KASHIWA DAISUKE - 5 dec.

The electronic school of young Japanese composition enthusiasts boasts talents of boundless inspiration. Coming from a stimulating and vital cultural environment, this crop of young artists includes members with widely different backgrounds. Kashiwa Daisuke has a cross-disciplinary background, able to blend a pronounced electronic soul with one of the most vivid inventive spirits around. A classical streak is the common denominator of this jagged digital-art formula, where the touch of a piano note or the smudge of an out-of-phase violin can be a decisive flourish.

“5 dec.” is a blender in short-circuit, mixtures of deranged breakbeat take shape only to warp into a strange, destabilizing and disorienting form of chamber music. Crystalline digital frameworks drip with melancholy and desolation (the mottled textures of “About Moonlight”, blends of piano melodies on “Silver Moon”); the more driving passages never fall into the trap of rhythmic monotony, instead shifting compositional scheme again and again (the uncontainable spirit of “Aqua Regia”, an icy flow of tones on “Bogus Music”).

The shadows of an impalpable drone are furrowed by gentle, soft structures (the apparent insubstantiality of “Broken Device” and “Red Moon”); a cascade of notes woven together with a skilled hand reveals an artist with clear end goals in mind (solid idm structures on “Silver Moon”, the brilliant hardcore approach to the art of cut'n'paste on “Requiem”). Amid sharp flashes of acidic industrial music (the assault of mottled tones on “Taurus Prelude”, the cacophonous finale of “Beatiful Sunday”) sits an episode with almost pop overtones (the techno-pop shades of “Black Lie, White Lie”).

Without ever losing the thread of a theater teetering on the brink of collapse, Kashiwa manages to pull off a record that is, at times, exhilarating. “5 dec.” earns a place of distinction thanks to its varied, accessible and freshly conceived approach. At this point, the next step to take is a decisive gathering of ideas to mount the definitive assault on the Western electronic music scene.

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23/08/2009