Tashi Wada - What Is Not Strange? (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

Tashi Wada's first new album in over five years is also his most surprising, comprising a set of elevated, poetic songs that draw from psych-rock, new age and ambient, leaving the tonally rich, avant-minimal drone he's most widely associated with to simmer in the background. It's gorgeous, subtly extravagant "Dream Music" - one for fans of Julia Holter (who appears here on vocal duties), Jim O'Rourke, Rafael Toral, Joanna Brouk, Terry Riley.

The son of legendary Fluxus minimalist Yoshi Wada, Tashi Wada has thus far largely followed in his father's footsteps, composing vibratory oddities on 2014's cello-fwd 'Duets' and collaborating with his dad on 2018's wormhole-piercing wonder 'Nue'. 'What Is Not Strange?' flips the script, written over a period when Wada both endured the death of his father and welcomed the birth of his daughter. Considering his conflicting emotions, Wada began to move away from minimalism and towards a form of ecstatic maximalism. He immersed himself in the poetry of surrealist Philip Lamantia - who inspired the album's title - and began to see the album as "dream music", a way of harmonising with Lamantia's view that the secrets of the world are contained within all of us.

The title track opens with a cautious ensemble of blurry, pitch-bent synths and wordless, weightless vocals, but when the album hits 'Grand Trine', Wada's intentions are made clear. Psych-y harpsichord twangs and ethereal flute transport us back to the Laurel Canyon era as a voice is reduced to breathy echo, and the bolshy drums become a faint sweep. These carefully-engineered builds and drops feed into the theme - the music appears to assemble and disassemble itself like a dream landscape, tripping between memory and illusion.

The process is most distinct on 'Flame of Perfect Form', an energetic avant-rock stomper that's been tweezed to perfection. Drums are identifiable and sturdy, but still manage to wash like waves around the hypnotic, droning vocal part; Wada turns his knotted electric guitar riffs into dense, frayed patterns that intertwine with distorted cello squeals. There aren't discernible verses or choruses, but it still feels like a song, its tempo monitored by heartbeats and intuition, its structure informed by exposed emotions. We can make out a legible blueprint of classic American music, but Wada blurs the edges into incomprehensible shapes, Lamantia's peyote-fueled stanzas guiding his hand.

The spectre of Minimalism manifests itself too - particularly on tracks like the serene 'Revealed Night' and 'Asleep to the World' - but even these moments are spiked with disquiet. The former almost drowns its scrapes and oscillations under smoggy cityscape recordings, and the latter cuts into silence with percussive punctuations, curving mumbled words into negative space and organ flurries into dreamy serenity. On 'Time of Birds', the tonal experiments that rooted 'Duets' is repurposed, underpinning a balmy vocal drone, and organ work that sounds as if it's swaying between Wendy Carlos and Alice Coltrane, both triumphant and discreetly mystical.

'What Is Not Strange?' seems exceptionally well timed, landing in an era when minimalism is abundant but incongruous. By fracturing musical history using dream logic and beat era surrealism, Wada gestures towards a dazzlingly interlaced future that's dense, unpredictable and entirely human. If you've been enjoying Rafael Toral's similarly mind-expanding 'Spectral Evolution', this one's defo for you.

Ezra Buchla – viola, electric viola
Corey Fogel – drums, percussion
Devin Hoff – double bass
Julia Holter – vocals, additional keyboard
Tashi Wada – keyboards, sirens

Tracklist:
01 - What Is Not Strange?
02 - Grand Trine
03 - Revealed Night
04 - Asleep to the World
05 - Flame of Perfect Form
06 - Under the Earth
07 - Subaru
08 - Time of Birds
09 - Calling
10 - Plume
11 - This World's Beauty


Thanks to the Original customer!