I first encountered Tokyo-based electronic producer Yoshiteru Himuro’s work back in 2004, when the now sadly departed Couchblip label released his Clear Without Items album, an impressive and diverse debut that showed him incorporating post-IDM, glitch-hop and chiptune influences into a coherent and compelling whole. In the intervening years he’s also continued to steadily release music under the Himuro moniker, with 2005′s Mild Fantasy Violence on Zod being followed by his most recent 2007 collection Welcome Myself on his own Tangram Disk label. Three years on, this latest download-only EP 4P on the Bedroom Research netlabel sees Himuro offering up four new tracks that lean distinctly towards fractured leftfield hiphop and wonky sounds. Opening track ‘Pay For What’ starts off in similar territory to the likes of Dorian Concept, with loping, off-centre hiphop rhythms providing a treacherous undercarriage to bleeping, gamecore synth effects that almost seem in danger of sliding right off the backbeat, just before things break through a sampled Japanese phone message into the kind of lush, layered synth grooves you’d associate with the likes of Mux Mool. By comparison, ‘Password Lost’ sees Himuro sending cut-up vocal fragments ricocheting off a crushed-up sounding backing of Nintendo snares, ping-ponging bass kicks and ride cymbals in what’s easily the most chiptune-oriented moment here, before ‘Pointing Answer’ brings forth the dark synth grooves as distorted electronics buzz and churn beneath clattering, broken electro grooves and mutated G-funk synth riffs. Finally, ‘Play Until Dying’ closes things on a very similar tip to the more frenetic and rave-tinged areas of Flying Lotus’ recent detail-packed Cosmogramma, as clattering drum breaks struggle to keep pace against speeding analogue synth riffs and and spasmically fluttering snares. Extremely impressive all around – and you can download the entire release for free at Bedroom Research!
Chris Downton
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