H. Takahashi - Low Power

A Closer Listen

Tokyo resident H. Takahashi uses a background in architecture and sound design to good advantage. Both areas can be thought of as being one and the same, the former being confined to physical construction and outward manifestation, and the latter being a fluid and ever-morphing construct existing only within the auditory sphere, the receptive pick-ups of human hearing.

 Low Power is a minimal design, its melodies like slippery stepping stones, unable to take a concrete shape as they hop from one tone to the next. The notes fall away, dripping into the ether as the melody repeats and other, tiny pieces of sound emerge from their hiding places, their insular shells. Low Power is akin to a system shutting down after an eight-hour-haul, seguing into the sounds of a screensaver in sleep mode, when it becomes time to rest and recharge; calm, clear, and cold music that drips and drips.

As the intervals clash, they sporadically light up, syncing up with one another, like a traffic light that will wink back and forth between the fiery fall colors of orange and red. Their collisions don’t sour the music; dissonance isn’t here. Instead, harmonious notes float in a tank, an aural construction, with each one encased in and hitching a ride on a tiny pocket of rising oxygen. The loops lull the listener, taking them to the borderlands of sleep, and while that may well be their aim, the music remains physically active, too, never standing still for a moment.

These cool-blue vignettes are made out of air and water, and Low Power becomes elemental as it plays, a sleepy lullaby and a slow embalming. (James Catchpole)

Available here