チェスマスター – 天使
Recommendation: ☀☁☁
At the risk of sounding totally pretentious, 天使1 is チェスマスター’s2 most “important”3 album, as it heralded a serious stylistic change in the producer’s approach to subsequent works. The previous three – 真の愛,4 Night Drive and The Games We Play – were primarily hypnagogic drift albums with some elements of late night lo-fi; 天使 somewhat continued this, but with a techno-futurist aesthetic and subtle hints at the robot/human dichotomy that would be fully realized on 2016’s I am Chesumasuta. The album artwork best elucidates this concept: in comparison to the nineties-CD-ROM of 真の愛, 天使 is straight Japanese cyberpunk. Even the track names have a globalist vibe; many of them refer to gods and goddesses of various mythologies (including Greek, Egyptian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto), which fit the album’s title theme and the popularity of angelic/mythological figures and archetypes in Japanese mainstream media.
天使 is also チェスマスター’s most stylistically varied work – one whose consistency will depend on the listener. The album makes heavy use of the Infinity Frequencies technique of repeating two/three-second samples for a minute (e.g. “天照,” “ハトホル女神,” and “玉依姫尊”), but without the abject obviousness of the source material that is the other artist’s signature. Indistinct PA chatter flutters on the outskirts of the mix (e.g. “木花開耶姫” and “アルテミス”), similar to “を作成中” off of 真の愛. Whereas previous albums sounded like soundtracks to a smoke-filled night out (especially Night Drive), 天使 is far more ambient; sure, there are slowed-down voices with tape hiss, but they sound more like voices filtered in from the advertisements hanging off the buildings in Blade Runner‘s vision of 2019 Los Angeles – a comparison that’s frequently thrown around in cyberpunk, but is quite apt here.
The preponderance of short songs (the average length is less than two minutes) makes the act of listening to individual tracks kind of pointless. Other than “菊理媛神,” “保食神,” and the eight-minute “永遠の天使,” none of the songs are written to be heard out of their context in the album. Therefore, 天使 is best experienced as a total suite, not put on shuffle or in a playlist. Listeners who do the former will find that 天使 is more than the sum of its parts, and makes for one of the more engaging, cinematic listens in ambient cyberpunk music.
Tracklist
1. 時代を超えた – (1:55)5
2. デメテル – (2:03)6
3. 豊玉姫 – (4:45)7
4. 天宇受売命 – (2:20)8
5. 天照 – (1:18)9
6. ハトホル女神 – (1:33)10
7. 保食神 – (2:01)11
8. ウアジェト – (1:01)12
9. 弁財天 – (2:13)13
10. 玉依姫尊 – (1:30)14
11. 鬼子母神 – (1:55)15
12. 木花開耶姫 – (1:39)16
13. 菊理媛神 – (2:48)17
14. 功徳天 – (1:43)18
15. 摩利支天 – (1:10)19
16. アフロディーテ – (3:21)20
17. アルテミス – (1:21)21
18. ヘスティア – (2:27)22
19. 伊弉冉尊 – (0:43)23
20. 永遠の天使 – (8:00)24
1Japanese translation: “Angel”
2Japanese translation: “Chessmaster”
3Yeech.
4Japanese translation: “Real love”
5Japanese translation: “Timeless”
6Japanese translation: “Demeter”
7Japanese translation: “Toyotame-hime”
8Japanese translation: “Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto”
9Japanese translation: “Amateur”
10Japanese translation: “Hathor”
11Japanese translation: “Uke Mochi”
12Japanese translation: “Wadjet”
13Japanese translation: “Sarasvati”
14Japanese translation: “Tamayori-hime”
15Japanese translation: “Kishibojin” or “Kishimojin” or “Hārītī” (the last is in Sanskrit)
16Japanese translation: “Konohanasakuya-hime”
17Japanese translation: “Kukurihime no kami”
18Japanese translation: “Kisshōten” or “Kudokuten”
19Japanese/Chinese translation: “Marici”
20Japanese translation: “Aphrodite”
21Japanese translation: “Artemis”
22Japanese translation: “Hestia”
23Japanese translation: “Izanami-no-Mikoto”
24Japanese translation: “Eternal angel”