneself in meditation.
The LP comes in very high-quality boutique packaging, with an abstract magnified drawing on the cover—in an edition of 350—the release is uniformly austere, tasteful, but not especially showy, just like the music. This is a record that seems to concern itself with issues of time, its infinite length and mysterious indifference. It’s clear these are preoccupations on some level here, with Sachiko occasionally overcoming the familiarity of these themes and tones. 6/10 --
Travis Bird (18 August, 2010)
