RHUCLE “Royal Blue” (Oxtail Recordings)

 

I had to check out the Bandcamp page because I know I’ve written about Rhucle, the project of Japan’s Yuta Kudo, before, and I wanted to refresh my memory. But once I got there I was bombarded by release upon release as I scrolled down the page, endlessly, until my scrolling thumb got so tired I had to stop. (Luckily I found one, probably two, tapes that I wrote about. Whew!) The sheer volume of output you’ll find there is staggering, and you might be overwhelmed enough to reconsider determining a starting point. But don’t! What I’ve heard is all utterly delightful, and you can just forget about everything and use this, Royal Blue on Oxtail Recordings, as your starting point regardless. It’s really something you shouldn’t stress out about.
 
The main reason why you shouldn’t stress out about it is because Rhucle’s music is entirely stress free, Royal Blue being no exception. Utilizing synthesizers and field recordings, Rhucle gently and exquisitely opens up paths to inner peace that you may not have realized were available to you. Best experienced in solitude, preferably within a set of headphones that dwarfs your noggin, Royal Blue is an inner world of maximum rest and relaxation, a rejuvenating sensory experience, an immersion in crystal pools among the clouds. Perfect for meditative practices, Royal Blue wisps and drips, shimmers and floats, all in soft focus, all centered inward for true peace. So, you still feeling stressed about getting into Rhucle? It’s like I told you – that’s a ridiculous observation, especially with this beautiful new tape right in front of you.
 
https://rhucle.bandcamp.com/
 
https://oxtailrecordings.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

RHUCLE "Fantastic Garden" C46 (Constellation Tatsu)

With this release, Tokyo’s Rhucle joins Constellation Tatsu’s ever expanding, stalwart cat-a-logue of Japanese sound-sculptors who carefully work in meditative drone/ambience, each artist as unique and personal as the human mood-shift, itself.

Temperament-wise, Rhucle dominates the bright and shiney…the most blissful spots of our brains. Straight outta the SOTL* playbook, this ¾ hour exercise in glacially drifting swells of synth/guitar-drenched-reverb** is mixed with such a neon shimmer*** that it’s nearly impossible not to visualize aurora borealis’s ghostly fogs all just intermingling in some galactic, blacklight slowmotion, with at least four distinct layers of hyper-lit accumulations weaving, vertically, to & fro. It’s all so cartoon-esque; a portrayal of what it’s like to frolic amidst Oxygen & Nitrogen-based molecules as solar winds stampede through you, gracefully highlighting their dominance of Earth’s upper atmosphere…

but Rhucle is born of man, & must tether such celestial delights with sonically-buried reminders of terrestrial field recordings, most notably those of our most important liquid life-source (in contact with energetic arousal) as well as the parched vocal chords of many non-human sample of the animal kingdom.

In short, good for to study to, good for to study, good for to zone out to, good for to get guided by, good. Good.

*Stars of the fucking Lid

**that’s right

***really, nearly blindingly metallic in its commanding edginess

http://www.ctatsu.com/portfolio/fantastic-garden/

and/or

https://rhucle.bandcamp.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan