ICHIKO AOBA - Luminescent Creatures

It's been said before, but it's worth repeating once again: Ichiko Aoba's art manipulates time with disarming simplicity, moving in and out of it with the suppleness of a snake, picking up fragments of old conversations as if months and years hadn't passed in the meantime. We last left the Japanese singer-songwriter grappling with the winds sweeping across the imagined scenery of Adan Island, and that's exactly where we pick things up again, specifically from the final track of that collection. It's to those "Luminescent Creatures", the invertebrates that populated the island's shores and that Ichiko has had the chance to observe in recent years during her long dives off the Ryukyu archipelago, that the Japanese singer-songwriter dedicates her eighth album (ninth, if you count the soundtrack for the film "Amiko"). For them, the musician composes a new chapter in her magical songbook, a passage that doesn't disown the stylistic updates and sonic expansions of the previous album, but condenses them into a more streamlined experience, a concentrate of enchantment that, like a mirror, reflects all the wonder and mystery of underwater life.

So even those without the means can dive with Aoba into the warm waters of the Japanese archipelago: they'll be welcomed by a constant sense of wonder, the flow of lives that almost entirely elude our understanding. In this sense, the elliptical approach to songwriting found on her early albums finds a perfect counterpart in the richer arrangements adopted in her most recent work.

Not that there's any shortage of bare-bones voice-and-guitar passages, yet the album benefits from its lush chamber/orchestral openings, which amplify the sense of awe inspired by the depths of the ocean: "Coloratura", placed at the start, perfectly fulfills its role as an introduction, pirouetting across the waves with deft flute and string passages, an overture whose enchanted elegance doesn't land too far from the cinematic warmth of Joe Hisaishi. Echoing that same jubilation are the waltzing phrases of "Tower", a romance that lights up the deepest blue, and above all the precious arpeggios of "Luciférine", where the gentle character of the Japanese songwriter's melodies reaches an even higher degree of transparency.

Light and darkness, the archetypal duality par excellence, find in Aoba's music a perfect vessel to stage their struggle, along with all the weight of meaning that struggle carries with it. Nothing could suit this better than a maritime setting, with the sudden changes of scene that underwater life can offer; it falls to the artist to play with details (the celesta of her companion Taro Umebayashi turning to crystal around the vocal line of "Mazamun"), to blow a lively breeze over gentle folk harmonies ("Aurora") and then whisk it away in an instant, letting emotion speak for itself ("Flag" and its faint bossa-nova streaks). And emotion always arrives, charged with that force which surrender to nature always summons: the task of a keen eye is to nurture it rather than judge it, to make it one with its surrounding context, an ambience as fluid as it is imposing, undeniable.

In the closing tracks of "Luminescent Creatures" this could not be made clearer: the voice sometimes loses its words (the delicate synths accompanying "Pirsomnia"), entrusting itself to the vastness of the surrounding space to illustrate the most complete submission to the designs of creation ("Sonar").

Far from any form of urban chaos, with the elements suggesting fresh inspiration, Ichiko Aoba becomes guardian of an environment as fragile as it is majestic, ready to reveal itself to those with the proper courage. A gesture of submission might well help.

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24/03/2025