Home And Away: Metoronori’s Mawari

To some extent, Shibuya-based music maker Metoronori’s Mawari reminds me of fellow Japanese artist i-fls. Both are painfully DIY, recording simple electronic tracks on their own, both artists defined by chintzy keyboard and synth sounds. Their music also evokes youth gone by, mostly via the simplistic sound they lean on. Yet one thing separates the two – Metoronori relies on her own voice, while i-fls is purely instrumental. Her singing on Mawari adds a playfulness to the rinky-dink creations across the 11-tack album. Her overlapped coos on “Rizu No” make the song both cute and disorienting, while her single-syllable contributions to “Mass” add softness to the otherwise bare-bones track. Natural sounds, similarly, add strange flourishes to her songs, most evidenced on “Hyouteki No Uta,” where the sound of someone tapping on keyboard plays alongside the scattered synth notes and her low-key singing. Mawari is an odd little album, a homemade collection of experimental music crafted from the barest of pieces. Strangely captivating, get it here.