Hi, everyone. Inthony Teethtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Ichiko Aoba record, Luminescent Creatures.

Here we have a new album from an artist who may very well be the gentlest singer-songwriter out of Japan, someone who we have not heard from in a minute. I mean, I don't know your listening habits. Maybe you're the hardcore fan that dove into Aoba's soundtrack work that dropped in 2022 around the Amiko film. Or maybe you caught wind of the recent live crossover she did with Black Country New Road in Rotterdam, or even caught wind of the environmentalist music project spearheaded by Brian Eno that she contributed a single to titled "Space Orphans".

Either way, Aoba's last proper solo full-length LP, released back in 2020, which was Windswept Adan, a musical gift that came at the very end of a horrible year. At the time when the album came out, it was really a high watermark that came after 10 whole years of just slowly honing a trademark sound for Aoba.

She is now on her eighth full-length LP here, if I'm correct. So much of what is here on this album is so familiar, it's like she never left. Luminescent Creatures still features wondrous chord progressions, very sleepy, whispery, subtle, understated vocal performances, and the sweetest, most magical, little melodies. These songs are like pleasant dreams or precious little music boxes. It's truly a prime example of doing a lot with a little.

Because even though Aoba's music tends to run very quiet, there is still something at least a little overwhelming about the sheer beauty of it. And the typically intimate songs that she writes have only gotten more entrancing and mellow as she's progressed.

At the time it came out, Windswept was at least a little bit of a departure because the production on this record did see Aoba embracing more orchestrations and layers in her work, and she's most definitely doing that again on this album here. In fact, I think she really wants audiences to know the arrangements are here to stay as you are, in a way, almost pummeled with them with the opening track "COLORATURA", which is loaded with all these lush and cinematic arrangements that fans of indie folk titans, such as Joanna Newsom and Sufian Stevens, should be able to appreciate.

Aoba also seems to be pulling inspiration once again from nature itself and the writing on this album, too, especially the ocean, and sometimes mystical imaginative storytelling as well, like in the case of "mazamun", which is this little slice of life scene depicting an imp who is just up to all kinds of imp-type mischief on this song involving water droplets and bugs are raft on the ocean. It's like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie, which makes sense considering those soundtracks and that world of imagination was a reference point for Windswept Adan.

Now, the biggest moments of beauty and inspiration on this record, the tracks that truly have the most standout melodies, are the more bare, acoustic numbers that really could fit snugly into that Windswept Adan tracklist, many of which are packed with all of this coastal, oceanic imagery, waves and lighthouses and ships, even the song "SONAR", which is like this abstract first-person perspective of communicating in the ocean through SONAR through song in the way that an ocean mammal might such as a whale. And yeah, the track is essentially about trying to reach out in that darkness and find connection in the unknown.

Again, I think all the major musical and aesthetic gears that made Alba's last record so good are turning on this album, too. But I still can't help but feel like what she has pulled together here pales in comparison, though. I do think the instrumentation and the vocals and the arrangements for the most part are there. But the shorter run time, the choppier flow across this tracklist and the more meager songs, I think, just give us a record that doesn't feel quite as wondrous or as immersive.

And while the opening orchestrations on the record and at a few other points as well are very nice and detailed, a little storybook as well, I think they mostly overshadow Aoba's vocals in this particular case, sadly. I don't think the interlude moments add that much to the record. And then you have some songs that are so repetitive and lacking in development, they might as well be interlude moods, like in the case of "aurora", which features these very tense arpeggios that don't really progress or resolve in a very gratifying way. A

nother moment on the record that I'll say is very pleasant on the ears is the combination of stuttering synthesizers and humming on "pirsomnia". But the piece overall is just maybe a bit too ambient and new age and abstract. It just feels like an explorative motif, maybe something that could have worked better on a formal soundtrack of some sort.

I will say there are aspects in which Aoba does go the extra mile, like in the case of the closing track, "惑星の泪 (Wakusei no Namida)", which is one of several key moments on this record that works in bits of wind or found sound in order to really give this album a sense of place and make the record's connections with nature just a bit more clear.

But these additions on the album are typically so minor that they're not necessarily game-changing, and they're certainly not as impactful as the moments where Aoba is simply playing to the strengths that we already know she has, like on simple ballads on this record, such as, again, "mazamun", "tower", "FLAG", as well as "SONAR". Everything else on the LP either ends abruptly or inconclusively, leans a bit too much into the arrangements, and the song gets lost in the sauce.

Not to mention that overall, the entire record feels surprisingly predictable for a project we've waited this long for, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 6 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Ichiko Aoba, Forever.