As a rule, Collage takes place somewhere up in the air.
The ambient Collage assembled by Kadzuki Ikegaya opens with “Hourglass,” the hissing of summer lawns maintained by the cosmic gardener, the planet on which it is planted humming as it rotates, with small quasars flashing in the sky and the rhythmic swish-swishing of the well-sharpened pruning shears he wields.
The shimmery “Four Drops” is sound craning its neck to see something very far off in the distance. Reverse raindrops leap off the hollow wooden blocks of “Shishiodoshi” and, now airborne, spead angel wings and hover, waiting for more to join them. “Silence of Twilight” portrays not as much its silence as the way the universe settles into its awesome nocturnal stillness. ”1012” is a close but earthier relative of “Shishiodoshi,” thumb piano played during rainfall, on the porch under the eaves by someone sitting cross-legged. Although the album has a semi-pastoral feel—suburban, let’s say, in the original, non-judgmental sense —the extended “Dawn Chorus” with which Ikegaya closes the album, sounds very much like a big city and its traffic stirring to life with the sunrise, as heard from high above, on the fifty-first floor of a skyscraper. This urban locale is however no break with the theme, since as a rule, Collage takes place somewhere up in the air.
The oversize plastic sleeve includes a small stationer’s worth of cards and envelopes from which to choose how to store, display or make a present of your copy of Collage.
Collage is available on Vent.
