Anata Wa Sukkari Tsukarete Shimai – Sweetness & Light EP [Bearsuit Records]

The project between Japanese experimental artists _, Bradford’s Gnomefoam and Bunny has already produced one exhilarating EP for net label Rack & Ruin, in fact you can read about that here and even go and download it for free very soon. The name of that project was the Horror Punk EP full of noisy elements with a playful feel to it, the Sweetness & Light EP for Bearsuit Records is the flip side to that, a down beat dreamy affair that’s all together easier on the ear but just as sonically ambitious.

There is a really beautiful fuzzy dream like daze on the Sweetness & Light EP, shimmering guitars with shoegaze like qualities a build hazy atmosphere. The songs aren’t as insane as the Horror Punks EP here you get to know the more melancholic side to their musical bows. There’s a glitchy electronic feel to the music but it’s not mechanical and cold, it’s the complete opposite in fact, full of warmth and really playful and organic.

Some of my favourite tracks are the wonderful opener ‘Forsake’ with the robo voice opening and sublime guitar shimmer that builds a subtle soundscape around the beautifully sweet vocals buy I presume _ as they’re on Japanese are just gorgeous. The way AWSTS use found sounds in their songs always makes me smile, you hear crackles of what sounds like fire or just everyday things you cant quite put your finger on but they really give the music a living breathing feel. The track ‘Bearskin’ shows this wonderfully with a windswept whistle running through it, which makes you feel like you’re stuck alone on the moors. But the track isn’t as simple as that it breaks out into playful bleepy electronica like your still stuck out on the moors alone but you’ve started hallucinating. This group often send you in new and interesting tangents.

Sweetness & Light flows so beautifully there is a real emotional feel to this music, even when the vocals are obscured in fuzzy dream like distortion at times you can just feel an underlying sense of sadness. At times here AWSTS remind me of a lo-fi M83 without the big cheesy epic ambition, its more subtle than that though and more personal.

Anata Wa Sukkari Tsukarete Shimai make some beautiful and insane music sometimes all at once, they are a diverse bunch of artists that come together here to create a beautifully EP that both pulls on your heart strings and makes interesting new shapes with a wonderful sonic pallet. They will draw you in an demand repeated listens.

http://www.myspace.com/awsts

http://www.myspace.com/gnomefoam

http://www.myspace.com/deconstructivism

Anata Wa Sukkari Tsukarete Shimai – Horror Punks EP [Rack & Ruin]

Coming on like a fucked up noise driven glitch addled punk pop hybrid Anata Wa Sukkari Tsukarete Shimai is the latest project from the enigma that is _ from Japan and Bradford’s Gnomefoam and Bunny. It’s hard to explain exactly what kind of music lays within this seven track EP, which you can download for free on the fantastic net label Rack & Ruin. You could say that this is the flip side to the project AWSTS did for Bearsuit (words on the way soon), which was mellow and glitchy this one is insane, a no holds barred journey into the unknown and you know what its loads of fun.

The gentle opener ‘Evergreen no niwa ni kirisame’ opens with sweet Japanese lyrics and what sounds like an accordion before looping into some crunchy beats and eerie electronics. The Punkieness of the title really kicks off on track two which comes off like an insane Go Team! But with lo-fi noisy guitars and descends into a thrashy metal like beast at the end. You really don’t know what’s coming next with AWSTS right after the full on thrash of ‘I wish they all could be horror punks’ comes the quirky dreamy off key poppieness of Persistent damp problems haunt my keyboard’ which sounds like its been made out of clockwork robots.

An un-doubted highlight for me is ‘Moisture container and the pain in my arm’ with its catchy melody and fuzzed out distorted lyrics that echo the title as a lonesome guitar and electronics try and freak the shit out of you. The next track somehow reminds me of a twisted hip-hop track if it wasn’t so off the wall you could imagine Biggie Smalls rhyming against the breaks and strings. This idea is only enhanced for me when the piano loop of ‘Lost in the forest of blank sportswear’ comes in but then soon gets dismissed when the track melts into a freaked out noisy ballad with fuzzy buzzy sounds and pluck melodies that give way to distorted melancholic guitars, wonderful. The EP closer does exactly what it says on the tin ‘Goodbye Until We Meet Again’…

The two combine forces to create a strange skewed vision of punky pop played though found sounds and electronics, its music made by any means necessary. The Horror Punks EP is experimental by nature but still manages to twist out some song-like wonders, its almost like switching on the radio and surfing the airwaves, once in a while a song pops out of the fuzz. This juxtaposition of all out freewheeling experimentation and catchiness brings a joyous energy to the EP that gets under your skin.

http://www.myspace.com/awsts

http://www.myspace.com/gnomefoam

http://www.myspace.com/deconstructivism

http://www.rackandruinrecords.com/

Kirameki – A Fit Of The Jerks (Bearsuit)

Kirameki is a very strange beast indeed I first came across them (them being the oddly named _ & *) yes you read that right it’s a double team collaboration effort made by a guy called _ and a guy called * more on them in good time. Anyway I came across them on the excellent free net label Rack & Ruin Records, I was really taken by the madness that was lurking within. So I was so pleased for them when Bearsuit picked them up for a full album release. A Fit Of The Jerks is that album.

It’s really hard to explain what the hell is going on with Kirameki they shift and move through many styles often within seconds. I guess it’s a cut’n’paste sort of affair a bit like what Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow would cook up if they both went a bit insane one night. You have no idea what so ever what’s coming next it could be a full on spazzed out blast of breakcore beats or a mellow meandering through field recordings and strings. It’s all so playful it just pulls you into its strange little world.

_ is an artist from Japan and that’s about all we know of him really, his partner in crime doesn’t even know his name so to join in the anonymous fun * was born I can only really tell you that he’s from Scotland and is probably just as insane as _. They collaborate entirely over the Internet by sending tracks and files back and forth until some noise comes out. I’m not sure they have ever met at all face to face, it’s an interesting way of working and the results kind of reflect that.

Where to start with highlights? Well it all flows so well even with all the mad twists and terns so the tracks feel less like songs and more like segments, surges and soundtracks to pretty much everything all at once.

Exercises in Style is a deranged almost circus like opening track, you can imagine a ringmaster drunkenly stumbling into the ring to announce the album over the top of this. He doesn’t though that’s all pretty much just in my head. The next track lures you into a blissful jazzy kind of place before things go haywire again with the funky guitar led breakbeat fuzz monster Sayonara, Gangsters. These two really know how to collect sounds and thread them together in such a compelling and interesting way that goes from party bangers to ambient noise.

I always seem to get Drown Yourself in my head for some reason I think it’s the mad breathy pitch-shifting laugh that does it. There is something mad about it that just draws me in. The following number My Cloud is a sublime shoe-gazer full of fuzz and chords that melt into an Aphex Twin style freak out at the end and reminds me of Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches with it’s horse samples.

The noise rock beast Morgan House-Cutter gets me going with its grating, jarring sounds and beautiful twilight chords. Just to confuse things further they throw in a track called Our Last Track part 5 right in the middle, it sounds like a long lost KLF pop trance number being played in the distance followed by a marching band running down a busy road next to a train track, but in a good way of course.

Kirameki really do know how to twist turn and generally scare the shit out of the listener by luring them in with some beautiful soundscapes then bashing them around the head with a techno / gabba beat and running off with a big cheeky grin on their faces. It’s so hard to place this in a single box, it’s like ambient hit’n’run schizophrenic techno beat music or something.

A Fit of the Jerks will not be to everyone’s taste that’s for sure but the ones that find it and cherish it will be rewarded with some wonderful, fun and compelling listens. There is so much inventive sound packed into this album that it really stands up to repeated listens when your in some sort of deranged mood for it.

Kirameki – Exercises In Style

Rack & Ruin have been at it again with the RRR045 release: A collaboration between _ and *. You may have seen my review of the _ LP not long ago; I was damn impressed with its ambient textures and lo-fi-tronic sounds. Well Kirameki brings Japans _ and another symbol based artist this time from the UK known as * together to create something just as wonderful yet entirely different.

Kirameki is a twisted little set of tracks in an electro, break beat, ambient, noise, monster vain. It’s way more intense than the previous _ outing. A kind of trip-hop Aphex Twin style freakery is going on here. The songs stop and start and twist in all directions, sometimes in beautiful ways as in Bunny & The Electric Horsemen or spooky ways like on, well the end of that track. Exercises In Style keeps you on your toe that’s for sure. John Lennon Vs. The Martians has some snippets of a deep and pumping baseline mixed with some space age Morse code and phat drums that break out into drum’n’bass style cutups and even funky house territory all at once. It all reminds me of Coldcut and their Journeys by a DJ mix, which is just sublime and a classic mash-up of so many styles of music it’s unbelievable. The closer Flash Bang Whinny has some distorted electric guitar lines and some ace loops of sound. I love the names of the tracks on Exercises In Style they are full of fun and randomness, just like the music.

Kirameki’s Exercises In Style is a joy to listen to and at only six tracks a quick breeze of inventive sound tomfoolery too. Go and check out the other release featuring _ if you haven’t already here. And I will go and look for some more * stuff and keep on checking out Rack & Ruin Records too. So should you, go on then…

P.S. I have just noticed they have a compilation up for download to with cover versions of some mad stuff ranging from Why? To the Spice Girls. I am on the case downloading that one.

P.P.S. The album _ really unveils its self even more after repeated listens, it’s so intricate and twist so much it’s a joy. Check out what I said about Rack & Ruin here too.

_

You read right the artist is _ and the album is also _. This is another excellent Rack & Ruin Records release (RRR041) to be exact. _ is a very modest Japanese artist who makes a kind of ambient noise that sounds like a soundtrack to a as yet unmade film, maybe by Gus Van Sant about someone bumbling along with beautiful arty shots and not much dialog. Even the tracks are un-named on _ by _ its so aloof yet so beautiful and almost thrown together. _ takes you on a journey through the means of sound and sound alone. A wurr feeds through this album and adds a slightly disconcerting atmosphere through out the 33 tracks. There are chaotic passages of strummed and skeletal instruments, distant hums and field recordings all mixed together to make tapestries of sound. I was even surprised to hear a little grunge riffing on the guitar, ace stuff. To quote _, "You hear this album and will feel boring. Contact me, if the other thing is felt. The 32nd music played the folk song of the place where I live in". The 32nd track is the only named one, it goes by the name of Asadoya Yunta, who is maybe someone who helped out? Maybe. _ English might not be to good and the modest and vague description doesn’t do this release justice at all, _ is damn lovable for it though. I am on tender hooks waiting and listening where _ will take me next, its almost like reading a book and watching the story un-fold in front of you. In-fact it would be a perfect soundtrack to the book The Coma by Alex Garland, in which you aren’t sure if the protagonist is awake or not as we shift from descriptions of reality to complete chaos and day dream worlds. If The Coma were to be made into a film I would quite happily listen to a _ soundtrack for it. _ is part disturbing, part noise, part beautiful and warm _ by _ is wholly absorbing. Check out _’s myspace here and the Rack & Ruin Artist page here. The go and download it for free from them it’s well worth it.