AUS - Chalybeate

The stay of aus (the Edo-period-obsessed artist and producer Yasuhiko Fukuzono) in Ikaho, a traditional Japanese hot spring resort, has produced a highly distinctive album. A translation of the installation "Ikaho surroundings – Ambient Onsen", the record recreates the experience of the onsen ryokan, the typical Japanese inn nestled in nature, complete with a thermal pool in which to relax and purify oneself.

An enormous amount of field recording work has bottled up the folkloric spirit of the Ikaho area; bursts of water, submerged tones, vegetal and atmospheric textures, and subterranean morphologies work in concert to paint a delicate, discreet sonic ecosystem, capable of opening up vast unspoiled vistas without ever breaking the intimacy of the experience.

The recording tapes were treated like living organisms, left to decay for a year in the open air of Ikaho and then recovered and digitally reworked by Craig Tattersall, at The Humble Bee studios in Manchester. The imperfections, the grain, the physical marks left by time and the elements that acted on the tape have given the sound greater roughness and stratification; a distance and density that enrich the work, dressing it in the solemnity of ritual and the untouchable fragility of an ancient sanctuary.

The musical bed on which these sounds act and unfold has an ecstatic lightness, a gentle electronics rippled by the muted touch of stringed instruments, which, without ever losing composure, display sweet, rarefied textures, at times set apart, at times present to sustain the enchanted atmosphere.

The tracks, so meticulously constructed, resonate and expand, evoke, and envelop the listener's body, presenting themselves as physical elements, indistinguishable from the steam, the humidity, the warmth of immersion.

"Below The Surface We Shimmer And Shine" is built around the faint clangs and tinkling of furin (the traditional Japanese summer wind chimes). "I Follow A Barren Path Across The Old Mountain" cradles the rushing of water and the blowing of wind together with human footsteps that fade into the sonic weave. The shamisen (the Japanese three-stringed instrument) of "Blushing Copper Light" invites a tense, noh theatre-like contemplation; while the deep resonances of "Specular Ochre" prepare for the coming evening in the darker, more submerged outcomes of "In Dark Hours Your Colours Glow Their Brightest" and "The Mulberry And The Stone", in which the tape degradation heightens the sense of darkness.

The soothing "Juniper" and "We Flow Ever Downwards, Until We Blossom" immerse the finale in a silvery, nocturnal, meditative environment; the sound of the wind chimes and the hiss of steam, accompanied by an orphic piano, calm the water into a gentle current and guide toward a new dimension of serenity.

An aristocratic, extremely formal ambient album, whose plastic tension recalls the lyrical and aesthetic atmospheres of Yasunari Kawabata, forever suspended between tragedy and ecstasy, sensuality and restraint.

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05/04/2026