Chain DLK (.COM)

Since the moment when Taylor Deupree’s 12K seems to have walk out on the end to itself of merely abstract ambient in order to make waves in this stylistical pool by means of organic and narrative hooks, this label is managing to dope many music lovers with authentic masterpieces and this third album by Illuha, the suprising collaborative project by Tomoyoshi Date and Corey Fuller, could reasonably belong to such a category. “Akari” could be considered the third evolutive step of these Tokyo-based musicians as “Shizuku”, their first release, was mainly recorded in the US with final intergrations which got separately added by each musician, the second stunning release – “Interstices” – got recorded during live sessions, while this record has finally been recorded in a studio recording in Japan, where these guys had a wider sonic equipment at their disposal in the bargain. In accordance with the title of the album – “Akari” is the Japanese word for “light” as well as the name of JAXA infrared satellite -, you could almost feel that each track unfold gradual permutations from darker sonorities to cathartic expansions, but they follow such an ascensional curve by means of delicate interplays between acoustic and electronic instruments, which brings ambient closer to the boundless electroacoustic field. The scientific connection of the titles of each track let foretaste the essence of each suite, which almost seems to the intellectual delight of discovery and knowledge where any single sonic element sounds like interconnected with other ones before it reaches its emotional acme. Winsome sonic entities got psyched out by delicate piano strikes on the initial “Diagrams of the Physical Interpretation of Resonance” before they fade out over a sort of cosmic breeze, a certain inquietude got rendered by the solitary contemplation which occasionally seems to transmute into a deep mental absorption by surrounding natural elements on the following “Vertical Staves of Line Drawings and Pointillism”, it smells like a gradual renaissance on the breathtaking daintiness of “The Relationship of Gravity to the Persistence of Sound”, which reaches the highest level of purity on “Structures Based on the Plasticity of Sphere Surface Tension” before percolating with reinvigorated strenght over seemingly flat land on the final “Relative Hyperbolas of Amplified and Decaying Waveform”…