Japanese experimental music figurehead YoshimiO (OOIOO, Boredoms) has announced her new collaborative album with producer IzumikiYoshi, To The Forest To Live a Truer Life, out March 24th. The duo’s debut as YoshimiOizumikiYoshiduO finds YoshimiO using the piano as her primary instrument for the first time since her youth, with fractured melodies and her singular vocal acrobatics bent, stretched and mutated by IzumikiYoshi’s modular synthesizer into cascades of brightly colored waves and dotted constellations of sound. First single “mini yO” is a perfect introduction to the pair’s unique soundworld, YoshimiO’s hypnotic piano figures navigating vaporous electronic atmospheres, as her vocals blossom into ever-more psychedelic shapes.
YoshimiOizumikiYoshiduO’s debut album combines the thrill and precision of masterful improvised music practitioners unearthing new sonic possibilities. YoshimiO’s kinetic energy saturates the album’s every pore. A balance of YoshimiO’s raw live improvisations and IzumikiYoshi’s correlated processed sounds give the pieces a sense of grounding and weightlessness in tandem. Stark piano figures that recall bluesy phrasings or classical progressions warp into beams of fizzling synthesizer. YoshimO’s voice undulates and echoes in wild tendrils. Rather than taming YoshimiO’s spirited performances, IzumikiYoshi adorns every unique flutter with complementary otherworldly textures. Recorded primarily in a cafe nestled in a forest in Japan, To The Forest To Live A Truer Life is a celebration of pure potential, of music born of the moment expanding in every direction.
