Thread: Favorite Albums
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Old 2011.10.31, 02:55 PM   #51
Tokyo Jihad
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#6: Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana

In the airy quiet that follows the opening clatter in my number 6 favorite album, you already know Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana is going to be an interesting listen. It takes all of 36 seconds for the heavy drums and fuzzed bass to crash through the orchestration of the album opener “Shuukyou” before you just might sit up in your chair. And at the 1 minute mark, when the orchestra overwhelms the track once more, you can’t but wonder where else Shiina Ringo’s third album can go; how an artist can stuff this mammoth at the front of an album.

The opening suite of the record transitions into “Doppleganger,” a pop song fitted with loops, drum machines paired with this album’s characteristic blown out drums, synths, and three year old samples from Shiina Ringo’s previous work, Shouso Strip. The song ramps up the tempo without compromising its off-kilter atmosphere by introducing some pitch shifted doubled vocals to substitute a choir. The album flow is given a hard shove by the bass bend intro of “Meisai.” Violin, bass, and guitar swirl and battle around the vocals, inevitably leading the song to implode into chaos leaving nothing left but for the artist to light a cigarette to bridge to the aching “Odaiji ni.” The fourth track swells with a solo piano and Ms. Ringo’s vocals screeching over little but the obfuscated sounds of a TV, as if the entire track was recorded by one left at home with only a television companion. Much of the album is said to have been recorded in the different rooms of Shiina Ringo’s house, this may be close to the truth.

In this series, I may not have often gone into such in-depth, and sensational, description of the arrangements and compositions for these 20 albums. That is because there are few albums that can compare to “KZK.” Most albums up to now have been fairly straightforward in what to expect sonically, even Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. This album is equal parts Dark Side of the Moon, Vespretine, and Chopin.

The television whispers transition into the lavishly orchestrated, pop-executed “Yattsuke Shigoto.” The song, a re-working of a song recorded a few years prior, is contrasted by it’s neighbor, “Kuki,” it too a song re-worked numbers of time. “Kuki,” along with the opening and closing tracks, is the tentpole of the entire record. Shifting from beautiful and sincere to intense and earnest, fully orchestrated at it’s beginning and finishing with a traditional rock 4-piece, “Kuki” is an epic.

I go into such details not because I enjoy talking so pretentiously about these tracks, but because this is how I listen to this record. I pick out each instrument, each non-instrument, and imagine how it was recorded, why it was recorded, who was the performer, what other “instruments” were considered and/or recorded in it’s place. The creation of this record mystifies me. What I spend much of my time pondering is the songs unadorned. The arrangements sound so central to each song’s composition, I always wonder where the seed of the songs are. A making of diary or something similar is something I would buy ten copies of.

The late-album suite features a number of unusual forms and arrangements. “Torikoshi Kurou” starts with a breath of levity following the previous track with some scat vocals used as the primary beat throughout the whole song. The track also features a roulette wheel of guest instruments. “Okonomi de” is a personal favorite, a smoky lounge act that features what is either a stressed violin or a nasaled screech that pierces through the middle of the track like an ambulance siren. Track 9, “Ishiki,” is probably the most straightforward ambling rock groove on the album -- if not for the woodwind and accompanying middle 8 breakdown. The penultimate track on the album is also unassuming. Upon closer look, “Poltergeist” is a very entertaining acid-trip waltz, constantly it teases and teeters between a good trip and a bad trip. Not overt in presentation, behind the plush strings is a constantly swirling, herky-jerk, pitched synth cascading up and down the scale at nauseating intervals. Never do I feel too confortable or calm listening closely. There is a just a peak at the end of a jaunty acoustic that teases a finale that couldn’t be farther removed from the few happy notes we just barely hear.

The closer resonates with “Shuukyou,” and “Kuki,” as mentioned before. The song title, “Souretsu,” translates to “funeral,” so you can guess what is in store. The many eastern instruments that adorn the track paint the picture that the song itself is floating down a proverbial River Styx (even without the translation.) As chaotic and powerful as Brian Wilson’s “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” and as unsettling and heavy as The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” The moment at 3:47 when the organs of some sort of afterlife ring in is one of the most ear opening moments in music that I’ve heard. Just in case you hadn’t had your fill of anarchy on the record, Shiina Ringo pushes up the master volume fader to 11 as the track reaches it’s coda. -- That is, deafening silence. -- The fracas the song expectantly descends into is hard cuts to silence at the 44:44 mark of the album’s run time. It is a coda I cannot help but chuckle at every time, as if to say, “you got me again.”

Shiina Ringo has described this album as unchecked ego (or something to that effect.) Unchecked ego very rarely leads to work like Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana. I find there has to be a second ingredient in order to yield this type of album: confidence. I’ve heard reports and interviews that argue the contrary, but tell me that a track like “Meisai” or “Souretsu” is something pulled off by someone that doesn’t believe they have complete mastery over their medium.

Each track’s composition is impressive, the composition of the album as a whole is a marvel; how each track lends to the next. There is no doubt in my mind that Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana is one of the best albums of the 2000’s. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to earn the attention it deserves. In the west it is seen as an unknown record in a weird language no one understands, and even in Japan the album allegedly didn’t sell as well as hoped -- often the case for such progressive, experimental material as this. The price of admission may be fairly high for some audiences, but it is worthy ride. It is an album that deserves to be seated next to the Is This it’s, the Elephant’s, the Funeral’s, and the Stankonia’s of it’s day.
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