Tatsuya Yoshida is one of these music mavericks that have
legitimated labels such as Planet Mu or Rephlex. After
a stunning and very clever first album, Dummy
Variations, released on Planet Mu just over a
year ago, Yoshida returns with another little corker of
an album. Inspired by Yokohama’s Dreamland theme park,
this album is yet another eclectic collection of weird
and beautiful music, sitting nicely between Aphex Twin’s
Richard D James’s cascading drill’n’bass and the more
grandiose atmosphere of Mike Paradinas’s Royal Astronomy.
Don’t get mistaken though; Yoshida is everything but a
plagiarist. Quite the opposite in fact as he develops
his own musical language by bringing elements of pure
pop, raw funk and traditional Japanese music together
and blending the lot in a magical mayhem.
The Dreamland theme park was one of Yoshida’s favourite
haunts. Old fashioned and deserted by the traditional
hordes of tourists, the park eventually closed down recently,
but the ambience of the funfair survives in Joseph Nothing’s
music. Even more than on his previous album, Yoshida plays
with atmospheres, constantly overlapping beats and melodies,
changing direction, or so it seems, all the way through.
Nothing is ever static in his music. Alternating between
short and longer tracks, Yoshida also alternates fast-forwarding
and more introvert moments, giving his audience no time
to get used to any particular incidence. It is not to
say that there is no consistency at all here as the man
remains firmly in control of his wild machinery by putting
great care into each little melody and orchestration.
The way his music comes together is unique, and, rare
thing in electronic music, extremely humoristic. In turn
intense and swift or delicate and cheerful, Yoshida’s
enchanted creations display his considerable talent to
its full extend. The exuberant enjoyment that he gets
out of playing music is palpable everywhere, most of all
on Wind May Blows Nobody, a funk-meets-new wave-meets-heavy
metal joke, Fat Baby, where raw funk history
is rewritten in two an a half minutes, Secret Calm
Life, which sounds like an outtake of a bad Italian
western movie soundtrack, the pinball bonanza of Spiral
Cloud, or even when he wonders on Boards
Of Canada territory wearing flip-flops, as on the
magnificent Still. But the best moment of the album
is to be found when the Dreamland Idle Orchestra
makes an appearance in full formation, parading in the
streets of the theme park, once again filled with kids
laughing. The alarmingly simple melody of Exhausted
Marching Island proves to be the most unlikely manifestation
of excellence, and, despite its slightly melancholic tone,
is a vibrant homage to the spirit of funfairs.
Disconcerting, this album definitely is, but nothing less
would be expected from this fertile talent. Tatsuya Yoshida
proves once again than variety is not necessarily a bad
thing, and by cramming as much emulations of genres as
he can into forty minutes, he maintains the interest of
the listener while developing the most poetic of idioms.
4.5/5 |
