Saito Koji - Guide

Hello residents of Blogland and welcome to another year on planet Earth! (The last year in fact according to most well respected scientists I've chatted to). I take it everyone had a fabulous Festivus and if your recent consumption habits have been anything like mine, you'll be foregoing lunch for the next eleven months in an attempt to shed the Christmas stuffing. And I've been royally stuffed; I don't think I've done potty properly for about a fortnight.

Anyway that's enough of my ablutions - let's crack on with the hard-backed-two-thousand-and-twelve music annual (collector's edition) that is Skies Are Rare. And what better way to set us off than with some stunningly beautiful ambient music, which helpfully comes in a double-dip recession whacking finance and guilt free package.

Japanese multi-instrumentalist Saito Koji's new record Guide is available for download on the Resting Bell website and is well worth the effort. Koji creates eroded, swelling soundscapes that, whilst lacking in any real dynamics, are still wholly engaging in their own right and aren't parked in the category of 'background' music. Guide is only inches away from being simply an atonal mess and flirts openly and courageously with the often befallen traps of noise. There is also little deviation between tracks; most of which have similar synth voices and all of which clock in at exactly three minutes in duration. However this little novelty actually makes for a strangely pleasant pattern. The three minute cut off point for the tracks (which also share almost identical volume envelopes) quickly becomes engrained in your subconscious and by the latter half of the twenty-four minute record, is almost subconsciously satisfying.

Generally Guide makes for enjoyable listening for fans of ambient. The aforementioned repetitive streak is a footnote underneath what is a fine record at an affordable price tag. It's meditative, short and free. Give it a whirl:

http://www.restingbell.net/releases/rb103-guide