TAKAHIRO MUKAI “Helplessness" C36 (Degenerate Trifecta)

Both Osaka-based Takahiro Mukai and the Washington-based Degenerate Trifecta label (aka Mrs. Dink) have a real knack for kicking out mesmerising, quasi-tribal electronic jams that straddle the line 'twixt Industrial and Techno, finding new & creative ways to explore what it might sound like were a thrift store’s vintage electronics section to become both wholly possessed and highly caffeinated. 

Downright capital-s "Spooky" in parts, this half-hour plus soundtrack of nervous meditations has all the charm to rope in the anti-“beat shit” crowd AND bring some noisy/industrial flavor to those that do worship at the metronomic altar. Hard trick to pull, but TK & DT pull it off seamlessly!

https://degeneratetrifecta.bandcamp.com/album/helplessness

and/or

https://soundcloud.com/takahiro-5

—Jacob An Kittenplan

TAKAHIRO MUKAI “The Ideal Ruins” C40 (Hylé Tapes)

 Do we call Takahiro Mukai prolific now? He’s released eight tapes in the past two years, among other things, so I think it’s safe to say he’s going through a creative streak. I’ve even reviewed him on this very blog before. I know you want to relive his Telly, Washer & Fridge release on Entertainment Systems, because we’re all in this together.

The Osaka musician has found a newish home for this release, our old standby Hylé Tapes (and dang, they’re the excellent-est). I wrote before about how Mukai’s music would be perfect for seasick, alternate-gravity-pressure dancefloors (or at least something along those lines), and he’s proving my intuitions right yet again. This is awesome dubby-steppy weirdness, if everything was coated in soap bubbles and slowed down to tub-drain speed. This is dance music for MOMA installations, and it only gets as fast and crazy as “#236” and “#244” allow it to. (Numbers only for TM’s song titles.)

Yeah, this is modern art as recognized and configured in sound waves, and it points to the future. Mukai’s harnessed his synthesizer rig and wrangled it into an abstract wilderness where East meets West in a psionic global showdown. He is the MC of the event, and he is only in our minds. We’re on the brink of total annihilation, and The Ideal Ruins is the soundtrack piped in from another reality to hasten the action.

Maybe that’s what he’s insinuating by his title, The Ideal Ruins, that we’re dancing in our reconfigured postapocalyptic bodies upon the grave of modern civilization. We’re beyond everything, and this is what’s left. Fortunately, Takahiro Mukai has survived to make everything a little more pleasant. Or maybe he was never actually here in the first place.

Hylé Tapes

Takahiro Mukai Bandcamp

--Ryan Masteller

TAKAHIRO MUKAI “Telly, Washer and Fridge” (Entertainment Systems)

“A collection of 6 signature TAKAHIRO MUKAI musings.” Because that’s what TAKAHIRO MUKAI does, everybody, he muses over his synthesizer. He doesn’t compose, he doesn’t jam, he muses. Meaning, he considers carefully and introspectively how his miniature synthesizer movements will move and flow, penetrate the ears, infiltrate the mind.

The tracks are titled by numbers, because TM has absolutely no interest or time for such trivial matters as actually naming songs. And he doesn’t need to. Tracks like “#176” and “#174” bounce along like a stone skipping on a still pond, its ripple effects the digital EQ readout of each track, because we’re eating our own tail here, ouroboros style. Realities are overlapping, superimposed like ancient Rome over modern-day life, just like in VALIS, and if you haven’t read VALIS, do it. Then listen to Takahiro Mukai. Or vice versa. One does not inform the other.

If there exists a discotheque where TM DJ’s, it would be the weirdest, herky-jerky dancefloor ever. Instead of huge, four-on-the-floor beats, everybody would stumble-bumble to the sickly, warbling, static-heavy bong rips Telly, Washer and Fridge constantly serves. But still, if you’re listening to this – and I know you are, everybody is right now, and I mean everybody – you can totally picture the club, right? The lightshow, the vibe – the music’s just a little off. And that’s why TM’s perfect for being in my head. Because there’s no way in FUCK that I’m ever going to a club.

http://www.entertainment-systems.net/

http://soundcloud.com/takahiro-5

--Ryan Masteller