#walearic

Back in 2024, Kaoru Inoue released one of the highlight albums of the year in the form of Dedicated to the Island: Soundwalk & Music for SAUNTER Magazine, which came out for Record Store Day on the Deep Ground sublabel of the artist's own Seeds & Ground, and which was itself a wider vinyl release of a CD that was originally included with SAUNTER Magazine Vol. 06. As the title indicates, the LP was based on a “soundwalk” around Yakushima Island…a place that has continually captured Inoue’s attention and imagination since he first visited in 2002 for the recording of Final Drop’s amazing Elements album. 

A lot of the work of Dedicated to the Island is based around the technical method of Ambisonics, which allowed Inoue to capture the natural landscape and the auditory aura of the flora and fauna in a 360-degree sonic rendering. These hyper-detailed and healing sounds of water, birds, and rustling leaves served as the foundation for dreamtime weavings of fourth world fantasy, spiritual balearic, magical mallet minimalism, and deep ambient house…all of which slowly build from a forest temple whisper to a ritualistic slow dance preceding beneath a sparkling canopy of starlight.

Towards the end of 2024, Inoue revisited the Dedicated to the Island project with a remix 12” titled Rhythms of Dedication. Here, Argentinian artist SidiRum…a contemporary explorer of slow house and tribal music…presented a hypnotic interpretation of album track “Nagareru”, which was also given an alternate rework by Inoue himself. Elsewhere, a few other cuts from Dedicated to the Island were treated to enhanced remixes with a leftfield club focus…so that the overall mood was taken towards trippy and tribal zones of psychotropic electronic intoxication and bewitching body dance ritualism. As well, there were supplementary productions included from outside the Dedicated to the Island ecosystem…such as “La Isla Secreta” taken from Global Ark’s All Future’s Parties compilation...which further complimented the exotic, exploratory, and equatorial vibes of ceremonial body beat mesmerism.

Kaoru Inoue - Rhythms of Dedication (Deep Ground Records, 2024) The A-side begins with the SidiRum remix of “Nagareru”, which features cosmic tropical synth patterns in sequential stasis and muted loops in polyrhythmic motion, with the sounds bringing evocations of marimbas and balafons. Broken beats lock into in a tribal groove beneath metallic accents treated with cold reverberation, and as the track progresses, pads and prismatic leads drop in at repeated intervals. It’s all hushed and heady, with everything pulling away at times, leaving just cymbals and tones of idiphonic iridescence to filter into smoke, as tracer trails of extra-terrestrial static flow into and out of the stereo field. “Nagareru Anatomy” is Inoue’s own treatment of the track, and begins with a restorative cleanse of flowing water, while world drums are backed by subsonic thuds. Sequential metallophones pan across the spectrum bringing tropical splashes of island warmth, and shakers and booming bass slides give a heady dub pulse. All the while, holy moaning tonalities arc up into the sky, and far in the background sits a gentle presence of layered spiritual squelch. “La Isla Secreta” ends the A-side with tapping club cymbals, looping balaphon oscillations, celebratory drum accents, and joyous streaks of synthesized sunshine. The ritualistic beats flash into a stutter step groove, further accented by flamboyant tom fills that possess an almost stadium rock flair, while layers of balearic romance melt all over mix…these big poly pad textures all gushing, gooey, and glowing in neon, while everything else is surrounded by wavering and wondrous currents of mirage magic.

On the B-side, “Karyobinga” opens with a subdued sequencer display of equatorial enchantment that sounds like electrified kalimbas or steel drums dancing over an urgent live drum rhythm with a heavy dose of balearic fusion. It’s a mystical ocean groove pulsing and galloping into shadowy paraisos wherein new age vocal synths sing like aqueous mermaids. Epic key changes ride Michael Shrieve-style drumkit pyrotechnics as the stereo fields lights up with sparkles and shimmers of prismatic metallic magic, and haunting hazes of billowing sea foam and ghostly salt air blow all through out the mix. Whistling tones flow in from some place of mysterious origin, and there is a continuous sense of cycling and synaptic motion…a feeling in sound of thrilling and adventurous oceanside exploration. “Hoshifuru Drums” is another rework from Dedicated to the Island, and comes to life as a deep incantation of tribal forest drums and psychedelic alien synthetics, with ringing bells, shimmering shakers, and morphing mutant liquid ascending. What then develops is a primitive conga line groove through the humid rainforest undergrowth, wherein dial tone tracers swim amidst polyrhythmic patterns and shamanic rituals of world music rhythm. The mix is additionally accented by solar spells of strummed guitar that fade in and out of focus, bringing gentle Afro-folk influences as they occasionally lock in with the rhythms for ebullient passages of positivity that sadly disperse all too quickly, while all through the background, animalistic cries and psych rock wah wah riffs further color the flow. At the end of the 12” sits “Cityscape 4:20 am Harajuku,” and here, a panorama of chirping birds joins reversing ambient waveforms that sound like some golden solar wind being sucked back into the sky.