Koji Asano has produced some ugly music in his time and with August is Fall, his 49th album for his own Solstice label, he’s made some more of it. However Asano releases are always at least interesting, his prolific verbosity, single mindedness and refusal to articulate making even his most unlistenable productions enigmatic.
August is Fall comprises three long tracks, each around 20 minutes. Like his recent releases a similar mood dominates, each track a different take on the album’s ‘core sound’, a bit like Satie’s Gymnopedies for noise. The theme here is dull metallic grind, sustained, staggered, and subtly tweaked over long durations. ‘I’ is possibly the least approachable, due to short dropouts, like a scratched CD, which interrupt the screech, before widening out to prolonged white noise, lurching bumps and beehive frenzy. In ‘II’ the industrial whine is heard through an open window of a ship in a gale, a circular saw battling strong winds. ‘III’ is the most musical, a more formal exercise in digital signal meltdown, slow waves of crackle echoing in an empty tunnel, hints of musical tones clogged, like old hair, in a dirty drain.
