Antwarps was reared on the stage of youth (Yasuhiko Fukuzono was all of twenty-one years of age when he wove its fourteen tracks together, which originally appeared on two limited cd-r releases from U-Cover), but it’s languorous live-ember eyes betray a piquancy of maturity in mixing up broad brushstrokes with the finer details in his music. The album has a solid rhythmic foundation built from a patchwork of electronic flutter and scrunch. Fukuzono gravitates towards rhythms which are both regular and random, which are occasionally interrupted by miniscule tics and whirrs, and which remain exuberant and unpredictable throughout, like hiccups that shock upon arrival. As a thick, gurgling soup of excessive sounds is adumbrated, simple melodies flit undemonstratively in or around the spacious web of guitar, keyboard, harmonium, and synths, or else they fight against its current and have a subtly disorienting effect, without ever disrupting the grand structures.
The remix of Lang is also a notable effort. Ulrich Schnauss, Kettel, The Remote Viewer, Manual, and Epic 45, amongst others, make for a well-chosen clan. They sufficiently vary the pace of the music – in fact, more so than does Fukuzono on his lonesome – and break up and charge its sometimes leaden plod with dramatic eruptions and nebulous interludes. In their elastic take on the theme material, the players manage a sonic evocation of place that is oftentimes thoroughly convincing. The beau geste of the album belongs to Schnauss. Structurally simple, elemental yet contemporary, his superimposed layers of synthesizer tones and distant chiming percussion shift in and out of focus, as spangling guitar and some silvery treble chirruping lift it up into an infinite sky that is warm, meditative, and enveloping. At the same time, it’s only one instance in work dotted with potent, measured performances of this intricately structured yet compelling music.
Max Schaefer
