There’s ambient, and, well, there’s ambient. There are also artists
who can drone on and on, who can drone with the best of them, and
even over the breadth of a full CD or respectfully-sized catalog
still manage to say very little. Yamaoka is not one of these artists.
On the contrary, his is a soundworld forever in evolution, where
texture is so finely-wrought and considered it is virtually
de-texturalized, his practice being a crash-course in studio dynamics,
studio exploration, studio ingenuity. Once again gracing Carpe Sonum
with his presence, Yamaoka ratchets the emotional atmospheric level
up to ten, ravishing us with wave after wave of aural balm, sensory
deprivation, and tonal technique. But gorgeous as it all is, floral
wallpaper it sure ain’t. Rather, these ten slices of discrete music
have a habit of sneaking up on you; what seems like a collection
of sonic zircons are actually finely-buffed diamonds. The opening
track's lush life cascades about the ears and head with the cyclical
comfort of digital waves smashing up on smooth shorelines, while
the following work adds ticking percussive motifs that help to
embrace you in its womblike amniotic fluid. And roughly half-way
through, Yamaoka channels his inner (Richard) Pinhas and Fripp/Eno
affectations across a series of endlessly-repeating icicle sequencers
that refract their surroundings into a thousand brilliant points
of light. Yamaoka manages to tap into the awe and mystery of sound
which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.