Red Stars Over Tokyo :: Deconstructing Happiness (Testtoon)

Contrasts melt, comparisons jar as a strange sense of composition is somehow maintained in this immensely absorbing album.

Jeroen Lauwers is a staple of Testtoon Records. Under his Red Stars Over Tokyo moniker this soundscape sculptor has delivered two 12”s and a 2LP. And it’s to the Belgium imprint that he returns with a new album, Deconstructing Happiness.

As always RSOT brings a range of styles together. Noise. Drone. Soundtrack. Electronica. Ambient. All are churned as a deep sense of alienation permeates this most recent excursion. This estrangement is clearly visible in track titles such as “Burning Houses”, a warbling and meandering journey through field recordings and rhythm, and “We’ve Lost Everything,” a piece born in a haze of feedback and static. Yet within this dissociation is a space for change, each of the above adopting a subdued cinematic elegance as they build and develop. That film score quality is ever present. It shifts in the sliding scales and aquatic textures of “A Room With No Air,” morphs in the neo-classical fizz and chilling intensity of “Exit Lines.” A triumphant charge closes with the cymbal crashes and orbiting notes of “Shooting Living Targets.”

And this is Lauwers’ true gift, his talent for layering sound, surreptitiously constructing until the listener finds themselves in a labyrinth of complex loops and unsettling shadows. Contrasts melt, comparisons jar as a strange sense of composition is somehow maintained in this immensely absorbing album.

Deconstructing Happiness is available on Testtoon.