Performed largely on piano and electronics, the selections on Afterglow, a collaboration between Akira Kosemura and Haruka Nakamura, provide a rich, resonating meld of opulent and bell-like tones. From here, the ambience of the release widens into a stately panorama of obscure and half-submerged gestures: shards of electronic splinters that sound like the links of a chain uncoiling, rumbling undertow’s, and low end sublimities on the piano, often twinning the aura with the non-homogenous.
It’s this element of the recording that allows it to ring out as a joyful vortex of sound, as something more than pretty ornamentation. Themes crystalize, then undergo serial changes of state as pungent chords blend or clash. What is more, the set as a whole is well measured. The duo shift from hypnotic ambiences, to restrained contemplative pieces, to swirling, insistent yet centreless expressive motifs. In so doing, the terms of the albums development are discernible, and its changes sound true.
Take a track such as “Graf”, for instance: here, melodic flurries arise out of digital squits, tinging the air with a lovely sense of longing and faint hope. Indeed, although a few works fail to achieve any manner of distinction, many ghosts of melody hover in the sinewy webs of this delightfully expressive and genuine work.
Max Schaefer
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