Ichiko Aoba – ‘Luminescent Creatures’ album review: An evocative piece of austere chamber-folk
THE SKINNY: Anyone who’s been following Japanese impressionistic folk artist Ichiko Aoba will know how much a thematic presence the ocean serves in guiding her work. Acting as a narrative backdrop to 2020’s Windswept Adan and inspired by her field studies in the Ryukyu Islands, Ichiko dives deeper into the sea’s alluring mysteries to uncover where her prior album’s protagonist may have been swept to, exploring the physical and spiritual dualities of terror and beauty that lie at the deepest ocean floors and the innermost recesses of our beings.
Ichiko is gifted with an enchanting knack for drawing you into an exquisitely intimate realm. Her delicate chamber-folk arrangements are no less quietly cinematic on her new album Luminescent Creatures, her haunting guitar and percolating piano drops, swirling together with austere surrealism charged with evocative power despite the minimal arrangements. It’s the textured washes around Ichiko’s work which transport to the aquatic ether, each cut surrounded by floating sonic artefacts and long-lost detritus that superbly illustrates the slow, submersive pull into the album’s spectral ambient tides.
Luminescent Creatures‘ starkly rippling and lapping compositions are held together by Ichiko’s elegiac vocals, earthy and unassuming yet reaching aching levels of emotional soar, never shoving its way to the fore but gorgeous enough to serve as a guiding light deep in the traverse of her pastel psychedelia. One forgets that Ichiko is singing in her native tongue, her vocals hovering in the subaqueous folk-like ancient sirens that transcend language barriers.
Ichiko gleams much from her staid acoustic pieces, yet just as the deep sea beds are littered with a vast array of alien creatures and weird fishes luminously flashing in the dark as the album’s title touches on, the range of hues and colours on hers and co-producer Taro Umebayashi’s palette can begin to feel one-note, a nagging yearning for extra aural dimensions to drive home the mystical traverse Luminescent Creatures otherwise so deftly realises.
Like all albums worth their sea salt, Ichiko’s latest effort’s buried treasure lies waiting to be discovered. While first waves hit with a worry that her muffled folk pieces are skeletal to the point of thin and threadbare, over time and repeated listening, the tender and illustrative energy glows ever more radiant, its paired-down arrangements offering her pieces breathing space, as well pockets of introspective wander amid a work that conjures a slice of surrealism at its most intelligent and inventive.
For fans of: Water nymphs and kelpies
A concluding comment from Suijin: “She’s nicked my ideas!”
Luminescent Creatures track by track
Release date: February 28th | Producer: Ichiko Aoba & Taro Umebayashi | Label: Hermine
‘COLORATURA’: A fantastical unveiling of the oceanic abyss, flowered with lush strings and cascading piano. A fitting passover from Windswept Adan baroque heft. [3.5/5]
‘24° 3′ 27.0″ N, 123° 47′ 7.5″ E’: Lifting an old Hateruma folk piece, Ichiko points to the coordinate’s island lighthouse as as a poetic beacon of light before the album’s deep dive. An interlude which serves its conceptual purpose. [3/5]
‘mazamun’: A lilting number wrapped in whale sirens and intriguing percussive bells, it’s a song which steps aside for Ichiko’s intimate vocals to do the work. Wise, if the overall experience is a little thin. [3/5]
‘tower’: Irresistible washes of Ichiko’s intricate guitar and waltz-like strings buoyed with an utterly wistful melody that pierces and touches a deep rumination. Sublime. [4.5/5]
‘aurora’: A deft showcase of Ichiko’s nimble guitar picking but little else. A stirring piece but treading creative waters. [3/5]
‘FLAG’: A spike of drama prickles underneath the gentle acoustic, evoking choppy waters and fraught dangers. A touch one-note akin to ‘aurora’. [3/5]
‘Cochlea’: Another conceptual interlude with salt in the air. The sea breezes against the wind chimes pleasingly, a pleasing pause amid Ichiko’s narrative arc. [3.5/5]
‘Luciférine’: Magic captured in a bottle here. Like the frayed remnants of a hazy memory, Ichiko weaves gorgeous intermingling strings and harp-like motifs crafting a piece that surges with a strange twist of affirmation and elegy. Stunning. [4.5/5]
‘pirsomnia’: Conjuring impressive levels of stir from minimal arrangements. ‘pirsomina’ exists as an ambient submersion to the album’s thematic conclusions. [3/5]
‘SONAR’: A spatial reach that embraces more familiar creative terrain. A no frills wander that flashes a more traditional compositional character. [3/5]
‘惑星の泪 (Wakusei no Namida)’: An affecting and humble moment of folk purity coated in tingling winds and solemnity. A piece that’s sentimental but never cloying. [4/5]
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