The Creatures
Hái!

I don't know about you, but my musical preferences vary greatly throughout the day. If in the morning and afternoon I prefer hard, fast, aggressive music (hard rock and metal primarily), in the evening and at night, my tastes definitely shift towards softer, atmospheric sounds, possibly with electronic, psychedelic, tribal, and similar elements. So it can happen that my opinions on an album flip depending on the time of listening. This was the case with this particular CD.

While surfing the web in my spare time, I happened to read about this side project by the singer of "Siouxsie and the Banshees", and being fixated on the band at that time, I immediately decided to get their work. The choice fell on "Hai!", inspired by the, in my opinion, stunning, Japanese cover (given my passion for Japan, which, by the way, you will be interested to know, I finally managed to visit this year, fulfilling one of my life's dreams). The first time I listened to the album (I can't recall the exact time, but it was in the middle of an August afternoon with the scorching sun and the car turned into a kind of oven), I was strongly disappointed, so much so that I didn't even finish it but took it out after about ten minutes, exhausted by the endless succession of percussion occasionally interrupted by a few words here and there.

The album thus ended up at the bottom of a pile of many similar ones, gradually fading into oblivion. Then one day, while I was driving home, trying to find something to listen to to keep myself awake, this album came back into my hands, and, tired of the others available that I had listened to exhaustion, I decided to give it a second chance. Well, it might be that at night the atmosphere is completely different, or that I was in that state where drowsiness puts you in a sort of sweet semi-daze that increases your receptivity, but listening to the tribal rhythms of this CD while driving on the highway enjoying the lights, with the window down and the cool wind brushing my face was an experience almost comparable to a mystical trance.

The album, as can be deduced also from the cover, is strongly minimalist and inspired by Japanese culture (this is also evident from tracks like "Godzilla!" and the use of the daiko, a kind of large Japanese drum), the sounds are a mix between tribal and avant-garde, and naturally, the percussion takes center stage, with the singer's voice occasionally interjecting without ever becoming invasive (for example, in the first song, it appears only at the final phrase).

All in all, a very interesting album, which invites us to completely surrender to its hypnotic rhythms and let the mind wander, free from any thought.