Magic Hour is both accessible and deeply experimental with its mutant ambient approach. The sonic palette employs clicks and clacks, echoes, mechanical whirs, lost terrestrial train whistles, melodic forms, shattering forms, and human murmurs, sometimes slowing or speeding up local fields to gain an emotional edge.
Continuous processes of deconstruction and reconstruction
Time is not a reliable empirical concept, Magic Hour combines improvisational and accidental guitar sounds, lyrical ambient drones, and high-definition sound editing. Magic Hour is both accessible and deeply experimental with its mutant ambient approach. The sonic palette employs clicks and clacks, echoes, mechanical whirs, lost terrestrial train whistles, melodic forms, shattering forms, and human murmurs, sometimes slowing or speeding up local fields to gain an emotional edge. Sharp, jarring cuts where one familiar sound instantly morphs into a new field.
Drawing on all available sonic materials—including instrumental sounds, electronics, fragments of recorded audio, and environmental sounds—FeLid creates tracks and improvisational live performances through continuous processes of deconstruction and reconstruction. So many examples. Sounds with backwards envelopes, where the natural decay of a noise happens before its sharp impact. Freezing a specific moment or target in complete temporal suspension.
Magic Hour is the second album by Tokyo-based artist FeLid, who combines improvisational and accidental guitar sounds, lyrical ambient drones, and high-definition sound editing. His practice is designed as a shared exploration of the relationship between sound and space, inviting audiences to experience and discover these connections together in real time. FeLid is the solo project of Kazutoshi Eguchi. He is known as a member of the post-hardcore band the north end and as a co-organizer of the festival platform MIMINOIMI.
A collage of percussion instruments ::
I am imagining dry mountain water, such as found in a Japanese rock garden. “Karesansui in the air #2” (5:14) opens into a collage of percussion instruments, wooden objects being tapped or struck, a curiously nourishing soup of casual fast easy flowing sounds. Here the passage of time is an objective measure. “Hello, World” (3:37) might be a welcome transparent soup of small items. Behind everything there is steamy condensation dripping and falling into a puddle on the ground, forming clusters with little gaps.
Next the beat is bubbling and walking by itself, the feeling brings little scenes that open and close, and return, “Magic hour (disco)” (4:37). The ticking of the clock machinery is dark and hidden things are happening all around. The next thing I remember, I awakened in an “Environmental Mood” (3:13). We are washing stuff in the cave, bumping and scrubbing, spilling water and tossing things around, the scrubbing is the beat. Time to go to work. “Rotate Dub” (3:30) has musical lathes, a running motor sound of some kind, chattering and rattles, perhaps close views of many different motors not all at once, the power tools sing and purr. Do you feel like an afternoon rain shower? “Yuudachi Dub #2” (2:44) brings a different lathe creature here, chattering away faster, sometimes speeding like a demon, with a jittery beat, moving really quickly along, faces appear flattened in the direction they are traveling, the clock on board stretches. Our spaceship appears to move very slowly.
Hold on, this next track is less than a minute in duration, “Akirame Mo Kanzin” (0:58). Metal stuff and small percussion instruments are being tapped, played backwards and forwards, very busy until the end, that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. Now I am floating in the dark waters, “Harmonics Dub” (1:51), barely bobbing on the surface. I love the sound of guitar harmonics, textures made by energizing the strings, a mandolin being dusted off, searching for something. This turns out to lead into a haunted house, where we can play ping pong, “Sense of Gradation” (5:56) blends drone like textures with the steady ping pong tok tok tok sounds, a sound collage of real-world noises that have been warped, looped, and recontextualized into an abstract sonic experience, never busy, accenting the constant drone of imaginary wire strings being provoked, while the ping pong activities continue, proving the ability to use magic related to time.
FeLid is also a member of MIMINOIMI, an organizing collective dedicated to exploring ambient and experimental music from multiple perspectives, and is involved in the planning and production of the urban festival Ambient / Week.
Magic Hour is available on ato.archives. [Bandcamp]
