Takahiro Kawaguchi/Utah Kawasaki - Amorphous Spores (CD)

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Erstwhile 077

Unusual sound work from the Japanese duo of Takahiro Kawaguchi and Utah Kawasaki (Astro Twin), using self-made instruments and electronics to create unexpected sonic emissions that follow curious paths separated by periods of quiet or textural sound. Six-panel digipak, photography by Ujin Matsuo, design by Hirozumi Takeda.

For lossless (16/44) files, go to this page.
TRACK LIST

1.  12:32 (12:32)
2.  10:59 (10:59)
3.  4:17 (4:17)
4.  10:01 (10:01)
5.  5:20 (5:20)

(released November 2, 2015)
CREDITS

Takahiro Kawaguchi - selfmade instruments
Utah Kawasaki - electronics

recorded in the summer of 2015 at Ftarri and Pool, Tokyo

mastered by Taku Unami
photography by Ujin Matsuo
design by Hirozumi Takeda
produced by Jon Abbey
REVIEWS

Joshua Minsoo Kim, Tone Glow
Before listening to Takahiro Kawaguchi and Utah Kawasaki's Amorphous Spores, one first experiences Hirozumi Takeda's beautiful design for the album. The photographs that adorn the packaging are alluring precisely for how they draw out specific qualities from various objects—the shape of the mushrooms, the contrast in color between them and the dirt, the general form and movement of the leaves—and bring them to the forefront via thoughtful framing. These individual photographs are chosen with the gatefold packaging in mind; the leaves that flank the side interior panels act to house the CD between them. When one lifts the disc from its tray, an upside down mushroom is revealed. It's unexpected and equal parts charming and hilarious. It all captures the essence of Amorphous Spores perfectly and acts to prepare one for engaging with the music.

When "12:32" begins, a low rumbling is heard. It's deep and has an inherent rhythmic quality to it that sets up the piece as both meditative and dramatic. However, any sense of tranquility is quickly shattered with the sound of a loud, resonating horn. These horns appear frequently but in different ways; sometimes we hear small squeaks, sometimes we hear a series of short notes. A buzzing drill arrives soon thereafter and it acts to contrast the clear, crisp tone of the horns. These three sounds make up the large majority of "12:32"—it may not seem like much but Kawaguchi and Kawasaki handle the material with such meticulous precision, in both pacing and arrangement, that the piece feels grandiose and nuanced.

Even more exciting is "10:59", a whirlwind of a tune that ranks among the best pieces either artist has ever created. It's huge and cacophonous and accomplishes such a feeling through the mixing of various contorted electronics. Considering this photo of Kawasaki sporting a SOPHIE shirt, it's easy to connect the elastic and humorous sounds present on "10:59" to those SOPHIE has created in the past couple years. However, it also recalls the playful attitude of U is for Utah and some of the stuff Kawasaki has created under the youpy moniker, both in its sound and sense of humor. The horn is present again on this track but it serves a different purpose in the midst of hyperactivity. There are, in fact, isolated moments where the horns resemble that of a clown's but what's more amusing is how a constant stream of staccato notes—something present on "12:32"—can sound so terrifically deadpan. The unexpected appearances of the whirring drill are also effective and they've managed to make me burst into laughter on multiple occasions.

The following two tracks are a bit more familiar-sounding but they manage to highlight how Kawaguchi and Kawasaki are so great at contextualizing specific sounds. On "4:17", the drill is heard yet again but it blends more seamlessly with the fidgeting noise. Here, the clamor is contained and the different components amass into a thick layer of sound. When the drill finally disappears, it becomes clear just how instrumental it was in making the piece feel so dense. "10:01" performs a similar trick except with the horn, allowing its droning tone to bind the rest of the instrumentation. As its high-pitched tone eventually clears, the abrasiveness of each scrape and yelp becomes palpable.

The album ends with a reprisal-of-sorts of album opener "12:32" and it acts as a repose from the raw buzzing noise of the previous tracks. It differs from the first track, however, due to how overwhelming the looming low end is; in the final thirty seconds of the song, we hear a note that's perceptibly altered by the track's deep pulses. That exact moment ends the album on a subtle but strong note. Amorphous Spores is filled with many of these small details and it's exactly why it feels like such an accomplishment; the level of craftsmanship that appears in every track allows each revisit to feel incredibly satisfying. It's a real testament to how astute both musicians are in utilizing and organizing their source material, and it's at the core of what makes Amorphous Spores one of the best albums of 2015.


Lucas Schleiche, Brainwashed
Listening to Amorphous Spores, it’s difficult not to think about sex. The title alone implies it. Spores are generally vehicles for asexual reproduction, and while that isn’t technically sex, it is at least related in that it is a method for securing growth and repetition over time. But Takahiro Kawaguchi and Utah Kawasaki chose to place mushroom caps on the cover of their album and many members of the Fungi kingdom can reproduce either asexually or sexually. The method utilized depends on the environment. In conditions favorable to a mushroom’s continued existence, spores are produced by mitosis. As genetic replicas of their parent, the spores simply germinate and continue the species over and over again, no partner required. When conditions aren’t so favorable, however, mushrooms go through a more complicated process involving cell fusion, the production of a zygote, and meiosis. It still doesn’t make sense to think of males and females (the gametes all look the same), but since the resulting spores are not clones of their parents, their offspring stand a better chance of surviving environmental changes. The newly mixed genetic material might, for instance, secure them a tolerance to drier climates. Though it would be a stretch to say that what they’re doing is sexual, Kawaguchi and Kawasaki also work with morphologically similar germs, “selfmade instruments” and “electronics” according to the slim liner notes. They begin as quantifiably distinct bodies, fuse, interact, and disperse, finally producing hybrid offspring. Although it’s a strange and unlikely symmetry, the structural and extra-musical content of the album point toward the similarities in fungal mating and creative collaboration.

In getting to those similarities, it may be enough to point out that Amorphous Spores is shaped like a bell curve. The intensity, volume, and density of the record’s five parts can all be mapped to that form, expressing a movement from calm and stability to disturbance and volatility, then rapidly back to calm again. The circularity fits all of those reproductive graphs passed out in college biology classes and, appropriately, matches the shape of the mushrooms depicted on the album’s cover. Were the music a perfect representation of the progress from mycelia to basidiocarp and so on, each stage in the life cycle of the fungus, maybe the one in the artwork, would have an audible equivalent, and the whole project would be a representational work of art, a very strange translation of the procreative act to the realm of sound.

In all likelihood, that is not what Kawaguchi and Kawasaki had in mind when making their record. For one, the title is not Spores, but Amorphous Spores, suggesting shapeless and apparently unorganized elements colliding at random, not hyphae with cell walls and nuclei undergoing plasmogamy. Whether the duo hits the mark in that respect depends on which part of the music is supposed to be amorphous. Kawasaki’s electronic instruments and Kawaguchi’s homemade contraptions are all designed, and if they had wanted to they could have provided diagrams showing everyone how those instruments were built and how they function. For that reason, and because no such diagrams are present, they seem like poor candidates.

On a simple level, all of their sounds are also formal, vibrations of a particular size and shape, presented in a perfectly appreciable and ordered way, passing through a medium. That’s a murkier path to travel and probably just as unhelpful anyway. The obvious uncertainty at play is the interaction of the instruments and the noises, of the buzzing fan motors, synthetic bursts, and horn-like peals that spin and gurgle endlessly through the album’s middle portion, and of the heavy low-end drones Kawasaki lays down at the extremes, the seismic foundations for Kawaguchi’s curt interruptions. These interact, exchange properties, form structures, then fade away, recurring and resounding at the microscopic level from moment to moment, and at the generational level as the album loops back on itself in its final seconds, cutting a path toward its beginning.

How these parts relate, what they produce, and ultimately where they lead all depends on how the sounds are received. Beyond the big picture of repetition and diversification the inexhaustible matter of translation awaits. That’s where the sexual activity promised by the album’s title enters the equation. Electronic vibrations and organic receptors fuse, interact, and disperse, setting off a chain reaction. The process can end there, in the pleasure of repeitition, or it can spin off in any direction whatsoever, germinating in the minds of others.