Once more, UNKNOWN ME leave it up to you to decide whether they are deadly serious about their 21st century take on kankyō ongaku or they are taking the piss. For eight years and across four albums, three of which were released through Not Not Fun (maybe the clue is in the name), the group consisting of Yakenohara, P-RUFF, and H. Takahashi on the production side and Osawa Yudai as art director has dabbled in the cheesy tropes of Japanese environmental music with a vast array of synths and other machines, making music that felt joyfully ambivalent: Is this not yesterday’s sonic prozac transported into a new age in which consumerism is even more rampant and people are even more desperate for it?
The questionable origin story of »Bitokagaku« – allegedly, these tracks were commissioned by Shiseido much like Hiroshi Yoshimura’s »A・I・R (Air In Resort)« exactly 40 years ago—seems to indicate just that. Then again, the music isn’t exactly a carbon copy of the bubble economy sound, but on “Bitokagaku”—reportedly produced entirely in the box, though also that seems doubtful—it is more clearly indebted to the 1990s than before: Opener »A Rainbow in Meditative Air« seems to quote Aphex Twin’s »Xtal« briefly with its hissing hi-hats, if someone ran »The Universe in Ore (Paradise Mix)« through an analogue tape it would pass as a very solid Boards of Canada tracks, »Retreat Beats« is peak IDM, and so on. Are those deliberate references or accidental rapprochements with certain schools of musical thought while the core trio is busy trying to figure out its own formula? Also that is never really clear, which makes “Bitokagaku” an even stranger, literally more wonderful record—this is music that keeps you guessing, keeps you occupied. Very un-kankyō ongaku-like.
