Friday 24 September 2021

Bite-sized Bits 09

Mary Pratt - Smears of Jam, Lights of Jelly (2007)


Another reminder for myself because if I've learned anything over the past year and a bit of Bandcamp Fridays is that wishlisting something to get 'soon' is quite often a lie. Still, here we have a recent addition to that ever growing list, the solo project(s) of Ken Tanaka of Hyakkei. Hyakkei were already on my wishlist of stuff to get as I felt like dipping my toes back into the post-rock world again, and another one I was kind of surpised to find on Bandcamp actually.

Discogs is a little misleading if you go to Ken's page - it doesn't list any of his four solo albums that you can find alongside Hyakkei's works. I checked them out expecting more good post-rock stuff, just solo, and I was half-right. Stealing a line from slightly stilted press piece on the official YT upload of this single - "... a sound approach such as post-rock and electronica, what comes to mind is a nostalgic and warm Japanese Landscapes." which is pretty dead on actually.

A mixture of acoustic and electronic a la some of The Flashbulb's stuff, it's a very pleasant listen. Really the closest comparison I could make would be the similar vibe that The Knife were rocking on their debut and on some of their soundtrack work; think tracks like 'Vegetarian Restaurant' but with a little more electronics going on. As you might have guessed from the title this one is very indulgent piece, loaded with anthemic guitar licks, it just absolutley screams 'indie'. Perhaps a touch generic, but I like it enough. To use the analogy I've mentioned before: sometimes you just need a bit of comfort food, and this is the audio equivalent of that for me.



-CVF

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