No.9 - 9-9-9-9-9
Country: JapanLabel: Liquid Note Records
Released: 9 Sep 2009
Genre: Electronica / Downtempo / IDM / Acoustic / Broken Beat
Details:
(Japanese Edition)
Takayuki Joe is an interesting figure in the Japanese music world. Although he’s been making music for nearly a decade, his albums haven’t become as influential as many of his peers. He flirted with releasing music overseas in his early days, but after finding little success, he retreated back to Japan. Despite the growing number of Japanese labels with an international presence (Schole, Speck, Plop, Noble, Thomason Sounds, Zankyo, etc.), Joe has stuck to a label and a group of artists that don’t frequently get mentioned outside of his homeland (Liquid Note, Amestub, Nanofingers, Aus). Such would suggest that the music of Takayuki Joe, aka no.9, isn’t on par with the international standard, but this is clearly not the case. Joe’s latest, 9-9-9-9-9.com (henceforth 9^5) is another wonderful exploration by this talented musician.
no.9 started as a fairly experimental, minimal project, at least compared to its current incarnation. Joe’s first two albums, Calm and Ecstatic and Mushi No Ne, could easily have fit onto one of Europe’s experimental electronica labels without raising any questions. There’s a tangible influence of labels like ~scape and Raster-Noton which shows that Joe is influenced by Western electronica. This is an important observation, because anyone who jumps into 9^5 could easily miss such a connection, and also because ten years ago Japan’s electronica scene was not nearly as thriving as it is today. A young artist didn’t have much choice but to look to the West in order to find a source of inspiration. Retrospectively, third album Micro Films is a transition between no.9’s early work and his next two albums, Good Morning and Usual Revolution and Nine. It moves out of the experimental arena and into more ambient waters, toying with the idea of a more robust instrumental backbone and also bringing in some additional artists. Good Morning was Joe’s big breakout. This album is the one where Joe really allows his personality to seep into the music, combining everything from old-school IDM and video game music to jazz and modern classical into the mix. It is a veritable fusion of everything Joe loves, and the album is quite the unique experience — few are as simultaneously playful and sophisticated. Usual Revolution and Nine expanded upon the main themes of Good Morning, and while not a large deviation in style, it’s an accurate observation to note that it was Joe’s most modern classical album, prior to 9^5.
9^5 is Joe’s sixth album, but really only his third since stumbling onto his winning formula. Although there are still quite a few styles contributing to no.9’s sound, 9^5 is by far the most simplistic of Joe’s modern works. Instead of layering different styles ontop of one another, 9^5 is more likely to stick with a single style and then transition it into the next. In this aspect, 9^5 achieves a coherency not found on previous works, but those who loved Joe’s frantic mix may feel the artist has gone timid with the new project. However, such a declaration would be untrue; if anything, Joe is only becoming a more sophisticated artist. Opener “Urban Nature” returns to Joe’s roots to deliver a Booka Shade-esque electro track that reminds us of where no.9 originated. After that the album switches between standard no.9 cuts and more modern classical ones. For instance, “Will,” “Flower Shop,” “Re: Bug Beats,” and “Last Song” could have been included in one of his past two album, and “Hikari Sasu Michi E,” “Tomorrowland,” and “Melodian” are certainly in tune with the current trend of classically-leaning artists with ample use of piano, strings, and gentle acoustic guitar. What’s more striking is how well Joe manages to put all these tracks into the same album. Everything sounds like it naturally belongs together, and no.9 successfully forges an album that erases genre lines.
Notably, the highlight of the album is meant to be the interaction it has on the Internet. 9^5 was not created solely to be a musical album, but one that would interact with a special website created by the musician. Thus, 9^5 is not just the album or just the internet page, but both of them together. Here the listener will find a multitude of visual enhancements for the album, including videos, images, and a nifty “tap tempo” feature that displays a specialized visualization after the user inputs the correct tempo of the song he is listening to. The website is quite a nice compliment to the album, but it wouldn’t be accurate to claim they stand next to each other in terms of importance — the real interest here is definitely the album.
In the past half a decade Takayuki Joe has transformed his project from amateur electronica to a delectable fusion of modern music. He’s opened his mind to the role of the solo artist by often writing music to be played by a large group, and he has also gone outside to box to experiment with how listeners interact with a musical work. The future looks bright for Joe, who must not understand that most artists would have already hit creative fatigue by now. -Jordan Volz (Silent Ballet)
講求日常生活與音樂相互結合，由Takayuki Joe領軍的樂團No.9，一年一度的第六張全新作品” http://9-9-9-9-9.com ”，在09年的9月9日，合計收錄9首新作，正式發行。
這一次的新作以植物為主題，除了帶來No.9一貫融合花蟲鳥鳴的聲效，電子與古典的交合之外，這一次為了新專輯特設網頁–99999-Project ，特別展現了音樂與映像的連動結合，在進入該網頁之後，將滑鼠移到中間Flash動畫的位置，利用Tap Tempo系統，將是點擊滑鼠左鍵，依照本次專輯中收錄的樂曲，再聆聽樂曲的同時，跟著音樂節奏按四次，這樣網頁也偵測出你所打的節奏之BPM，由BPM可以得知你所聆聽的樂曲，隨後出現樂曲名稱，再點選樂曲，然後你就可以看到對應該樂曲的音樂映像，跟著音樂欣賞美麗的數位影像，感覺十分有趣，更特別一提專輯中的最後一首曲子” Melodion ”，在進入映像畫面的時候，下方還會多出現電腦鍵盤的圖示，按下不同的按鍵，就可以出現不同的音效來點綴，可以依自己的喜好為樂曲加上色彩，缺點就是如果電腦的效能較差，在判定點擊節奏就會有誤差。
回到專輯本身，本次作品表現依然不俗，這次運用較多比較銳利強硬的聲響，同樣由Takayuki Joe與Nanofingers混音後製，Takayuki Joe透過音樂表現出在都市中那些小小植物的生命力，希望這個城市的人們不但能夠擁有愛，也都能有熱愛這一片大自然的心，不論是宛如碧玉落盤的” Flower Shop ”，還是極具速度感的” Re: Bug Beats ”，到最後清新簡約的” Melodion ”，每首曲目皆能放鬆心情細細品嘗，讓人不禁回味。- Text by: AstroB a.k.a 太空猴
Tracklisting:
- Urban Nature
- Will
- Hikari Sasu Michi e
- Flower Shop
- Tomorrow Land
- Re:bug Beats
- Auto Teck
- Last Song(Album Ver)
- Melodion
