White Vinyl, single sleeve (Incl, A3 poster + Download card).
Solo pop violinist and multi-instrumentalist K IshiBashi (aka Kishi Bashi) release his debut album '151a' on Pod, This self-produced album expands on the majestic sound of Kishi Bashi's 'Room for Dream' EP, After touring with Regina Spektor, Of Montreal, M83 and Yeasayer, Kishi Bashi's latest endeavour showcases his talent as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, weaving his way through a spectrum of genres and styles. After lead track "Intro/Pathos, Pathos," a soaring yet concise amalgam of all that is to come, the record unfolds with a gentle, and somehow grander revisiting of two songs from the earlier 'Room for Dream' EP, they being the (now) NPR radio favourites 'Bright Whites' and 'Manchester'; reigniting their purpose with subtle variations that serve the larger arc of this new LP, From this foundation the record candidly affirms its suggested dialectic, a dance between the earthbound materialism of captured art and its airy origins, in the give and take of "It All Began With a Burst." The song appropriately struggles for take-off, whispering its intentions in washes of synthesizer that threaten to drown the claps and voices struggling to emerge, until a fragile harmony is realized in a bass-driven dance beat and desperately triumphant vocals, From the deconstructed doo-wop of "Wonder Woman, Wonder Me," a 21st century transmission of Smile-era Brian Wilson that is both lush and blushingly naked to the menacing marriage of Eastern hues and Western operatics that is the Blade Runner-like trance of "Beat the Bright out of Me," this album is a mediation between opposing drives, offering possible reconciliation but never promising it, A nuanced awareness of inherent contradiction is constant in all of these songs, at turns jubilant, as in "Chester's Burst Over the Hamptons," a frenetic violin driven gallop full of stabs of sound and classical vocal harmonics that resolves in an breathtaking synth and string composition most pronounced in the sweet despair of "I Am the Antichrist to You," which layers the delicate vocal melodies of the best of post-Beatles pop over a somber and beautiful New Age string arrangement, If "I Am the Antichrist to You" is tragedy, then "Atticus, in the Desert" is comedy, albeit dark, bouncing and whistling with the acceptance of romantic failure, reaching for a fuller, more compassionate survey of the landscape, Starting with the admission, couched in the layered a capella not done so well since Queen, that "as twins we create an era, two souls in bright Sahara," a tale is told, over bright symphonic gypsy pop, of a doomed affair, and yet there is a palpable sense of acceptance and even enjoyment in the suffering.
It is fitting that, during the conception of this record, Ishibashi was mindful of the Japanese term "ichi-go ichi-e," a recognition of life's transience, sometimes translated as "for this time only." Acknowledging that each moment happens only once, ichi-go ichi-e, reminds one to invest fully in these moments but also to let go of their outcome, It is in this practice that one opens the portals to both creativity and love and the results are clearly in evidence throughout this record with its synthesis of disparate formal elements and its unnerving look at contradiction.
