Nobukazu Takemura - Hoshi No Koe
(Thrill Jockey)
Kyoto's Nobukazu Takemura saved up the more abstract odds n' ends from his
Child's View project and released them in 1999 as Scope. Though the album's
uneven blend of melodic naivete, rampant glitchery, and carefully cultivated
Steve Reich-like repetition never quite gels, Scope served as a Stateside
calling card for the talented Takemura. Conceived as an album (or, rather,
as a pair of albums, along with the concurrently released Sign), Hoshi No
Koe ("Notes from a Starry Sky") grants Takemura a less fragmented canvas,
letting his wonderment find flower in baroque arrangements of
instrumentation and warm electronica. A squirrelly fantasia in vibes, tones,
and beats, "Anemometer" taps into the uniquely juvenescent joie de vivre
that made Takemura's Japanese Child & Magic and Music for Issey Miyake Men
releases so captivating. Pre-album single "Sign" is a fantastic progression
for Takemura, smoothing over jittery, burbling electro-pop with cooing,
Vocoder-treated vocals and a hummable (well, almost) tune. Likewise, lilting
Bach-via-Nick, Jr. pastorales "White Sheep and Small Light" and "Stairs in
Stars" mark steps toward accessibility, while the deceptive twinkle-twinkle
simplicity of "One Day" and "In the Room-Roof-Wood" belies an instinctive
feel for the weight of silence and the liquid quality of melody. Even the
discordant abstraction of "A Chrysalis"--winking in and out of harmonic
soundness like firefly light--and the disc's interspersed exercises in
digital dissolution ("Honey Comb," "Trampoline," "The Voice of a Fish")
evidence a gentleness that is sincerely inviting and playful rather than
perfunctory. Takemura may take pride in a "child's view," but the sweetly
embraceable Hoshi No Koe proves that his musical perspective is ageless.
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