To some degree, Cokiyu is responsible for you reading this post on this blog right now. I’m not talking in the head-slappingly obvious way that you probably Googled that name and somehow ended up here, but rather the little truth that this blog might not even exist if it weren’t for college-aged me stumbling across her album Mirror Flake. Quick story – back in university, I was a music nerd (shock) and was flirting with Japanese music. At that point, I’d digested the Western-approved staples (Boredomes, Cornelius, Shugo, Boris) and a few others (Lullatone jump to mind, as does Rainstick Orchestra) but wasn’t all that serious about it. Then, in a move matched only topped by the time my housemate and I bought a deep fryer on a whim, I stumbled across Cokiyu’s MySpace page, was wowed by the two tracks posted and instantly ordered it. The entire album wowed me, and that sort of sparked my further steps into the world of Japanese music. The more you know!
So I’m pretty excited to stumble across the news that Cokiyu has a new album called Your Thorn out next week on Flau Records. It’s a nine-song album which, based on the album sampler below, finds the Tokyo artist returning to the lush atmospherics of Mirror Flake once again, her voice gliding within.
[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/cokiyu/your-thorn”]
The title track can also be streamed at Flau Record’s SoundCloud page. Minimalist electronics sweep gently over what could be field recordings of birds…Cokiyu’s electronic compositions gel surprisingly well with the natural world, as if keyboards appeared inside tree trunks…as her voice gently wafts over it all. The best touch ends up being the string-pluck noises, which add a refined touch to this delicate number. Listen below, I’m geeked.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/22377738″]
Big thanks go to Nagoya’s Vivid Black, who inadvertently tipped me off to this when he posted a remix of “Your Thorn” to his SoundCloud page. Listen to that below.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/22522747″]