Satomimagae - Taba [ RVNG Intl. - 2025]Taba is a work of unbridled interiority, cloying at times, others, downright claustrophobic. Spread over 14 short pieces, the album, by Japanese artist, Satomi, is predicated on the simultaneous existence of the individual and the larger collective (Taba) to which it inevitably belongs, however fraught that relationship. Strange, then, that the results on Taba would feel so personal, an effect that can easily skip over the universal altogether and march headlong into the alienating, if you're not careful. In order to avoid such pitfalls, Satomi wields heavily processed singing and acoustic guitar in order to draw attention to the aforementioned divide, with the occasional smattering of extra electronics, flute, and lots of tape hiss. Lo-fi techniques are nearly synonymous with this genre, whose chief progenitor, Liz Harris (aka Grouper), spawned a musical direction that has been going for quite a while now, its longevity proof of the allure of the fragmentary and broken, in both structural and aesthetic terms.
So, what of the collective that is the work's title? After repeated attempts to fumble around for some kind of auditory evidence of its impact on this work, my rather clumsy guess is that the inwardness that is the horizon of Satomi's songwriting is formed through the imperceptible presence of an outside that is not so much figured as felt, a pressure exerting itself akin to the weather. The final track on Taba, the appositely titled, "Ghost", is the closest thing to proof of the collective understood as a specter that rears its head in the acoustic divisions of individual notes and sound sources, like the fluttering of Satori's voice and the gentle picking of her acoustic guitar that is slowly overtaken by a motor speeding up and finally slowing down.
Fans of Grouper, and lofi, dreamy, vocal-driven songwriting with acoustic guitar, will probably feel at home in the stifled introspection. It is familiar sonic terrain, to be sure, but the imaginary collective is still the closest we'll get to something like an encounter with the social Real. For more   Colin Lang
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