“Seabound is an exquisite ambient album and it's without a doubt the equivalent of Structures from Silence for its deepness”
1 Undercurrent 23:04
2 Poseidon 17:04
3 Seabound 20:30
(CD/DDL 60:56) (V.F.)
(Ambient Music)
After Quiet Rain, it's the turn of SEABOUND to have a major sound enhance, sound-lift. Initially released in 2009 on a CD-R format, this 5th album of Juta Takahashi is an impressive sound mosaic which entails us in the deepness of a universe which remains as much intriguing as the cosmos is. Sculpted in the infinite possibilities of the analog synths, this oceanographic symphony finds all its musical depth in a new remastering which defined with accuracy the immensity of an intense oceanotronic work.
Notes of piano, playing the scale with a harmonious indistinctness, spread an enchanting hypnotic melody which runs in loops in an oceanographic broth where squeak lamentations of spectral whales. Undercurrents brings us in the depths of the album with a repetitive melodic pattern which swims constantly in a water rich of its sonic oxygenation shining by thousand of prismic particles. The atmosphere is soothing and the melodious motif weaves a hypnotic earworm which floats constantly between our two hemispheres. A musical itch which drifts throughout the 23 minutes that lasts Undercurrents and roams between these various gregarious intonations embroidered in the breaths of seraphic voices and into some smooth halieutic synth waves. Magnetic! It's of a strange soporific beauty which brings us there where Juta Takahashi wants to situates his opus. Poseidon is more tormented with its black winds which buzz and blow with such a swiftness that they tear the foam of waters. They plunge and knock down the tranquility of the abyssal depths with a mixture of synths layers and of their varied tones which float with languor in the marine countercurrents. Their shadows blow some black sighs of which the irradiant outlines are dancing with other more silvery tones, drawing a mesmerizing dance with the colors of kaleidoscopic prisms which sparkle in the shades of ebony silvered. The waves which cover the panoramic banks of a paradisiacal island also cover our peace of mind when the first dreamlike breaths of the title-track reach our ears. With its synth lines which interlace in a juxtaposition of sound pallets to the reflections as dark as crystalline, Seabound is of a breathtaking sibylline beauty. Morphic and surprisingly musical, this slow symphony about the solitude of the halieutic spectres enchants with all these so lyrical synth layers coil up to float in sound landscapes to shady and disturbing feelings.
Once again, the music of Juta Takahashi totally seduced me. SEABOUND is a wonderful album which sparkles of its mysticism with a rather unique sound description of a universe which doesn't stop shining with its thousand musical reflections. The music is peaceful and poetic. It spreads its morphic veils with so much delicacy that we forget time. Here is a classic of ambient form music which appeases my nocturnal torments, such as Steve Roach did with his amazing Structures from Silence.
Sylvain Lupari (May 6th, 2013) ****½*
Available at Juta Takahashi Bandcamp