Kasumi Trio — Oh! Gimme You
The trio features Takashi Ueno (Tenniscoats) Shinsuke Michishita (LSD March) Ikuro Takahashi (Fushitsusha, Nagisa Ni Te) & the primal focus here are the joint acoustic or un-peddle effected electric guitar tones & the buoyant yet haphazard to often quite sombre Japanese male vocals. Sure there nudges of electronics, some subtle percussion touches, & an array of quirky yet subdued manipulated noise & sound elements thrown in between the gaps. And there’s even a little organ & off-kilter horn wails on a few later tracks; but the guitars and the vocals remain the main and present forces.
The album is often sparse yet never cold or barren; it all feels very human, warming and at times quite playful. The whole album nicely drifts along in a mellow yet at times slightly awkward manner as the often tuneful yet wondering tracks are brushed with off-kilter edges, noisy nudges & the odd discordant flavour, strum or sonic fold. Certainly you can hear hints of all the members other projects with-in ‘Oh! Gimme You’; but this has it’s own edge, charm & flavour which make this it's own distinctive sonic cheature instead of a Frankenstein monster like melding of the members other four or five projects.
All told a pleasing yet slight off-centre album that mangers to be mellow, stumbling, & charming. It's restful and soothing sometimes; yet at others a little jarring and edgy too and that’s what makes this all the more appealing in it’s mixture of the mellow & the slightly discordant or off kilter-ness.