Rapunzel8083 is the sort of project that really fucks up all of your preconceptions about genres and scenes and trends, because what Rapunzel8083 exists outside of anything going on in Japan at the moment. The closest contingent I’d even dare drop Rapunzel8083 into would be INNIT, since both focus on bending the rules of electronic music into fascinating new styles.
Rapunzel8083’s shorter songs are plenty good and strange, but the project’s best ones are the ten-minute tracks that near the ten-minute mark. “Miró Jazz” is the latest entry in Rapunzel8083’s “jazz” series, and the best one yet. Turns out several of Rapunzel’s shorter beats released over the past month or so – including “Duet” among others – were parts of this song, each one a different segment. Holding the entire song together are samples of children talking…including, surprisingly enough, a snippet of the viral YouTube video “Charlie Bit My Finger – Again!”…which tie these otherwise surrealist passages together. At first, this sample-heavy approach brings to mind Los Angeles’ Baths…but nothing Baths has ever done sounds this epic, and I don’t mean in an Internet-age “oh this BLT is SOOOO EPIC” but rather like I’m climbing over a huge mountain.
The one common thread running through Rapunzel8083’s works is a love of art, specifically of painters. The last “jazz” entry was “Dalí Jazz,” and this one is in tribute to Joan Miró, famous for his surrealist images evoking childhood (which, hey, explains those samples). It’s this art connection that puts Rapunzel8083 on the outside of any scene going on right now in Japan (that I’m aware of), and it is very welcome.