Chib — Moco
On that No watches No maps comp, you could also hear Joseph Nothing who went on to release albums on Planet Mµ. It took Chib two years to release an ep. The slower, the better? It remains to be seen.
Chib is Chiba Yukiko, a Japanese woman in her early thirties. She recorded her album with an old sampler and a sequencer. She seems to have something of a “recording maniac”, pressing “rec” everywhere: on the streets, in tube station, at the restaurant, in her room. Then, she selects bits and put them together. But Chib’s songs are not just field recordings. Instruments are very present: samples of strings, piano (Chiba took piano lessons for 10 years), guitar.
Chib never lets the attention of the listener drift away. Typical music structures often mean routine. Routine means boredom. One thing seems obvious: Chiba Yukiko does music to avoid every day boredom and had tremendous fun recording her every day life. It’s quite rare when you get “flowing” melodies for more than 10 seconds, but when you do, it shows that Chib could make some wonderfully melancholic pop music. Most of the time though, Chib combines very different sounds together with a enthusing lack of respect for any musical rules. Her music goes where her minds want to go, no matter what she is expected to do, be it by traditionalists in general or electronic music traditionalists…
Chib has enough talent to choose the route she wants to head to. She could go poppier, the Tujiko Noriko way, or opt for a more minimalistic approach à la Yuko Nexus6. Or to combine both. Or even to do something completely different… The only problem of Moco is that it asks more questions than it gives answers. FatCat have discovered a new talent, but Moco will be judged when Chib releases her first full-length.