Nikaido Kazumi and Saya from the Tenniscoats team up for the second Nikasaya album, One Summerheim recorded in and around the Guggenheim house in Kobe Shioya. It’s quietly draws you in, with it’s delicate and sparse sensibility. Being without Japanese as a language it is the quality of intonation, and vocal expression conveyed as states of being, that is so admirably wrought, providing the lure.
It is well within the range of soundscape art, with the brief accompaniments of trains, trucks, cicadas and incidental wind and other environmental noise. At times it is seemingly part of the capturing of a recording within the moment, yet the artifice of the album is a constructed naive, honest and playful. It suggests an organic sensibility and would have you believe that you are listening to captured moments. Yet forms play through, the school/lesson mode of Bokura Niwa moulds the sensibility of the child. While other times the characterizations achieved deliver a wide range of vocal ability and depth as in Yuka, Gamaou and Ramadan, expressing tonal ranges and call and response modes.
The albums guitar, piano, harmonium, flute, hand drums contains elements by Ueno Takashi (Tenniscoats) and Lawrence English, whose production and mastering highlight the minimal and environmental nature of the sound. The uniform bright soft quality of the rendering foreground only loses focus to the play of the vocal and guitar elements. Saya’s guitar is akin to listening to the sound of leaves interweaving the structure of the tree in conjunction with the wind. At times you are unaware of its presence, suddenly the whisper of patterned sound mesmerizes. While the form; rendered simplicity mixed with wide-eyed naivety may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it holds these qualities within obvious proficiency that their mask is seemingly visible and absent.
Innerversitysound
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