t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – 肉体からの離脱

Album information:

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Artist: t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者
Album: 肉体からの離脱
Type: Full-length (LP)
Release date: 27 August 2014
Label: Dream Catalogue
Format:

• Digital download (Dream Catalogue, 2014)

 

Recommendation: ☀☁☁

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Scour the archives of RateYourMusic or Bandcamp, and you’ll see plenty of users calling telepath’s¹ 肉体からの離脱² the ambient version of INTERNET CLUB’s ▣世界から解放され▣. It’s not a bad comparison. Both albums stretch the concept of “vaporwave” to its logical extremes – the former in extraordinarily long compositions and the latter in microfragments.³ Both also extensively utilize looping – perhaps a bit easier to hear on INTERNET CLUB’s contribution, but telepath’s can certainly be heard on tracks like the opener “わたしはあなたと共に時は時間がありません”, on which pink-elephants surrealism contorts a series of vocal samples akin to Vektroid with Shader. Both albums are almost amusical⁴ in their final product, production tropes be damned: ▣世界から解放され▣ is quite forward with its influence in noise music and found sounds, but telepath wears a drone visage unmatched until Online Records turned on over two years later.

Prior to 肉体からの離脱, telepath’s discography comprised of his trademark production style of “slushwave”, which mixed hypnagogic drift and late night lo-fi music with heavily phased percussion and dreamy melodies. Albums like 未来へ incorporated popular music edits of acts such as K.C. & the Sunshine Band, and the samples frequently retained some of their original context with the slushwave aspect evoking hazy memories of romance and splendor. In contrast, 肉体からの離脱 mystified every aspect of the samples, losing the romance and adopting a dolorous affect that’s amplified by the long track lengths. In contrast to the tenderness of the 仮想夢プラザ project, 肉体からの離脱 gained that specific kind of baleful tension that occurs in confounding drone music.

Now telepath certainly was no stranger to long songs beforehand (“あなたを待って” from 現実を超えて stretched past fourteen minutes), but 肉体からの離脱 upped the ante by making length a focal point. The eight-five minute length of 肉体からの離脱 is often cited in the vaporwave community as being the album’s make-it-or-break-it characteristic. It doesn’t change upon one’s listen and realizing that so much of that length is the slightest of variations upon the aforementioned theme of slushwave-drone. Perhaps this makes 肉体からの離脱 an effective example of vaporwave furniture music that can be put on in the background during studying, reading, or drifting off to sleep. Whether it’s frustrating or hypnotizing will, in the end, be a statement outside of the scope of this article and is dependent upon the listener’s interest in drone music.

Musical quality notwithstanding, 肉体からの離脱 is practically necessary for telepath fans because it demonstrates such a sea change in affect and shows telepath at one of his most experimental moments. And by God, look at that gorgeous album artwork.

 

Tracklist

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1. わたしはあなたと共に時は時間がありません – (13:49)⁵
2. 私の夢の女性との時空間連続体の外側の内部の心の肉体ビジョン – (17:17)⁶
3. 愛の力を通して普遍的な言語翻訳 – (19:38)⁷
4. 目を覚まし夢 – (2:23)⁸
5. 私たちが存在する場合私たちはそこではありません – (13:17)⁹
6. ザ·ウェイ·ユー·メイク·ミー·フィール – (12:04)¹⁰
7. 時間外に夢を見て – (6:50)¹¹

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Then presenting as t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者. The katakana and spaces were dropped around 2015/2016.
²Japanese translation: “Withdrawl from the body”. Think of it like astral projection or transcendence.
³i.e. BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP
⁴Not a typo.
⁵Japanese translation: “I have no time with you sometimes”
⁶Japanese translation: “The physical vision of the inner mind of the spatiotemporal continuum with the woman of my dreams
⁷Japanese translation: “Universal language translation through the power of love”
⁸Japanese translation: “Lucid dream”
⁹Japanese translation: “When we exist we are not there”
¹⁰Japanese translation: “The way you make me feel”
¹¹Japanese translation: “Dreaming out of time”