New Le Makeup: “Aisou”

One of the elements that made Le Makeup’s Hyper Earthy such a striking album was the emergence of the Osaka’s own voice on the album. Since then, Le Makeup has been playing around with how their singing can be deployed over beats and acoustic guitar. Aisou finds the artist getting even better at using their own instrument, including knowing when to pull it back completely. The project’s focus on capturing the everyday feelings of life continues, immediate on the opening title track, one of the more spacious tracks Le Makeup has made. Yet look in the background to hear them playing with their own voice, manipulating it into another layer, including a late song stretch where it becomes fuzzed-out. The way Le Makeup places his vocals changes drastically over this release — they start a bit buried on “Delay” but eventually shove their way to the front just as the music picks up energy, while “Bangkok” pushes them further back, turning them into a memory. Then you have “Galfy,” where Le Makeup just takes the singing out entirely to dip back into the Caribbean-inspired dance music they played around with early in their career. Aisou follows the blueprint Le Makeup has been playing around with for a bit, and just shows how much better they’ve gotten with it. Get it here, or listen below.