If you wanted a perfect example of an early 21st century, bedroom symphony, global village, post-everything, hybrid pop to send up on the next Voyager space explorer, then you’d need look no farther than Ent’s Welcome Stranger. Constructed entirely by Nagasaki native Atsuhie Horie, aside from live drums delivered by Takanori Ohita, in the downtime between his outings as frontman for his BritPop influenced Straightener, the album does everything you would expect from an up to date, technologically savvy multi-instrumentalist.
The glitched up intro for ‘No Tone’ which begins the album, sets the scene clearly. Snatches of guitar burst, static fizz, some IDM-esque rhythmic sounds and then a Strawberry Fields mellotron as early lead instrument. The track then builds, layering piano, synths and overdriven acoustic drums, building to the grand finále that undoubtedly resides in the art rock shadow of Radiohead. It’s epic and intimate by turns and quite engaging. The album progresses thusly over the course of 7 tracks and bonus added remixes. ‘Girl’ heads into more dreampop territory, ‘Silver Moment’ is based on an 8-bit electronica foundation, with requisite guitar grandeur as it progresses. Grainy field recordings inhabit ‘Will’ and ‘Farewell Dear Stranger’, the former’s booming noise of movement in a corridor setting the rhythmic template for the track, the latter creating atmosphere with rain. The 3 remixes, from Kettel, Near The Parenthesis and Helios don’t stray too far from the original template and flow seamlessly to round out the album.
Welcome Stranger is well produced to a fault, with all the right balances of atmosphere, grit and shine. It’s component parts are wonderful to hear. Yet, as hinted at, it leaves me with a feeling of unease. In being such a typical example of where the fringes of post-rock currently reside, it also indicates that the mould is well and truly set and Ent is placing himself firmly within it. If you’ve listened to anything in this ballpark in the last 10 years, you will know exactly what to expect around every corner. There is little by way of surprise or something to define Ent’s sound as his own. It is every post-rock, post-glitch moment distilled into one generic work. Another problem which I can’t help but be distracted by is Horie’s vocals. I would so much prefer to hear his voice in his native Japanese than an extremely strained English pandering to perceived target markets in the U.S. and the rest of the English speaking world. Surely the post-modern has moved far enough along for an artist not to have to resort to this sort of impersonation.
The component bits of Welcome Stranger are undoubtedly beautifully crafted. But aiming to emulate and exemplify an already established mode is surely not an aim high enough. As soon as I am no longer listening to the album, it recedes back into the wash of generic post-rock in my memory, from where, I dare say, it will struggle to re-emerge of its own accord.
Adrian Elmer
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