Listening Notes Take 1

Nobuzaku Takemura: Scope
This has been one of the better rediscoveries on my iPod. I got this album sometime during college, and vividly remember driving back from the record store with my friend chuck, listening to the first track. It was about 20 minutes long and consisted mostly of silence broken by atonal, arrhythmic electronic noises. It was intriguing but hard to get into. The rest of the album is more accessible, and I am particularly fond of a track called “Icefall” which has been a regular feature on my playlist. It sounds like someone recorded a little synth riff, burned it onto CD and then scratched the hell out of it. It doesn’t sound like the recipe for gorgeous music, but it is—utterly gorgeous and utterly alien. In fact, in places, it reminds me somehow of Bach. Definitely worth listening to when you’re wearing headphones, alone in your room, or—as a study in contrasts—when you’re wandering through the woods early in the morning.