Cosima Pitz / Germany / RE 2024 / CS, 3rd edition. Cardboard slipcase.
The previous occasion I heard of Ayami Suzuki was when she released a duo cassette with Leo Okawaga (see Vital Weekly 1280). Don’t let her biography mislead you. In 2016 she moved to Ireland to study Celtic music, and since her return, she has performed Celtic ballads in Tokyo. I assume we are talking about a whole different world here compared to the two long pieces on her Vista cassette. There is nothing Celtic about this music, and you don’t need to be an expert to know that. She writes that she uses vocal loops and guitar, creating “site-specific ambient soundscapes” in which she incorporates her folk influences. In both pieces, ‘Glade’ and ‘Shore’, there is a hint that it is recorded at the Beach, more in the second than the first, but I tried to find the locations mentioned but had no luck there. With my limited knowledge of folk music, I’d say the second is the more folky piece here. Words might be sung, but they are stretched out, embedded within the sea (literally!) of sounds, synthetic or real field recordings. ‘Glade’ is more abstract and more ambient also. The ocean sounds suspiciously like white noise, certainly towards the end, when everything has disappeared. In this piece, Suzuki uses her voice to chant more than sing; I would think without words. The music here is somewhere at a crossroads of ambient and improvisation, and we often hear her searching for the next bit. In ‘Shore’, it all stays together a bit more, going from the abstraction slowly towards a more song-oriented soundscape. All of this made up for a beautiful variation in ambient music.
(Review by Vital Weekly)