Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Japan's multi-instrumentalist singer/composer Aoba steps with subtle beauty between electronic ambience and a kind of retro-chamber folk which finds her simultaneously with one foot in the past and the other confidently walking into the unknowable and mythic future.
In 2020 she released Windswept Adan (a collaboration with Taro Umebayashi) which was a gorgeously ambitious concept album bringing in harp, a string quartet, flute and so on alongside her ethereal voice.
It was a shift from some of her previous work and received very favourable reviews last year when it began to trickle into attention outside of the cognoscenti or her homeland following.
Certainly there were pieces which sailed perilously close to New Age music but for the most part it was a weightless and enchanting album.
Here at the Bunkamura Orchard Hall is the live rendition of that album -- with encore pieces -- where her voice hangs in the respectful silence of the hall.
Unless you speak the lanuage you wn't understand a word but somehow that doesn't matter much because the instrumental passages are so engaging.
Quiet and, although some may find it too delicate and evanescent, quite lovely.
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You can hear this album at Spotify here
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