夢が制限されています – 彼らは徐々に消失しています
Recommendation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is that George Takei? Probably not, but just look at that face: it screams “Oh myyyy.”
彼らは徐々に消失しています1 is a minimalist ambient album of the Telepathic Data Storage project. It’s part of a little-known subgenre called “lowercase,” which takes Brian Eno’s statement that ambient music should be as “listenable as it is ignorable” to the far end of the latter descriptor. It utilizes extraordinarily quiet sounds and amplifies those that are typically unheard. In the case of Steve Roden’s Forms of Paper, it was the shuffling of papers that created the music.
This album is that, but taken in the context of mallsoft. You know how in malls, you can tell that something is playing, but you can rarely tell what it is unless it’s an exceptionally identifiable song? That’s the kind of thing for which 彼らは徐々に消失しています is going – where it’s the most anonymous song out there played on loop ad infinitum for your shopping pleasure. I wasn’t aware that anything was playing in my headphones for the first couple minutes of that first track until I turned up my volume pretty damn high, and even then all that one can hears is slow piano tracks with basic rhythm/percussion. There’s no low-end on either track; it does well at capturing that empty, totally lifeless milieu that many mallsoft albums attempt but few do to this extreme extent.
Naturally, it’s an album that is most certainly not for everyone. Many of Telepathic Data Storage’s more avant-garde projects (and this one definitely qualifies as such) were one-offs for a reason, and 夢が制限されています2 is no exception. Each track has dubious listening value except as furniture music, even if the concept is on the mark – and they’re both quite long. If Y.2089 and ▣世界から解放され▣ are broken transmission taken to its logical extreme, then 彼らは徐々に消失しています would be the same for mallsoft. If that sounds like an engaging proposition, then try it out.
Tracklist
1. 彼は熱帯雨林を見つめています – (17:05)3
2. 彼らは徐々に消失しています – (13:16)4
In August 2016, the Telepathic Data Storage record label deleted their entire discography, which unfortunately means that there are no embed links for bandcamp or other streaming services. However, listeners may access 彼らは徐々に消失しています and other albums from the label by following this link.
1Japanese translation: “They gradually disappeared”
2Japanese translation: “Dream has been restricted” or “Forbidden dream”
3Japanese translation: “He is staring at the rainforest”
4Japanese translation: “They gradually disappeared”