Meitei

Kofū / 古風

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Boomkat Product Review:

Totally absorbing 3rd part in Meitei’s prized trilogy capturing lost Japanese moods, following sides of ghost story-telling and elemental sonics with a frayed suite of cut-up rhythms and samples; imagine Dilla meets The Caretaker on an Anime score…

One of the most distinctive and crafty artists we’ve heard emerge from Japan in recent years, Meitei and his absorbing catalogue have granted his listeners access to surreal, forgotten worlds where, for all intents and purposes, the past truly does feel like a foreign - if strangely familiar - land.

It’s been a real pleasure to immerse in the nuance of each of Meitei’s atmospheric sound-worlds, and ‘Kofū’ is a wonderfully unexpected addition to see out the series, contrasting his knack for shaping quietly rustling, melancholic scenes with more frenetic jump-cuts to colourful, but bittersweet, scenarios that subtly pay homage to working class courtesans of the Meiji era (circa late C.19th-early 20th, and Japan’s industrial and political revolution).

Using his art to give voice to dispossessed citizens of Japan’s past, Meitei’s descriptive skills are at their most sensitive, elusive, and affective here. Mottled vignettes of sampled vintage 78s are tiled with smudged & screwed Mica Levi-esque tekkers and collages of pitched-up vocals, old skool Kanye West style on the album’s two ‘Oiran’ works, dedicated to workers of the red light districts, with ‘Sadayakko’ and ‘Nyōbō’ slipping into something like Matt Wand on the MPC with Dilla or Carl Stone, along with an unmissable eight minute dream sequence cut, ‘Himawari’ recalling us the atmospheres of RZA’s Ghost Dog OST.

LP (13)