Written by Joseph Diehl
Coming off of her critically acclaimed previous album Windswept Adan, Ichiko Aoba has released her first official studio album in nearly 5 years. Serving as a spiritual successor to Windswept Adan, of which the closing track shares the title of this recent release. I took the time to listen to the track “Luminescent Creatures,” which ends with about 2 minutes of just the sounds of waves gently crashing and bubbling against each other before listening to the new album, and it’s clear that this is meant to act as a sequel to the previous work. Now we’ve drifted away from the shores of Adan and continue our journey through the vast oceans that surround it, discovering what lies below the surface of the water.
The album begins with one of the more melodically complex tracks “COLORATURA”, where Aoba shows that the emphasis on strings and flute melodies will be significant on this new project. Around the 2/3rds mark, the song switches to a more dialed back melody, letting frequent collaborator, Taro Umebayashi, really shine on the acoustic piano. Up next is the only track on the album not written by Aoba and Umebayashi, “24° 3′ 27.0″ N 123° 47′ 07.5″ E”, if you search for the coordinates in this track you will be led to a lighthouse at the center of the island of Hateruma, the southernmost inhabited island of Japan. This track is a version of a folk song only taught orally by locals of Hateruma, which Aoba frequently visited over the last decade. Treating it as a gift from the people, it’s feature here shows us that this album is one of her most personal yet as we reflect on so many cosmic and interpersonal questions that she lays out in the lyrics over these songs. The third track on Luminescent Creatures is what I would probably pin as my favorite one, “Mazamun” feels so close and personal it’s almost suffocating. Aoba’s vocals feel so incredibly isolated, we have gone well below the surface and in that everlasting darkness of the ocean, she can still be heard loud and clear. The production setup lends itself to this feeling by having the mic so close to Umebayashi’s celesta that you can quite literally hear his hands on the keys. Aoba is feeling just as lost in this vast expanse as we feel in the track detailing,
“I am lost
In somebody else’s story,
Accumulating
Memories and
Tower”.
The final verse on this track sets the tone for the rest of the album where memories of Japan and it’s folklore come and go likes waves in the ocean.
A couple tracks later we have reached “Aurora”, another personal highlight of the album for me. As a fan of Aoba’s work for a long time, this track felt incredibly familiar. Stripped back from the more complex melodies of the first parts of the album, this track is a return to form for her. Just her voice and the nylon guitar strings to guide us along, reminding us that even though we may not be able to understand the words of Ichiko Aoba, that does not matter. Her voice acting as just another instrument will still invoke such a strong reaction in the listener. Released as a single after the album announcement, we eventually make our way to “Luciférine”, which features arguably some of the most vibrant and complex instrumentation in her body of work so far. The phonolite strings, harp, flute, percussion, acoustic piano, Aoba’s guitar, and vocals come all together to form this utterly sweeping orchestration, still feeling so incredibly intimate, where we can hear the hammer on the metal of the piano whenever the song decides to grace us and let the piano take the forefront. This track’s piano melody playing so tender yet infectious, it hasn’t left my head since listening to it the first time on release. If you were to give this album a chance and listen to just one track, I would recommend this one.
Luminescent Creatures still reminds so many listeners as to why Aoba’s music feels so comforting. It doesn’t matter that many who listen cannot translate the lyrics, the feelings will always remain within the music. We can hear her reaching out, yearning for answers to the large existential questions that make up humanity looking for answers in the vast openness of the the universe. But this album feels so incredibly different from the rest of Aoba’s work, towards the very end of the album we have the track “SONAR”, which doesn’t even feature Aoba’s guitar playing which she has grown so acclaimed from. Instead, Umebayashi once again is at the wheel of the ship, serenading us with the piano we’ve grown so accustomed to. Also performing on the synthesizer, which sneaks up on the track, sounding like raindrops on the ocean surface. It is initially quiet and graceful, but quickly becomes the standout feature of the song, leaving us to wonder why we didn’t cherish it more once it’s gone by the end of the track. In a similar manner to the previous album, the final track on Luminescent Creatures, the ambience closes us out. This time, the wind is all that remains. We have drifted far away from the the shores of familiarity on Windswept Adan and now at the end of this new album, all we are left with is the open world, with wind guiding us to wherever we will find ourselves next.
