After his inclusion on Helios' brilliant compilation 'For Nihon' last year, Ex Confusion was finally given the platform he deserved with an album on the legendary N5MD label. Released at the end of March, Embrace is a perfect example of simple, touching ambient music. So, needless to say, I couldn't be happier that Atsuhito has produced two tracks for the Places Series. For many people, 'Where The Time Goes' will form the perfect introduction to Atsuhito's music, or an extension to an already proud, Ex Confusion library.
Atsuhito's work is a double dose of gentle, indulgent ambience. Distant and wistful, it retreats to a time of safety and comfort when your parents were the gentle giants that made the world a smaller, safer place.
Drawing inspiration from conversations outside his room, they provided a reminder of childhood memories “when everything was perfect and I wasn’t afraid of growing up”. There’s purity and a heart-breaking naivety to the soft reflection of both ‘Before We Begin’ and ‘If Only’ as Ex Confusion cocoons us from the world and finds sanctuary in the hometown recollections of Nara, Japan.
Guided by voices, Where The Time Goes is an ode to appreciating the value of what’s passed but it’s also a tender edict to seize every moment. Wherever that may be. “I heard voices in my head, telling me how things are hard to take back and how important each moment we have right now, is. Then I took my guitars and piano to record everything in my heart". (Words by Reef Younis).
ASIP003 - relapxych.0 - Tegelbacken Nightlights
Characterised by space, abandonment and dormancy, ‘Tegelbacken Nightlights’ takes its cues from urban decay. Crafted around a shifting scene of emptiness and dereliction, light and dark are intertwined, shifting between night and day; letting the darkness seep and the light carve through.
It’s a slow, languorous metamorphosis that revels in eerie sensibilities created by creaks and groans, ominous echoed footsteps and an unmistakeable sense of isolation. But it’s one that’s built on exploration and an acceptance of being engulfed by the unknown; of going deeper into a place that only serves to pull you further away from the familiar.
Within it all, there’s also unintentional beauty, the sort that can only be unwittingly appreciated or uncovered and it makes ‘Tegelbacken Nightlights’ a foreboding ode to the everyday. Inspired by the prospect of regeneration and recovery, even in the greyest wastelands, there’s hope. This is a tribute to finding salvation in the forgotten. (Words by Reef Younis).
ASIP002 enh - Roke
Living in an old B&B in a tiny village on the Pacific Coast of Japan sounds pretty idyllic; the perfect place to create music to a backdrop of natural coastal beauty and the nostalgic romanticism of a building with a million stories. But as ‘Roke’ displays, it’s an existence that’s balanced with the regular threat of something wild, uncontrollable and destructive.
Born from finding a semblance of beauty in terror, it’s the literal calm following the typhoon after which it is named. Combining a live recording of the house’s, creaking, defiant resistance, the droning ambience and the windswept elements create a track that’s both beautiful and unsettling. The structure’s stresses and moans add the familiarity of feeling safe as nature rages outside but here, there’s only ominous comfort.
Wracked with an unobtrusive power, ‘Roke’ is the wide-eyed contrast between the vexing aftermath and the trepidation that the worst is yet to come. Gripping to the end, it’s the tense triumph of potentially losing everything but the relief of finding shelter when you need it most. (Words by Reef Younis).
ASIP001 Kit -Tre-em
Inspired by time spent travelling to, and through Vietnam, “Trẻ em” captures a journey of introspection and contemplation; of excitement, contentment and considered observation.
Imbibed with a deep appreciation of the country’s sights and sounds, Kit’s affection for the people and places that unknowingly contributed is tangible in its warmth, richness and character. The breadth and depth of these tracks eases through a wealth of shared experiences, the weight of history and the often brutal reality of the world in which we live. Heart-breaking and heart-warming, perhaps the most wonderful thing about “Trẻ em” is its unerringly honest dichotomy.
An album that effortlessly transports and eases you into the heart of the experience, the tremulous “Girl Walking on the Beach Wearing a Skirt” takes you to an idyll of white sands and picturesque isolation - a place where the sun's kissing the horizon and the breeze whispers through the trees casting black silhouettes against a burning amber sky. It’s a track that evokes and transcends, sighing with the tide, truly content in its beauty and natural simplicity.
“Tunnels” is a dramatically different beast, its minimal heartbeat determined in its power. Alive with nervous tension, it’s an invitation to delve into the darkness, crawling towards the infinite, co-existing with the choke of claustrophobic fear and volatile gunfire as the walls close in on a space of dead air and defiance. But even trapped in a place as foreboding as this, fuelled only by adrenalin and a clamouring sense of freedom, there’s still a flicker of optimism in the unknown.
In album closer, “I Grew Up Here” you have the perfect bookend, a warm, swelling piece tinged with longing and sadness but one that flourishes into something warm and wide-eyed. It’s comforting in its reminiscence and warmed by the thought of being welcomed in a place you didn’t call home before but now, will always consider it to be.