Takahiro Kido

Takahiro Kido "Christmas Song"              

from Fleursy Music (Plop)

Ambient chamber // Out Now

(orig. Pub. early Aug. 2008)  

Yeah, that's right, not just "Flowery Music" and not even just "Flowersy Music": it's in French, it's Fluh-loooo-ersy (in there between "heresy" and "pleurisy") Music, though of course he couldn't make it "Musique," so inconsistency makes it even more irritating! But this isn't just another wuss-in-your-face album, revelling in twee. Oh, it's that to an extent, but pianist-organist-guitarist-melodianist-glockenspieler Kido is inflating his music's twee factor in its title, like Harry Smith drew cartoony (and apt)tabloid headlines from the stark (and topical) tragedies of so many of the ballads compiled on his  MSmithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music: blow it up real good, and it--well, it won't go away, but hopefully it'll be reduced, like the excess alcohol evaporated from heated wine,without losing its flavor, so you can really get cooking, and eating, without driving off into some valley of pallid pillows of puke. The deflating conflation of cheesy formalism and disaster which all times know too well. So (cut to the chase) Kido doesn't avoid the kind of crescendo-dependence his training in romantic classical music (and his taste in rock) conditioned him into, he reduces it to lyrical minimalism, but with a homey range of sonic and emotional effects, in those sweet little curves and waves, which he leads his instruments, and some violins, violas, percussive and various found sounds over and through. If it's "post-rock," as some say, it's also post-chamber, with bending, resonant walls pushed back, for big sky ballads like the disgustingly (and aptly) titled, yet self-redeeming "Smile-spotter's Chronicle," which moves along, to a just-train-like-enough rhythm track, welcoming aboard even a fuzz guitar, with glitter on its tiny tits: a guitar that wisely doesn't try to take over, but proudly rides under the shining strings, having arrived just as they were getting drippy. It's a welcome distraction, so now we can all enjoy the rest of the day trip. Walls can also push back in, for several minute-land-loose-change interludes, like "You Lost What?", which is just the fading reverberations of some missing moment, with the aforementioned sweet little curves and waves of composition now reduced to the sound, or impression, of stiff motion, quivering direction given to flickering frames, way in the middle of a fumbling search in the dark (if it's even dark--whatever it is, it's gone). Yeah, Kido can kid his own cuteness, and, though another big ballad, "Landscape With Snow," eventually lets an anime-pie-eyed, childlike sense o' wonder lead a stern, adult, way-left-of-middle-C hand astray, such indulgent adults and youngsters both get their come-uppance in "Christmas Song." Sort of. In "Landscape," the occasional low, growly bass note become the very thing the merrier sounds seem to wait for.  Here, a post-hip hop beat and a typically short, singable (and here, r&b-ish) motif brush through the gathering focus of textures, of anticipation, all of which keeps rising from phrases into a shared refrain, even a sentence made of instruments---but somewhere in there is a passing punctuation mark, of, not exactly irresolution, maybe it's the relative minor of the resolution we've been led to expect, the sound in the listener's mind, now turned like a card. And that becomes the one thing I keep listening for, in all the pretty paper. But still, it's just something else that's new, that has to be learned (and taught), like another ear, another year, all in the family. For a while.