PON moves effortlessly between the childlike and the obscure, the intimate and the epic, grief and wonder. It’s an extraordinary piece of work that reveals something new each time. This is an artist fully at the height of her powers and it shows in every single track.
Tiny electronic artifacts drifting at the edges
Editions Mego has always occupied a peculiar and vital corner of experimental electronic music. Since Peter Rehberg and Christian Fennesz discovered Tujiko Noriko‘s first demo tapes in 2000, the Osaka-born, France-based musician, singer, and filmmaker has been one of the label’s most quietly important artists. Her debut Shojo-Toshi on Mego arrived at a time when the label’s roster was dominated by the hard-edged processing of PITA, General Magic, and Farmers Manual. Noriko‘s arrival was an anomaly—soft, cloud-like, melodic, and human in a way that the label’s output rarely was. Over 20 albums and collaborations with artists like Peter Rehberg, Nobukazu Takemura, and Lawrence English, she has built one of the most distinctive bodies of work in experimental music. PON, her sixth album for Editions Mego, is dedicated to her cat, adopted as an infant, born deaf, lost to an accident. That dedication sits at the center of everything here.
What drew me to this was the sound of Tujiko Noriko‘s voice—it’s so hypnotizing. The album’s opener is long enough for you to grasp and pulls you in immediately. If I had to compare it to anything, I’m reminded of Björk and The Internal Tulips combined and that’s a very specific pairing that actually captures something real about what’s happening here. Björk‘s Vespertine (2001) is the closest reference point for the vocal approach—that album built its sound from microbeats constructed from everyday household sounds, shuffling cards, cracking ice, layered into intricate loops and harmonies that created a cocoon-like intimacy. It was glitch-pop that felt handcrafted and personal rather than clinical. The Internal Tulips, the Planet Mu duo of Lexaunculpt and Electric Company, worked in a similar territory, psychedelic, fragile, electronic pop where classic sensibilities were quietly deformed by laptop processing. Noriko sits exactly at that intersection. Just the intro alone has beautiful vocals alongside glitches and micro-sounds that are very interesting as a whole, tiny electronic artifacts drifting at the edges, fragile motifs appearing and dissolving before you can fully register them. The kind of detail that rewards headphone listening and punishes distraction.
Language becomes texture ::
“Kikoeru Pon” is another standout. Samples of a child are heard throughout the structure alongside field recordings—water sounds, domestic textures, the feline for whom the album is named. It sounds like a fusion of her voice and the child’s voice, and then she starts singing. It’s the kind of track that becomes deeply personal the longer you sit with it. “Sneezing” is also quite interesting to listen to production-wise. Listening to this is like a fantastic audio experience—you can hear things visually, it taps into a part of your mind where imagination runs wild. That’s rare. Most music is passive. This asks something of you.
“Bokuno Satellite” is another interesting production. The vocals are stunning here, but the production is so good and done very well. For the amount of fractured IDM and experimental electronic music out there, this is genuinely refreshing to the ear. There’s so much going on in that track and all of it feels story-driven, mysterious at times, I wish there was so much more of it. That’s the best kind of feeling a track can leave you with.
Almost the entire album is enjoyable. It’s a rollercoaster of events and great productions. Experimental in nature but with such good fusion of IDM folk or electronic folk—woven throughout that it’s just an amazing listen. Language becomes texture here, another sonic element in Noriko‘s palette alongside the electronics, field recordings, and melody. Most of it isn’t in English and it still lands completely. PON moves effortlessly between the childlike and the obscure, the intimate and the epic, grief and wonder. It’s an extraordinary piece of work that reveals something new each time. This is an artist fully at the height of her powers and it shows in every single track.
PON is available on Editions Mego. [Bandcamp]
