Irezumi returns with a deeply immersive ambient journey where granular textures, subtle electronic details, and melancholic atmospheres unfold into a beautifully restrained world of sound.
Deeply introspective sound waves flowing all around the room
Irezumi is a French-based abstract-minimal ambient music project formed by sound artist Manuel Mesdag back in 2008. His first album, titled Endurance, is highly regarded by passionate listeners in search of beautifully/carefully designed soundscapes where electronic scintillations meet cinematic expressiveness and instrumental repetitiveness. The project has a Japanese name, which reflects its very own musical signature, turned toward inner worlds and ritualistic passages to a state of deep quietness. Irezumi has been highly productive throughout the years, constantly delivering expressive layered soundtracks imbued with a particular flowing meditative mood.
This new album makes no exception and reveals a refined body of calm, enchanting, soothing, and sometimes sorrowful granular synthesized textures, augmented by sparse micro-noises and a palette of sonic effects. A track such as “Deliverance” delivers a progressively enveloping and grainy sonic ambient splendor, passing from very quiet to fully opened sounds. The general mood is very evocative, suggesting something at once tense and darkly opaque, yet infused with lighter emotional vibes. Every piece is built on delicate, fragile, spacious, and deeply introspective sound waves flowing all around the room.
Among my favorite moments offered by the album, I can mention the ghostly, blurred-out section of the profoundly melancholic “Unstable” or the trippy, mind-travelling and minimal “Shelter”. Perfect accompaniment for moments of self-reliance and easily recommended for fans of ambient electronica with an impressionistic feeling and tasty, minimal-melodiously inclined acoustic sounds. Never disappoints and is of solid musical value.
The album is delivered in beautiful vinyl format and distributed by Paris-based indie label Brique Rouge, known for embracing and promoting a vast range of electronic music, with a particular interest in clubbing, house, and techno music.
Downfall is available on Brique Rouge. [Bandcamp]
