MITCHELL AKIYAMA - Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep

Sonic decompositions for silent moments. Robotic disintegration for an ensemble of clattering machines. Lacerating tears from a sharpened blade. Timbral destruction and sonic decomposition. Mitchell Akiyama is an exceptional composer. His records are mystical and hidden, small and precious, underground and mysterious. From the Désormais project, to the Dakca duo, all the way to Avia Gardner. A myriad of pseudonyms through which he manages to fully express his inspiration.

This record is magical, secluded, constantly pricking us with delirious sonic contours, teasing us with imperceptible embroidery, tiny counterpoints.

"Strategies For Combatting Invisibility" is a continuous coming and going of an indecisive, rambling, hesitant rhythm. Strings intertwine, little bells, click and cuts, ethereal lines, the unravelling of a far-off world. A soundtrack for a machine in the process of being destroyed, whose reflected images are disturbed and incomprehensible.

"But Promise Me" is a double bass leaving lacerating notes, booming nocturnal schizophrenias. Sampled handclaps, deformed acousticity, fragments of disturbing pleasantness. An intimate, warm, priceless flow. A setting for a solitary room, faintly lit by an ancient lamp.

"Full Then Felt" is a whirlwind of glitch dust, immersed in an infinite, dark abyss, a rumbling crawl of a sea of souls. An accordion embroiders thunderous strokes, strings are plucked, pure, precise chords repeat themselves. A sonic setting for a dark afternoon, a solitary living room, only the music saturating the space, jolting emotions, interchangeable sensations.

"Your Distance Kept" is a boundless expanse. A guitar seems to play from thousands of miles from our ears, extraneous intrusions bastardize notes already contaminated in themselves, a drone is a coil that slips into every imaginable crevice, volume peaks are a rock-crusher in action. "Through Fall And Flicker" is a small conceptual game in which concrete noises are mashed up, broken down, shattered. Birdsong embellishes the landscape.

The title track is an exceptional piece. A transfigured, corrosive jazz. The sparkling squawk of a jubilant array of wind instruments, the gleaming hiss of an abstract sonic grime, pauses charged with pathos, the mystical and precise dictation of a solemn xylophone. Sounds suited to moments of pleasurable intensity, instances of pure stasis. "Suggestions For Walking Alone" is a small sketch in which unbridled imagination converges with a knack for chiseling moments of pure stillness, painting rare and priceless atmospheres. "Contrapuntal Lung Apparatus" is a little march in which the rhythm is broken down and worn away, emphasized and repressed. Joyful strumming, elusive loops, minimal percussion, a shining, dazzling interstellar centrifuge.

"Overhead Then Exit" is once again an intense, progressive sinking into a self-contained world. The fitful clatter of string instruments, decompositions that often overlay random, aleatory notes, distinct and blurred. Ambient for mechanical little hearts, in love with wrong notes. "With Her Shadow Cast In Doubt" is the most conventional piece. Wind instruments, guitars, piano, and varied percussion again come together to create a sonic maelstrom of enveloping completeness. Very few digital manipulations, just a classicizing spirit that hangs in mid-air, leaving us petrified.

"Ghost Storms" closes with a very minimal, lo-fi, deliberately muted approach. Stories written with a firm, decisive hand, framed by a macabre sonic aura, in a forest of cypresses, giant boulders at the corners, leaves scattered in every remaining scrap of space.

A multifaceted record that is never repetitive. Varied, priceless, steeped in innovation. Mitchell Akiyama confirms himself as a leading figure in glitch electronica, also in light of his latest (splendid) record with the Désormais project.

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30/04/2026