Ametsub
Linear Cryptics

Delicate, Crackling, yet Profound Japan

Ametsub: for most people, this name means nothing, and it's a shame because those who have the fortune to listen to this album in its entirety know from the first listen that it is a true pearl of electronic music. It's hard to find comparisons: Ametsub resembles nothing or almost nothing. IDM, Glitch, avant-garde are all adjectives that well describe the sounds of this album, but the whole is more than the sum of its individual parts, and the perfect harmony of these tracks, the delicate and crystalline melodies that blend into the electronic counterpoint of glitches and light rhythms (like a drum and bass created from crackling bubbles) are difficult to categorize into a single genre.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has described Ametsub as the heir of electronic music, and if he says so (for those who don't know, try searching for "Yellow Magic Orchestra" to discover the Japanese Kraftwerk), you can believe it.

In fact, those who have listened to the collaborations between Sakamoto and Alva Noto will immediately understand that this album is the realization of what that project had in potential: loops composed of piano fragments skipped at absurd speeds yet well assembled and never predictable within the rhythmic texture of the track (as happens in "Artland"); captivating, delicate melodies that fit perfectly into an extremely complex yet highly enjoyable and elegant rhythmic structure at the same time (for example in "2 Cats").

The piano is indeed a markedly present element in this work: filtered, deconstructed, rewound, in loop form, or skipped, it is recognized almost only by the timbre and not by its classic melodic functionalities (John Cage would surely approve). The harmonic structure is never predictable and banal, evoking the best jazz ballads.

Yet perhaps the most beautiful moment of the entire work ("The Solo To Untamed Place") has no traces of piano: two reverberating clarinets that slowly dialogue accompanied by an organ, while a highly changing and fast rhythmic structure underneath makes the melody stand out even more; it's a moment of rare beauty: light and delicate like a watercolor on rice paper yet deep and intense like a psalm veiled with nostalgia.

The cover, elegant but rich, full of colors yet soft, perfectly reflects the richness and extreme complexity of this masterpiece, which manages to be neither excessive nor pretentious but rather harmonious and well-balanced in the infinite shades it aims to evoke.

A debut work that takes the best IDM and glitch music have offered electronic music in recent years, bringing these genres to a higher level of mutual support and enhancement.

The label, "Progressive Form," deserves a special mention. Founded in 2000, it represents one of the best peaks of Japanese electronic avant-garde, capable of combining the most extreme experimentalism with the search for still elegant and melodic solutions.

This is my first review on Debaser. I apologize if it is not particularly brilliant or if it fails to be exhaustive in describing what I consider a fundamental work in the cultural repertoire of an avant-garde electronic music lover, which at the dawn of 2018 (12 years after this album's release) has not yet had a review in Italian.