Two years ago Satomi Magae released Kyokai, a collaborative album with ambient composer and sound artist duenn. Minimalism, glitchy electronics, new age music and a warped kind of songwriting were the touchstones, and duenn described the sound as ‘something more than haiku but less than music’, that is, something that urges the listener to engage in unconventional and perhaps uncomfortable ways. It was here that Satomimagae announced herself as the progenitor of a certain kind of liminal artform: her songs and snippets seemed to exist on the edge of sleep, or at the juncture between the corporeal and spirit worlds, although they contained few, if any, of the now-hackneyed signifiers of hypnogogic pop.
On her new solo album Taba, Satomimagae has chosen to venture further into those misty borderlands, albeit without the aid of duenn’s soundscapes. Her technique here is to marry the minimal, dreamlike philosophy of Kyokai with a more organic approach to musicianship and arrangement that acts as a kind of distorted echo of her earlier, folkier solo output. On opener Ishi, field recordings dovetail with a fuzzy, pillowy melody. This is a music of vague but tantalising hints, subtler and more interesting than her 2021 album Hanazono, the record where she first began to move away from structure and into abstraction.
There are superficial similarities to other minimal-minded Japanese songwriters like Ai Aso, or experimental heroes Reiko and Tori Kudo, but a closer comparison might be Grouper, who layers her songs in a similar way: a stunning fusion of ambience and songwriting, where the minimalism comes in the form – or lack of form – of the melody rather than from a stripping away of instrumental elements. And like Grouper, the effect of Satomimagae’s music is often wondrously visual, conjuring up images of rain or dappled sunlight. The verbal repetition on Many is hypnotic and lulling, but if it induces sleep then the dreams are of vivid landscapes.
The short length of most of the songs on Taba is another contributing factor to their dreaminess. They are fleeting things, sometimes barely more than snippets, calling into question the relationship between fragment and whole. While a song like Tonbo only lasts for two minutes and doesn’t seem to progress in the usual manner, it nevertheless feels entirely complete, and this is because Magae is so good at gently shifting our notions of what a song actually is and what it is supposed to do. She makes us contemplate form and formlessness, apparently without trying. But she also has the ability to surprise: the miniature Horo Horo seems at first like an acid-folk ditty, before the introduction of muted brass sends everything in an unexpected direction.
The field recordings offer a continuous thread that runs the length of the album, making everything seem like discrete episodes of a single long dream. The notion that these songs are short becomes more meaningless as the album progresses: all the elements here exist in relation to each other. Certain songs – like Spells, with its marginally more structured feel and eerily seductive clarinet – seem to act like markers or beacons, though perhaps they are deceptive ones.
The ground from which Taba’s songs grow is undoubtedly the acoustic guitar, which Magae employs not like a musical instrument but like a base coat of paint, or a loose set of grammatical rules. Everything else springs from the guitar’s background sound, which is at once ever-present and barely noticeable. On Wakaranai, it acts as a slowly shifting backcloth: everything that is layered on top, including Magaes voice, becomes slightly warped, slightly disconcerting.
But more than anything, Taba is just a stunningly beautiful album. Despite its off-kilter approach to melody and its frequent eeriness, there is something meditative about it. Songs like Dottsu wash over you, but not in a disengaged way: you feel like this music has access to every part of your body, inside and out, like it is composed of infinitesimally small particles that rearrange themselves around you. Kodama, with its overlaid vocals and strange bursts of synth, feels like it’s in two places at once. Again, Magae’s preoccupation is with the boundaries between worlds, and she is able to slip back and forward over those boundaries with apparent ease. It comes as no surprise to learn that Magae studied molecular biology; her music works on the smallest of levels and, at heart, is concerned with fundamentals and building blocks.
A number of Taba’s songs begin with a kind of onrushing background drone, so they feel like they are being carried in by wind or wave. Metallic Gold uses this background noise to add a sense of drama, a tension that remains tantalisingly unresolved even as Magae’s singing wanders freely or ends suddenly. Ghost – another of the album’s sonic beacons – seems to have something resembling a chorus, Magae’s multi-tracked vocals rising out of a chiming acoustic background, gliding and shimmering in a way that recalls Liz Fraser from the Cocteau Twins. Bonus track Kabi sounds fuller, warmer, with a gentle ripple of acoustic guitar offsetting its spooky background effects.
Taba is a strange miracle of an album, equal parts clarity and haze. It seems to drift by but never lets you take it for granted, remaining consistent in mood but always shifting in perspective. Satomimagae has created a work of art full of wonder and mystery that builds upon itself in the most surprising ways. It speaks a different musical language to anything else you are likely to hear, but learning that language is a joy and a reward in itself.
Taba (April 25th, 2025) RVNG Intl. / Plancha
Pre-Save: https://lnk.to/rvngnl119
Bandcamp: https://satomimagae.bandcamp.com/album/taba