With Ghostly Garden Japanese producer Chihei Hatakayama has produced his most accomplished album yet. Apparently based on existent pre-used sound files, the results are heavier and denser than the flickering sine waves and clipped guitar(-sourced) tones that made up earlier albums like Saunter and Minima Moralia. The sinuous, web-like fragility of those works has been thickened up, condensed into less dynamic, but far more involving, slabs of droning ambient wash.
Despite the lack of overt action, Hatakeyama’s melodic sensibility is as evident as ever, as gaseous clouds of lightly groaning hiss caress the ears, keeping listeners numbly transfixed to his slow moving purr. With the turquoise cover, in addition to sonic similarities, Ghostly Garden reminds me most of the like-minded Biosphere’s most static album Autour de la Lune, his paean to the lunar landings (via Eno’s Apollo). There’s a similar patience to set things up and just let them be, yet Hatakeyama’s music here is prettier, more alluring. Even tracks light ‘Slight Trail’, which throbs with the menace of Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, remains darkly seductive, its industrial hints highlighting the bucolic beauty lurking throughout the album. From Autour de la Lune Biosphere would go on to produce the stunning Dropsonde; we can hope Hatakeyama follows a similar path.
Joshua Meggitt
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