With the snow slowly thawing on the quads of our campus, spring has finally begun to seep in through the cold. In this brand new sunny world, let us all enjoy the beautiful new folk album by Ichiko Aoba — “Luminescent Creatures”.
The album, co-produced by Taro Umebayashi, was released last month with 11 tracks lasting 35 minutes. Following Aoba’s usual style, the music is mostly composed of simple instruments such as piano, guitar, chimes, and occasional field recordings. The tracks contain combinations of these delicate instrumentals and Aoba’s soul-touching voice, creating a strong sense of calmness and longing as if you’re floating through the crystal blue waters of the album’s cover. While some of the songs are a bit longer than the rest, lasting for more than 5 minutes, with the dreamy instrumentals, the time passes by like a gentle drift of wind. When the song is over, you temporarily return to real life as if waking up from a dream you’ll remember forever, for the next song to bring you to sleep again.
Although there aren’t many lyrics within the songs, with some tracks being purely instrumental, the album still managed to convey a sense of livelihood beyond what words could share. The lyrics (sung in Japanese but translated into English here) that are present usually describe a small scene of nature, making you feel as if you’re living in that specific moment, being out there in another part of the world where time has paused for the beauty to last forever. In “COLORATURA”, there are only two sung lines: “To the drifting waves of the sails / The people of the heavens follow the wind”. From these two lines alone, a scenery of boats drifting on the ocean is depicted, with the piano and the chime sounds in the background mimicking the flow of the water. Other lyrics describe a more emotional scene along with nature, such as in “tower”, “Sitting at my window I looked upon the night sky / When the sound of wings fades away / The lid on my dreams shall be opened / Memories, shaken off”. The melancholy within the lines is guided to you with the gentle piano as if you’re seated right next to Aoba in the solitude of that night.
The tempo of the tracks is rather slow, unlike some of Aoba’s other songs, serving as a nice break from the urgency of real life. When everything around us is moving along so fast, sometimes we need this bit of slowness to remind ourselves of the actual world we’re living in — one where, just like the album cover, the clear waters are flowing by slowly but surely.
So, with the exquisite music of “Luminescent Creatures”, let us live in the moment — there exists the beauty that we need not close our eyes and forget about. Listen to the music and listen for the sounds of our hearts reflecting through the melodies as we float through this spring together with grace and peace.
