Sawako
Madoromi

If you're Japanese and want to make money with music, you have little choice: if you're a sufficiently cute woman, you have to be an idol; if you're a man, you either become androgynous and start singing anime themes, or join an angry punk-metal band that curses institutions and headbutts amplifiers.

Or you can dare. You can ignore the money and keep your small circle of fans, creating YOUR music. Music that is real, coming from within. Where every sound, even the most mundane or unpredictable, is extracted from the heart of the artist with the scalpel of passion and inspiration. Sawako surely is part of this circle.
And although she is flirty and young enough to be an idol, she tries to make the impossible sound, even telling all the various Ayumi Hamazaki to go to hell. And she succeeds with this muffled "Madoromi," where you'd expect to find a (non)music by people like Taku Sugimoto, who records albums without singing or playing anything.

Instead, into the listener's ears extends to the horizon a delicate sound field, an overture like "August Neige". An ocean suspended between sky and earth, where you can hear the enchanting siren chorus from the underworld.
Sawako is barely perceptible on the horizon and looks like a child who has managed to find where her mother hid the jam: tender and intense.

An atmosphere of calmer and more ethereal IDM of the Autechre style can be savored with "It's Not On Purpose", delightful to the core of its human staticism. Just a couple of notes that already sound like an anthem, disturbed by intelligent electronic effects. Nothing original, but the talent is there.

More delicate atmospheres in "Uta Tane", a boundary between electronics and acoustic sounds. Two styles that meet, touch without recognizing each other, yet reflect in the same sound mirror. A universe of pastel sounds and colors that also appears in the following, brief "Passepass", a not very interesting episode, but necessary in a work that flows as a whole almost like a concept on human behavior, not using words but rather a child's cough, a metaphor of an inner discomfort.

The watercolors of a musical rainbow blend in the ethereal "Appeled Soapbox", where the boundaries between reality and fiction are very faint. Dreamlike, abstract, and sleek.

"Kira Kira" is a rustling of bells and aquatic sounds, nocturnal and snowy like the micro-sounds of Matmos in Bjork's masterpiece "Vespertine".

"Purple Sky Is Coming" seems like a cover of the darker and more abstract Mika Vainio. Here and there you can catch a passage that recalls the brass incursions of "Drawing Restraint 9" and it pleases. The soundscapes are so effective, that as soon as you listen to them, untainted lands loom before your eyes, like a needle piercing the skin.

"Far Away" is melancholic and dramatic and even though it's semi-instrumental, it brings tears to the eyes. Heart-wrenching. The soul is suspended in a limbo of bones, muscles, flesh, and rubble. Just hearing the distant whispers and aspects of the Japanese girl is enough to fall in love. A masterpiece of electronic music, often reminiscent of the golden years of Sigur Rós. What more could you ask for? A music box of surreal beauty closes it all with a tiptoe dance.

Let's be clear that this Japanese musician neither takes away nor adds anything to the electronic music scene. She doesn't stir the pot, attempting the unthinkable, but still sounds innovative and aggressive in her subtle sound scars. Does it seem incredible? Then listen to her.

If you don't find the total lack of rhythm nerve-wracking and you like to roam with your mind, well then this is your album. Blessed be Sawako!

^_^