It’s a concept album, of course, and doubtless one of the sort than could only emerge from Japan, where virtual reality has already usurped reality as we know it and a hyperreal ersatz world is in full effect. The singer on ‘White Girl’, a ‘Yufu Sekka’ is a ‘virtual’ pop star, and ‘White Girl’ is pitched as ‘an ephemeral winter story, dreamt by an extraordinary bedroom dreamer’.
Dreamy is certainly the word. Ultra-laid back hop-hop beats provide the axis upon which cascades of chiming spirals of sound fall in snow-like glissandos. The vocals, hushed and breathy are so heavily processed as to be bereft of humanity, as well as completely unintelligible. But I suspect the lyrics aren’t exactly vital: it’s all about the atmosphere, the uber-chilled vibe. Occasional bursts of glitchiness and stuttering crackles of distortion interrupt the drifting flow of the album.
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It certainly has its moments, but it does sometimes feel as though the concept has dictated the shape of the songs and the album as a whole a little too much. We know we live in a plastic world of artifice, and it might have been more rewarding to hear the true Mus.hiba here.
Mus.hiba Online
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