Soshi Takeda - Same Place, Another Time
Same Place, Another Time
Soshi Takeda
EP
Electronic
Liam Murphy
January 20, 2022
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More and more, we are gravitating towards sound and music to try and make us feel better. The torrent of ASMR content on YouTube gives people strange, warm in-ear sensations. White noise machines fill bedrooms with feedback. Think of the stereotype of zen as a concept and try not to hear the resonant lull of sounding bowls drift into your mind’s ear. The proliferation of ambient music – and more niche genres like dreamtone – is tied to this as well.
All of this leads to a kind of healing haze. A cacophony of calm (owed also to how easy it can be to create a euphoric soundscape and call it a day). So it takes real pioneering artistry to create true sonic solace. When we find a gem swirling around in the annals of ambient, we need to pluck it out and appreciate it properly.
Pavel Milyakov and British visual artist Lucas Dupuy’s HEAL offers a euphoric experience. It balances an unhindered momentum of calm, sidling up alongside the more background-noise ambient releases, but with awe-inspiring phases built in as well. Ensconced within the collection is moments of spiritual determination and truly vivid visions.
The introductory track, room, filters through to the listener’s ears in entrancing wisps. From there, the duo mix percussion almost like an alchemist. Large rolls and twinkling cymbals cause long tails of smoke and shimmery euphoria to rise all around as a cool ray of light emanates from the softly looping pads. A striking, hypnotic atmosphere is achieved – possibly owed to the artist’s penchant for 90s and 00s-era new age – as if we watch some celestial being pounding drums in a crystal clear space, cushioned all around by thoughtful pad chords.
The tranquil field recordings from Japan on track path – paired with the release’s ghostly artwork – signal a dedication to this neo-zen style. The country is the spiritual home of many near-millennium aesthetic movements. The slow movements of trains and calls of birds find themselves cushioned and helped forward on a sequence of bubbling pad chords that rise and fall like gentle leaves. The wisping quality of the euphoria still lends it that spindly Y2K spirit, though things feel warm.
That well-trodden path between new age and exotica is walked once again on deep gtr, but the divergence from the two preceding tracks imbues it with a beautiful depth. Bowing tuned drums take us further into a green dream. Each resonant note is languid and moist, a heavy leaf hanging over us.
The near-2000s vibes thunder back in through the rain-sodden samples on air X, each one like a shard of a vista during a torrential downpour as Milkayov builds a backdrop from jittering ambience. The instrumentation's tendency to spurt out from a sample or chattering through some sort of sidechain gives even this murky track a glossy finish.
flutes of doom’s breathy tones fly out over beautiful faltering drum sounds, begging for the track to take a cathartic turn. Instead, the flutes are left to fly gracefully in the middle distance, out and on into the sky. The deep thrumming percussion and throaty panpipe flutes have more than a hint of Chuquimamani-Condori about them. It’s all intensely dreamy, sitting somewhere between that near-millennium cyber-new age aesthetic and something truly touching.
Pavel Milyakov and Lucas Dupuy do not use the conclusive track as a means to send the listener abruptly on their way, as end is a gaping denouement soundscape stretching out for over 18 minutes. Discerning groans darken a fairly airborne ambience, the rich detail of the din giving the feeling of speed, the world below disappearing in a swirling blur. It feels deserved. No happy endings. Not that the maw of euphoria is sad, but it is open-ended, like careering elegantly into an unknown expanse.
True tranquillity doesn’t have to be a still, static phenomenon. Through HEAL’s multi-faceted landscape, we find different reasons to breathe deeply. Blending that neo-new age energy from the 90s and 00s with an austere style of instrumentation creates a gentle but forceful whisper of an EP. Some moments are rich with ink-black darkness, but that just makes it all the more effective when the light, calm elements breach.
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