Recently I happened upon this particular track again and found myself with it gripped in my mucky trembling hands gut wrenching hunger and headful of loss and oozing pain and I bought it up to my mouth without hesitation and snacked upon it so gladly so succulent and running down my chin in rivulets of luscious opulence teeth stuck with its phantomatic remnants. I basically like it a lot.
"It" is 'Need Nobody', taken from a new EP by Shigeto called Intermission. It is so called because Shigeto sees them less as a "strong message" and "more a taste, like a halftime show of sorts," presumably between 2013 album No Better Time Than Now and whatever album might come next. And I say: Well well if this is the halftime show then please allow me to crash all subsequent events and demand their halftime show no matter how far through because this halftime show is... The point is that despite being an intermission in name as well as in its feel, sound, and intent, the tracks still shine as brightly as any other tracks in the world that don't come with this modest and somewhat self-deprecating disclaimer.
And 'Need Nobody' is the perfect perfect example.
The first thing to notice is the analogue synth sounds scorching out from the track with a fabulous flow of melody lines: this is the ominous fantasy music from Zelda: A Link to the Past twinned with music from Super Metroid in all its lo-fi space loneliness, seeming to gulp in sadness and broadcasting it out with soft sounds, a heartbeat attached to a mind wondering if there might be another heartbeat-mind combination nearby. That's it— it's like a plaintive living-and-breathing sonar song scanning the horizon, beautiful and sad.
This floats above a rough escarpment of giant earth-moving bass (picture this gargantuan contraption trundling through stark countryside) punctured with a sharp lightly ornamented and edited beat, through which flows a stream of clopping clack dinging chimely percussion sumptuous and magical-sounding summoning beads of water still and perfect on intense green leaves – the rhythmic and more delicate version of that satisfying feel and sound of searching through a chest of loose Lego for one particular piece but at the same time for the simple action of doing so.
It is a past-and-future sound, a moonscape of yesteryear modernly framed, casting forth into tomorrow laden with memories and experience a voyage in a wellworn vessel, with its lamenting beacon flashing a siren song into the unknown desolation of it all, searching, searching - relaying, relaying.
- You can purchase Intermission via the Ghostly store if you would like to do such a thing.
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