A Closer Listen
WaqWaq Kingdom‘s music sounds like it looks, and always looks fantastic. The EP cover art is once again phantasmagoric, filled with detail and allusion. This time we also get an appearance from Lucky Cat. If there’s something a little different about the new EP, it is an emphasis on the centering of the mind, which is shown to contain its own hot spring, or onsen, a place where every creature can be content. The same might be said of every style, as the duo of Shigeru Ishihara and Kiki Hitomi continues to introduce international genres, stretching from their familiar, beloved minyo footwork to “Tanzanian Singeli-inspired rave thump and Indonesian koplo dangdut dance music.” Even the subgenres have subgenera. While listening, one imagines strolling through a Byzantine bazaar and discovering things that one didn’t know existed, all cultures co-mingling joyfully in a single place. By extension, one might imagine the healing of a fractured world, beginning with the peace of an individual soul.
WaqWaq Kingdom is aware of a seeming discrepancy: the clash between mindfulness and high tempos. But whoever said that mindfulness had to be slow? Not every person seeks inner peace through slow tempos and sparse sonic production. And if the mind is a cluttered place, why not meet such clutter with substitute clutter: a mind overflowing, bursting at the seams with different types of joy? The title track gets the head nodding in the first seconds, like a hyperactive dojo, but the tone is pure glee: the children running around said dojo, filmed by the other participants, then played back in fast-forward like a slapstick silent movie. When the music breaks (briefly) down, the pause is a water sip before a second, even busier plunge. The second breakdown is like the world’s quickest TM session; and then it ends.
The advantage to such music is that one stops thinking about the world. Dwell too much on outer anxieties, and one is lost. Lose one’s self in a happy trance ~ as emphasized in the slower “Hado” ~ and one may find nirvana. Religious elements, from Shinto bells and temple chants to flute, are woven throughout the set. The most Hot Pot Totto-adjacent track, “Yaren Soran,” references the 2023 album with an eight-note instrumental refrain that one might chant if so disposed, until it changes in its third incarnation. The title refers to a traditional Japanese sea shanty, which also comes with a Butoh dance. The tune contains some very amusing lyrics, not found in WaqWaq Kingdom’s rendition, but worth mentioning: “Oh!!! Soran. Even if I row four and a half metres, I couldn’t get that girl’s attention.” This line makes “Yaren Soran” the lazy rower’s version of The Proclaimers’ “500 Miles.”
Obviously WaqWaq Kingdom is having a ridiculous amount of fun, not to distract listeners from their problems, but to help them to recenter their minds. From fun vocabulary words (the multi-faceted, multi-mood Aigo) to video game, film and folklore references (“Goemon”), the EP offers multiple ways to expand the mind, reminding listeners of the breadth and wonder of the world. Should one be too hot for an onsen, consider it a cold spring. (Richard Allen)
Thu Jul 25 00:01:18 GMT 2024