AUS + THE HUMBLE BEE — BELOW THE SURFACE WE SHIMMER AND SHINE

The connection between music and place is inextricable, both the power of the former to soundtrack the latter, and for location to alter our listening experience. This is deftly put into practice by Tokyo-based producer and musician aus (Yasuhiko Fukuzono) on 'Below the Surface We Shimmer and Shine', a track originally intended to be listened to whilst bathing in an onsen — a hot spring, thousands of which are nestled in the forested folds of Japan's mountainous interior.

This piece of ambient music, with additional production magic courtesy of Manchester-based the humble bee singularly encapsulates the onsen experience. In its granular textures are promises of mineral goodness, countless intricate rough-hewn gemstones that speak of hygiene in body and mind, while a golden glimmer of sound illustrates a refraction of light in the hot spring waters.

Not only the onsen itself and its ephemeral liquidity but its surroundings, captured by aus in his field recording work, are brought to life. A coarse backdrop echoes a bristling tree-clad mountainside and the vast unknowable nature that surrounds the onsen town. Icy tuned percussion hints at frigid winter air contrasted with the waves of warm synth representing the steaming hot spring waters themselves. (A warm bath outdoors is super nice).

Though there's a contrast between human warmth and our desire to control nature (i.e. bathing in an onsen, comfortable hotel surroundings), and nature in its giant forboding splendour (i.e. the reason hot springs exist naturally, the harshness of the mountains), here they exist timelessly and harmoniously etched in sound.

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• 🔔 'below the surface we shimmer and shine' is taken from the collaborative album Chalybeate, which is scheduled for release on 13 February via flau. Originating as a sonic document of the onsen (hot spring) town Ikaho, Gunma Prefecture, by aus during a month-long stay, he enlisted the humble bee (Craig Tattersall, known for his releases for labels like Dauw and IIKKI) for production and mixing duties.

  The album is available for pre-order on Bandcamp, either in compact disc or vinyl form.

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🐣 BELS LONTANO — LOVELY PATH

We are back in the misty moods that define the music of Bels Lontano, and this time we are inducted into the sumptuous beats and the trickling of percussion of 'Lovely Path' that helps to make it a textured journey of sound. Whereas 'Smokkr' was a delicately decorated tract of sultry ultrachillment, this one is a more winding, creeping sonic illustration, more a flurry of house-styled kicks that keep it uptempo, some sense of vague worry like being lost without fear in a wide wonderful world.

Simple bass underpins the cascade of it all, an ascending pattern of notes that gives the impression of motion, sidechained to the beat for this wavy in-and-out-of-earshot vibe. Chimes glisten and gloss together, insectoid chirruping zings in the background; the clink-clank of hefty metallic objects draped across each other and dragged along for the ride. Harp sounds evoke something heavenly in the nocturnal marrow of this track, a path through an ancient forest lit for your safety by bioluminescent mushrooms: a lovely path.

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• 🔔 This arrives ahead of Bels Lontano's Kin Decade EP, which is "out soon".

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SHIGETO – NEED NOBODY

It is time for some music by Zach Saginaw aka Shigeto. I heard this a while ago and thought mmmm yeah definitely need to write about this look how tasty it looks. But sometimes just because you can see something's tasty doesn't mean you run up and eat it right away. In hindsight I was lazy.

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.

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• You can purchase Intermission via the Ghostly store if you would like to do such a thing.

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