Kazuo creates ambient spaces and runs with them. The latest release shipwrecked is a very wet affair and is intended to be listened together as one single piece that flows through.
With the water and beautiful chimes of “boys and soaked shoes” you get a distilled beauty that has a single chord wind instrument blowing through. The running water / beach wave sample doesn’t leave as we move into the haze of “1987” which evokes memories, afterthought and quite a bit of sadness in its slow spacious chord progression through tuned glass synths. Occasional piano and other synths swim into the mix but it’s a constant revolve around three chords and it amasses to far more than the sum its parts. “Drowned Trees” then brings forward the ambient piano and synths into a simple tune where the piano reverses back onto itself. The resulting ambience continues to be one of sadness and reflection. As the track builds to a distorted mess for the finale it fades to the near silence of a vinyl spit and the toy box of “I always carry a picture of you in my suitcase” which turns into something a little more joyful and cautiously optimistic. It feels like the tiny glimmer of hope in your heart – the last speck left. “White Mountains” is a carefully harsh four chord memento that has beauty in its harsh electric backlash before “Ending Song” gives very much more of the same only brass instruments blast in and turn things into a two chorded fanfare – is it a blaze of survival or actually the final breathes? I honestly cannot decide.
Kazuo’s “Shipwrecked” is ambient noise for those whom are willing to shut off, turn off the lights and listen. Admittedly I did after several glasses of alcohol but it helped me in the place that I was at the time and I sailed an adventure of my own. Isn’t that sometimes what ambience is all about?