Eiko Ishibashi is a productive and equally versatile artist. On Drag City she has released jazzy pop as a singer and songwriter, but also made noise with noise legends like K2 or Merzbow. She also collaborates regularly with full-time weirdo Jim O’Rourke and publishes abstruse experiments or commissioned work of all kinds via her Bandcamp site. »Hyakki Yagyō« is her first solo studio album since she delivered melancholic piano pop on Drag City with the poetically titled »The Dream My Bones Dream«, and the musical contrast could hardly be greater, although like its predecessor, this album also deals with aspects of Japanese history. However, this is not done in a radio-friendly song format, but with two long sound collages, each of which reaches 20 minutes. Where approaching hardly seems to be the right word, because rather the two pieces drift from one sound event to the next moment of condensation. This often sounds spooky and is meant to do so: »Hyakki Yagyō« was created in the context of an exhibition on supernatural narratives in Japan, ghost stories hinted at with flute and string sounds, which enter into a disparate dialogue with synth bubbling, water splashing and electro-acoustic effects, which are repeatedly accompanied by whispered, doubled lines of poetry from the 15th century. The spring nests at dawn / the summer melts into phantoms”. An evocative motto of strange beauty and thus programmatic for an album that brings wonderfully wonderful sounds into flowing motion.
Hyakki Yagyo
